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[UristMcDwarf]

I'm taking bets on how long it is before this devolves into Russians ruining it. Over under is 1 month right now.

nothin like casual racism

"Russian" isn't a race?

shhhhhhhhhhhhh

[Sirian]

Me wants! NAO! Or even better - yesterday!
I hope they won't change full loot, free pvp due to crying pus**es.

I'm against things like full loot / free pvp, and it has nothing to do with "being a pussy". I often play games where you only fight human players (for instance Quake live