Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it is possible for nobles such as mayors, barons, dukes, etc to pass laws that essentially banish troublemakers from their territory. And there will be ways for law enforcement to reinforce and uphold those laws, which would make certain territories a kind of "soft safe zone" but like real life, you're not really safe anywhere.
AI's definitely going to be one of the make-or-break points with this game. All we can do on that front right now is speculate, but given the dedication of the pre-alpha community, I imagine that one way or the other, it's going to get a lot of testing and a lot of polish. All we can do for the time being is hope that that's going to be enough.
As for your other points, Boogie...
Posted By Boogie_Knight at 3:03 PM - Wed Sep 26 2018
- Malais stealing from dead people is only a crime if everyone isn't dead. NPC's don't spirit walk. ill be interested to see what state opc corpses are considered. Another skirt could be shooting at npc's or throwing rocks to get them to aggro and drawing them into mobs. One guy in the group (or a smurf account) takes the minor infraction of assaulting a villager and the rest get the loot without getting into trouble.
Unless the criminal is experienced in obscuring or removing evidence, they're going to leave a trail of clues that can be followed by a player with the right skillset. So even killing every witness to a crime isn't enough to kill your trail; you need to invest time and effort into the appropriate skills to properly execute and conceal a theft, murder, or other criminal activity.
Kiting I can see being an issue, but the first gating point I see on people trying to do it is NPC gear. Even a simple hunting bow will be enough to put a stop to solo kiting/peeling tactics; attempting the same thing against a garrison patrol with 2 crossbowmen, bolas, or slings would in all likelihood be suicide without 10-20 people. The launch murderhobo zergs are a bigger threat than general kiting is.
Training NPCs into mobs (or vice versa) is only really going to be viable if the NPCs don't possess adequate sensory capacity to identify threats. Again, there's a lot to speculate on there, but simply from looking at the track record for conventional multiplayer game development, there's... not a lot of focus on detailed commands, patterns, or responses. SbS plans to have NPCs that are more than props. If they pull it off, I doubt anyone's going to be able to pull an unwary NPC into a pack of wolves on the fly. Stuff like that will require planning.
As for every town having palisades... well, to be honest, any duke negligent enough to not kit out their villages, towns and cities to defend against rampaging hordes of half-naked barbarians leading up to launch is asking for trouble. The zerg will be CoE's first real test of mortality. Improper preparation in the early grace period could kill the game. Adequate preparation will show everyone following the game - to support or disparage it - that it has a future, and that player effort makes a massive difference in the outcome of any given event of note.
To touch Divinity, one must be prepared to brave Reality.
i think they logic problem i was trying to point out is that these are not mmo npcs/mobs that are on a respawn timer with a set quest path. i think the logic of many is that this is an mmo with survival elements but having every building (not just some) be player built and destructible means this will play like a massive survival game. If 6k hours in ark, and nearing on another 3k split between rust and conan tells me anything it's that no one will want live in the large towns (i mean players will or will start out in them but the majority of players will build their own if they have the option) as everyone is a dragonborn and wants to be their own mini king.
There will be thousands of (shit shack) small, player hamlets that will be undefended. To the point that no duke, count, or even local magistrate will be able to count or map much less defend. The problem with this is npc's don't start as beach bobs so the naked zergs will not be naked zergs for long if they can kite npc's and mobs. I don't think this breaks the game or will even kill it. You should have a huge risk of getting killed and the small village you and 2 buddies built that attracted a few npc's should kit the griefers if you cant defend it. Its a way to say "live in an established town or get wrecked". I think this pushes people to pop centers and forces people to either group up, get good, or get wrecked. I think relying on NPC ai (which historically in most/all games has been bad) to protect you and be unbeatable is lazy and will make the game not fun.
Ai Archers, that were mentioned in the thread before are not the end all answer as any game with any type of shield makes them useless.
Be careful, not to fall into a sheep-like self-confidence thinking...
Don't expect to be safe at any time. Threat exactly comes when you expect it the least. IMO, the game will behave as expected the first 1-2 months. But then...
Then you will start to hear some people complaining about being taken stupidly by surprise, murdered and stolen to the bone into their own house, or during their way back to s(h)ettlement with full wagon of supply.
Hearing that , you will say "that's life !" and think "stupid noob", but you will start to be more cautious.
Then One day, you'll hear on every lips a huge attack on a village performed by a bandit group called
On the other side, you will have a group of 3-5 friends training hard at arms together the first 1-2 months.
Then, they will scout pacifically for prey and weak points, and choose one... It will work and move to another zone.
"Ah the world is so big my dear !"
With success comes reputation, and with reputation comes new recruits. The group grows, They improve their organisation to back-up their supply and create their own underground society in other cities, maybe county, duchy, or even kingdom, ensuring their revenue and supply.
They grow so much, that now they can afford to attack even settlement. They even laugh at killing unskilled player-soldiers.
Now their reputation grow so high that, the duke or the king himself try to catch them, but that is too late, because they are now outnumbering the king army herself. They are more skilled at killing player than any soldier. They are better equiped than any usual adventurer.
And they are wolf, so they split into many multiple groups.
"The world is so huge my friend !".
They go back into their underground-society and start to protect the sheeps from other wolves.
The citizen call them "Heroes", while they secretly start to call their King a "useless Jester".
Casus Belli starts in different county of the kingdom... The underground society is taking slowly control over the "pre-rich" nobles.
The $ 10'000.- Kings start to complain after less than 10 months. Dukes as well. Chaos is spreading like fire, but it's not fire because fire burns slower than chaos in this game...
Nobody is not anymore safe... Paranoia starts...
Farmer are leaving the game... Producer are leaving the game... Adventurer are leaving the game... Wolve left the game.
Game is dead. TILT ! Please insert coins :) LOL
"Heaven as hell can be earthly; we take them with us wherever we go."
Christopher Colombus
Posted By Boogie_Knight at 04:06 AM - Thu Oct 04 2018
i think the logic problem i was trying to point out is that these are not mmo npcs/mobs that are on a respawn timer with a set quest path. i think the logic of many is that this is an mmo with survival elements but having every building (not just some) be player built and destructible means this will play like a massive survival game. If 6k hours in ark, and nearing on another 3k split between rust and conan tells me anything it's that no one will want live in the large towns (i mean players will or will start out in them but the majority of players will build their own if they have the option) as everyone is a dragonborn and wants to be their own mini king.
I've got two things to contribute here. First is that buildings will not be easy to destroy. Fire's not going to be spreadable from small sources (ie. without something like siege gear, built for war and destruction), and applied force from an individual can only do so much damage. How they choose to tweak the numbers on this is on them, but I'd say they're going to make it quite difficult to get through anything that isn't a cheap, rudimentary door.
Second ties in with part of your point: This is, in essence, a huge survival game. Part of that is the fact that many threats will be harder to mitigate alone than they will in groups. And harder to mitigate in small groups than in large ones. Cities offer something that games like Ark, Conan and the like are incapable of on account of their server size: Security in numbers. When several hundred bodies occupy a small area, with rostered patrols and garrisoned guards, it becomes a lot harder to sneak in with a battering ram and smash someone's doors/walls down in the night. Or to get a treb or catapault within firing distance of the walls without being seen and probably killed.
There will be thousands of (shit shack) small, player hamlets that will be undefended. To the point that no duke, count, or even local magistrate will be able to count or map much less defend.
For this one, the answer's simple: it's going to be a lot harder to get resources in this than it is in the aforementioned survival games. No lugging around loads of wood and stone like so much sand in one's invisible bag of holding. Everything you carry, you carry yourself or use animals to move; everything you use is used to-scale, meaning you're not putting together a bunch of walls from the contents of a single tree. Building even the shit-shack quality buildings you're talking about would take time (especially for a novice lumberjack/quarryman), effort, and resources that most post-Exposition players (and a lot of Exposition players, too) aren't going to be able to spare. Yes, a lot of Exposition players are going to have resources to spend, but you've got to bear in mind they'd need to get those out of the distribution nodes and into someplace they can build without getting spotted building by guards (squatting), looted by other players (bandits), attacked by wildlife (natural hazards), or screwing up and wasting resources (low skill builders). A lot of the early threats people are concerned about are justifiable in games of lesser complexity, such as Ark and Conan. In a game that thoroughly fleshes out its craft and survival mechanics, however - without artificial stat inflation such as we see in conventional MMO design - things are going to be different.
How different remains to be seen, as once again - all we can do at this point is speculate on the finished product. However, on paper, it looks good.
I think relying on NPC ai (which historically in most/all games has been bad) to protect you and be unbeatable is lazy and will make the game not fun.
Ai Archers, that were mentioned in the thread before are not the end all answer as any game with any type of shield makes them useless.
Shields make bows useless, yes (for at least the first few shots, depending on quality), but bear in mind I also mentioned crossbowmen. Crossbow bolts can punch through full plate armour at decent range, from what I recall. If I wind up going the extra step up to nobility at launch, crossbows are among the first staples I'll be setting up mass production of in my county for this reason.
The AI doesn't even necessarily need to be complex, if you think about it. I expect it'll be a few tiers better than what we've seen before, in the absolute worst-case scenario. But imagine if the NPCs in the MMOs you played had ranged weapons with realistic damage, with high proficiency in a skill-based system where target tracking is dependent on the level of skill the character possesses. Given a clear line of sight, short-to-medium range and melee cover, even a basic point-and-shoot command in response to nearby hostile action is almost definitely going to down the attacker.
The offset to this is, of course, that if the first shot fails (and you only have one crossbowman in the defending force), they then have to reload. But I'm not trying to argue that the ranged advantage is unbeatable, simply that it's not going to be cheesable. But again, as well; I could well be wrong on all of this, and there's not really much besides what we've read of the dev journals that I can supply as evidence for my standpoint until the game's in alpha and ready for us to jump in and test things out. Everything we discuss at this point is speculation.
To touch Divinity, one must be prepared to brave Reality.
Posted By Wolfguarde at 11:44 PM - Thu Oct 04 2018
Posted By Boogie_Knight at 04:06 AM - Thu Oct 04 2018
i think the logic problem i was trying to point out is that these are not mmo npcs/mobs that are on a respawn timer with a set quest path. i think the logic of many is that this is an mmo with survival elements but having every building (not just some) be player built and destructible means this will play like a massive survival game. If 6k hours in ark, and nearing on another 3k split between rust and conan tells me anything it's that no one will want live in the large towns (i mean players will or will start out in them but the majority of players will build their own if they have the option) as everyone is a dragonborn and wants to be their own mini king.
I've got two things to contribute here. First is that buildings will not be easy to destroy. Fire's not going to be spreadable from small sources (ie. without something like siege gear, built for war and destruction), and applied force from an individual can only do so much damage. How they choose to tweak the numbers on this is on them, but I'd say they're going to make it quite difficult to get through anything that isn't a cheap, rudimentary door.
Second ties in with part of your point: This is, in essence, a huge survival game. Part of that is the fact that many threats will be harder to mitigate alone than they will in groups. And harder to mitigate in small groups than in large ones. Cities offer something that games like Ark, Conan and the like are incapable of on account of their server size: Security in numbers. When several hundred bodies occupy a small area, with rostered patrols and garrisoned guards, it becomes a lot harder to sneak in with a battering ram and smash someone's doors/walls down in the night. Or to get a treb or catapault within firing distance of the walls without being seen and probably killed.
There will be thousands of (shit shack) small, player hamlets that will be undefended. To the point that no duke, count, or even local magistrate will be able to count or map much less defend.
For this one, the answer's simple: it's going to be a lot harder to get resources in this than it is in the aforementioned survival games. No lugging around loads of wood and stone like so much sand in one's invisible bag of holding. Everything you carry, you carry yourself or use animals to move; everything you use is used to-scale, meaning you're not putting together a bunch of walls from the contents of a single tree. Building even the shit-shack quality buildings you're talking about would take time (especially for a novice lumberjack/quarryman), effort, and resources that most post-Exposition players (and a lot of Exposition players, too) aren't going to be able to spare. Yes, a lot of Exposition players are going to have resources to spend, but you've got to bear in mind they'd need to get those out of the distribution nodes and into someplace they can build without getting spotted building by guards (squatting), looted by other players (bandits), attacked by wildlife (natural hazards), or screwing up and wasting resources (low skill builders). A lot of the early threats people are concerned about are justifiable in games of lesser complexity, such as Ark and Conan. In a game that thoroughly fleshes out its craft and survival mechanics, however - without artificial stat inflation such as we see in conventional MMO design - things are going to be different.
How different remains to be seen, as once again - all we can do at this point is speculate on the finished product. However, on paper, it looks good.
I think relying on NPC ai (which historically in most/all games has been bad) to protect you and be unbeatable is lazy and will make the game not fun.
Ai Archers, that were mentioned in the thread before are not the end all answer as any game with any type of shield makes them useless.Shields make bows useless, yes (for at least the first few shots, depending on quality), but bear in mind I also mentioned crossbowmen. Crossbow bolts can punch through full plate armour at decent range, from what I recall. If I wind up going the extra step up to nobility at launch, crossbows are among the first staples I'll be setting up mass production of in my county for this reason.
The AI doesn't even necessarily need to be complex, if you think about it. I expect it'll be a few tiers better than what we've seen before, in the absolute worst-case scenario. But imagine if the NPCs in the MMOs you played had ranged weapons with realistic damage, with high proficiency in a skill-based system where target tracking is dependent on the level of skill the character possesses. Given a clear line of sight, short-to-medium range and melee cover, even a basic point-and-shoot command in response to nearby hostile action is almost definitely going to down the attacker.
The offset to this is, of course, that if the first shot fails (and you only have one crossbowman in the defending force), they then have to reload. But I'm not trying to argue that the ranged advantage is unbeatable, simply that it's not going to be cheesable. But again, as well; I could well be wrong on all of this, and there's not really much besides what we've read of the dev journals that I can supply as evidence for my standpoint until the game's in alpha and ready for us to jump in and test things out. Everything we discuss at this point is speculation.
Absolutely everything is speculation at this point. I would also add that both ark and conan being simpler games... well, they were both games that had 10x the budget this one does right now. The Arbalest you're talking about that could punch through armor and shields is pretty late medieval tech (12th century) if that's around day 1 i would be astounded. Non-player archers are also a static defense, they aren't smart enough to move around in between shots making a simple hunting bow in the hands of a player controlled character way more useful than an npc/opc archer/crossbowman. Also, who hasn't run an "S" pattern up to an npc archer and just whacked them with a sword? Shit you can do that in mount and blade and the npc archers are terrifyingly good shots that do move in between draws to make them harder to hit with arrows.
All this back and forth is kind of pulling away from my original point that open pvp won't kill the game if it plays like a survival game. Hopefully, it will keep the shit shacks to a minimum and incentivize players to work together and not be dragonborn. If its as easy to defend a town or settlement as most people have described, it probably wont allow for much action and be boring pretty quick once towns and cities are built.
Well, "boring" if you define excitement by how many bodies you can stack up or buildings you can burn down...
:)
Posted By Marovec at 08:38 AM - Fri Oct 05 2018
Well, "boring" if you define excitement by how many bodies you can stack up or buildings you can burn down...
:)
Excitement for me comes with the possibility of being one of the bodies that will be stacked. If i'm always safe and no one can hurt me, ill get bored of playing sim-farm-for-resources and quit. I'm pretty used to people having the idea that if you think pvp is necessary all you want to do is kill people for no reason.
O, I don't think that everyone who enjoys pvp just wants to kill people for no reason, just pointing out (in a tongue-in-cheek manner) that there is a decent portion of the CoE population that will find plenty of ways to not be "bored" that have nothing to do with combat/pvp.
Posted By Boogie_Knight at 01:16 AM - Sat Oct 06 2018
Snip
True, sorry for dragging things off track. I think that most of the serious PvP action will happen in sanctioned combat areas (city arenas, underground pit fighting dens, etc) or, on a larger scale, in warfare. While it does mean less immediate access to chaotic combat, it does allow for a much more diverse spread of content styles. PvP styles, too - economics, politics, and the like all have more than an edge margin in the game's design plan, unlike most MMOs. I'm hoping that, because of the difference in the game's mechanics and style of play, we won't see squatter shacks cramping up the areas around towns and cities simply because it's easier and less costly to live within a settlement than it is to try to survive outside of it.
That said, I've said it a few times over the last year and a bit, but the game's first real test of longevity will be the zerg. I think the odds are good that the initial rush of murder hobos and players trying to treat CoE like Ark or Conan will burn out fairly quickly. There's definitely going to be damage in those settlements and communities that don't properly prepare, and it might be fairly widespread. I'm very curious to see how bad the hit is when it comes, and how well (or not) the servers recover from it. Should the game pull through its launch, I think it's a pretty safe bet it's going to last a good, long time.
To touch Divinity, one must be prepared to brave Reality.
Posted By LaLicorne at
Is Chronicles of Elyria going to be a FFA PvP ?
(FFA stands for “Free for all PvP” this means you can kill anyone just about anywhere and anytime that so pleases you, there are not factions dictating who you can and can’t kill)
I know there are kind of rules and contracts, but will the contracts and rules be enforced in a way that make them taken seriously ?
TL;DR: No and Yes.
I concur that it is important to learn from past mistakes, so first I will tackle where the Shadowbane comparison stops in my opinion.
Then to quote a friend, I will consider why "CoE will make PvE, PvP, RvR, FFA, RP acronyms obsolete".
As for the contracts features, Caspian recently reported they were working on a new design journal about contracts and identities. Since it is so central to how the worlds of Chronicles of Elyria can be managed as a game system, we'll have to wait for that to happen.
As for Shadowbane, there are similarities but that stop really quick, right at the roots... the only possible challenge is about something I won't discuss: "lagging servers" since we don't know if SbS will pass that hurdle yet.
Shadowbane did a "jigsaw with most core designs": for instance, adding realms afterwards to rationalize the FFA consequences on a game system that wasn't created for it, was too late and another straw to a flawed conception.
About "aging tech", unlike the devs behind Shadowbane, CoE has proven time and time that they have a S.OL.I.D. development.
One that can switch clients when necessary: the whole saga of the "light game client", now Prelyria with increase efficiency, is a good example of good production-making (though the lack of knowledge base and bug and feature support is concerning).
I don't think I'm the only one around who would be perfectly fine having only the Prelyria client to play Chronicles of Elyria.
That's not the plan, as SbS assuredly included a potential swap to the Unreal 4.0 heir if/when they have to transition to that next-gen one within the next twelve years. Which solves another cause of Shadowbane's demise : its poorly executed and ankwardly dated "in-house graphics engine".
On the contrary, Soulbond Studios focused where it matters (even more importantly for an online world) with their proprietary dynamic story engine, the Soulborn Engine. Their bad luck was the partnership with Improbable (for the network infrastructure necessary to such a wonderous multiplayer system) that didn't bear the fruits they expected.
Thirdly-ish, the guys behind Shadowbane had trusted "financial investors" and Ubisoft as publisher... oh sorry, I thought I said enough. ;) But to try to not enter another debate, lets simply say that crowdfunders, as a matter of fact, care about the result of their investment (and about customer care :p), not about the RoI (return of investment).
Plenty of people have an opinion about this. Some says that since it is too difficult to balance a game, there has to be a meta changing every few month to keep things fresh. It's even working... until it doesn't anymore.
Something stable is easy to adjust and tweak, it also can endure some abuse (hinges of the kitchen door), but that other thing that miraculously hold itself together with a big sign "please, do not touch"... there's no way you will be not destroy something in the balancing process.
I could also answer without putting too much thought in it: do you see rulesets change that often in any other domain, sports or gaming being the closest (imagine this in soccer, tennis, or the way you get a paycheck)?
Sure motorsports tend to have to deal yearly with advance in technology and what is considered fair for the next competition/season, but a video game rarely have to go out of their way against such external threats (aim bots and that sort of things do pose a problem, but they are not new). No, the main problem more often comes from within.
There are plenty a game system that successfully include house rules and variants over an already robust main ruleset, definitely not before (in card games like poker or tarot, tabletop game and rpg systems are prime examples). But as a general rule: the more is artificially introduced, the lesser player base that follow, except if one nailed it hard on the money.
CoE design is lore-anchored, organic, and coherent; all three adjectives leading to the same point actually: a stable base to build on whatever other mechanics fit the grand scheme.
Shadowbane didn't have such, or any, a robust design before launch, and "wouldn't, or maybe couldn't, change gears" before derailing, leaving only regrets and some history footnotes in its wake.
Now lets talk: all those acronyms describe a limitation in possible gameplay, not a bonus feature... it is not so important in solo or even classical co-op game, though it starts to show the problem.
Any gamer know that PvE and PvP stand respectively for Player vs Environment and it supposed opposite Player vs Player. Yet notice that singular... it comes from an ancient era and is deadly relevant to our debate.
That's why people feel the need to further precise Ganking PvP, Free-for-All PvP, Asymetric PvP (4vs1), Team PvP, or... you get the meaning.
In such "PvP games" (even if they are dubbed MMO or worse: RPG), you enter the "game session", play a few "encounters", reap the "rewards" (even if you performed poorly) and "log out for the day".
In successful "PvP worlds", like in EvE Online, you have to park your belongings in a "safe zone" (being paranoid is an asset then) or amongst friends: I don't mean your contact list, nor raid members :doh:... but online people you actually trust... wait, what?!.
Anyway, on to my main point, what is an online persistent world with no persistent existences/characters? A nesting ground for anonymous geezers to exploit, abuse, brag, troll and grief.
We have plenty of successful and enthralling game worlds to adventure through (Witcher, Assassin Creed, Mass Effect, even the new Cyberpunk... you name it), but how many would risk their franchise to go (multiplayer) online?
Even simply co-op is a debate on its own, that's why there are plenty circumvening design solutions to bring the illusion without taking the literal step.
Anyone can do a shortlist of the worst behaviors from gamers/games and breachs of netiquette on their surrounding communities: what you'll obtain is the series of symptoms originating from a few festering causes and poor design choices.
One is letting a player wield the ultimate power to make everything disappear with a flick of a button (also known as simply logging out)... oh I see what some are thinking and I don't mean to chain people to their screens! :p
More seriously, in immersive and emergent game worlds, a player doesn't have to play a role (enforced RP, or not): they are immersive enough for the player to take decisions on what s/he wants to do with ~the~ her/his (character's) story.
Notice the oblivious blur between the two, something we all experienced in good games... or in a good book (yeah the real thing, paper still exists).
Just a tangent foray on some overlooked and potential practical problems to "raiding carebears" until "sheeps" become an exhasuted ressources in the game world.
First there won't be levels to boost your stats (attributes at least)... just training (and maintaining your fitness) and initial genetics somewhat, with an important exception.
Indeed, for wanabee agressors it is even more dangerous to try to attack someone close to one of their family member (villages for instance), as the "Family Bond" kicks in... and their stats get... "bolstered" (remixing into the overall best attributes).
Add to that, that using disguises (which is the best form of sneaking in this low-magic realistic game) among a close-knit community is taking a lot of risks (especially with the "blue or red" mentality generally associated with such locals).
But lets assume, a family of wolves (they can do that too) got their fangs on some fat loot, where to spend it? Where and how to enjoy the spoils and the good life? A historical question that corsairs and pirates of legends, as cunning and impitoyable they could be, answered by partnering with the (some) so-called sheeps, because every involved party is both actually.
What if instead, historical pirates could... safeguard their loot on their account (no... my treasure maps got eat by the dog), log off when pursued by royal fleets and teleport to base when low on consumables... did I mention mutineries and dyssentries among those powerful valiant crews?
Persistence of character: can't escape by logging or teleporting out... escape only if you died which seems fair,
then friendly fire and body collision: as announced balanced design against multi-boxing, unrealistic ganking and combat exploits noticeably (a crossbow wielder in your back is not the best thing you can wish for, unfriendly or not),
the limited inventory: for those like me who should be playing "Pathfinder: Kingmaker" right now (talk about a bad launch), we know how bothering that inventory thing can weight on gameplay and movement if pushed too far or done wrong,
non-trivial survival: in another MMO, any player would be rich beyond measure... and wasting resources like there's no tomorrow. In Elyira, good luck during the longest night or a more simple yet still harsh season/weather trying to maintain fitness for combat (it won't be wolf and sheep then, rather cicada and ant).
required logistics and transport: moving through the wild like on a highway, running all the time... don't expect things to go easily, though parkour is your new elyrian friend and a compas ("You brought the map, right? No, I thought you did").
to name a few systems that make the world complete and not just another pretty background to a gankfest party... still I should conclude with the narrative engine.
"A good story is one you don't want to interrupt or see interrupted."
The Soulborn Engine which records your character's behaviors along its lifespan pited against their values (education, tribe, religion, local laws and regulations) for the soul affinity feature, weighting risk vs reward... and tweaking your next story arc accordingly (o_O).
A soul that is your actual player character and will bear part of those actions for the rest of your gameplay (with that particular soul).
Sure, no other player can touch your soul, and you can still effectively log out with no consequence, but there are also no matter attached to this "escape" either, since you leave your other self in that ever-online world.
About PvE, there's no "versus", your character is the environment. OPC (offline player characters) are a good chunk of the population though they will probably behave a bit subpar compared to their NPCs comparses (non-player characters): having two personalities in one body (and possibly even more identities)... yeah a tad schizo those heroic/crazy/talented soulborns.
Finally, with all the benefits that come with grooming old souls, no smart, min/maxing or hardcore gamers (especially the "wolves" mentionned in this thread) would want to jeopardize their "end-game" for the very relative satisfaction of non-gratifying law-less behaviors.
Which I mean chaos-inducing, game-breaking and no-risk behaviors.
While living as an outlaw is half part of the charm of such game world, lets stop to think about it for a couple seconds: outlaws, most heroes and rebels are of that kind, villains most often aren't.
What does it mean in this ever-online world where you can chose a path of darkness (not wickedness) or virtue (not goodness) for your p(l)aying soul with every events you make.
Now, remember that most things in the game erode with both time and use (Darkest Dungeon is a good analogy of expected conundrums): it isn't free, even if seemingly easy, to go and kill a random someone ("sheep")... the kind of no-brainer that leads to a "too much hassle" choice.
As stated in a better way by @Wolfguarde in an above post, at launch, with the initial influx of new players testing the boundaries of their inner gamer's possibilities will be quite gruesome and challenging. Not to a breaking point hopefully, but as I like to say "A game deserves the players it lures", Shadowbane did it wrong in my opinion, we'll see what second population boom CoE will seek to court... as the fated date approachs.
[EU/EN/FR] An enlightened mind, a wandering soul (or vice versa) : mayor of the fair city of Aurora Beach, civil engineer by design, inscriber wanabee, outfit maker enthousiast... and editor at the Skyfall:Archives.
"May the land be fair to you." (Friend Code : 48FDFB)
i kinda think the major difference between CoE and shadowbane is that CoE is a survival game with a bit more structure that has mmo numbers of players and shadowbane was an mmorpg. They kind of have nothing to do with each other. There is rampant griefing on most/all other survival games but that hasn't kept them from getting 30k+ concurrent players for the last several years. That's kinda why i didn't address this issue.
The thing that drew me to CoE is that having 1000's of players in my mind fixes a lot of the problems with current multiplayer survival games.
Like:
-max 70 players on at a time means a tribe with 200 players can keep you from ever being able to log in.
-A server with 2/70 players is dead and no one will play there.
-1000's of unofficial servers all doing the same thing making them all dead or really low pop.
NPC's walking around and being normal was a huge draw to me too. I hated feeling like i was the only person in my tribe when i played late at night. I feel like this is what LIF:mmo is missing too. No one really to interact with other than other players who all just want to kill you drive-by style on a horse.
I feel like this kind of game is just the natural progression of multiplayer survival games. I think its great to mix in the MMORPG crowd with the Survival crowd too. I've personally never played an mmo other than BDO and even then i only played for a few months, just not my thing. I like to create and destroy things and hopefully have my created things destroyed so i can rebuild them better.
Posted By LaLicorne at
Moreover the freedom for Wolves (chaotic/hardcore PvP players) to kill Sheeps (general crafter/farmer/soft players) delivered a lethal blow to Shadowbane, ultimately leading oppressed "Sheep" players to massively leave the game. Which without "prey" lead the Wolves to leave the game as well ? So the game was dead.
So this is for me a really important matter. Where those two threats already did proved to lead to a fail in history of MMORPG.
Source : Shadowbane : Death of a game
All this fear mongering of sheep vs wolves, not all players who like PVP will be wolves, some of us will be sheep-dogs. If the sheep don't like to be attacked by wolves they get sheep-dogs simple.
Time periods akin to CoE, villages, cities, kingdoms hired people to protect the people and a similar concept will be implemented by villages, cities and kingdoms. Just like there are players who want to harm others for the fun of it there are players who want to protect others for the fun of it.
Naturally both players who harm or protect just for laughs are far and few between, the average PVP'r I know would do either based on what they can get in return. So if the sheep want to be protected live somewhere where there are players protecting you, or give enough incentive for sheep-dogs to protect you.
Recent article out about CCP was an interesting read:
https://massivelyop.com/2018/10/14/eve-evolved-wars-are-literally-ruining-eve-online/
My $0.02 worth - subject to fluctuations in the community stock exchange.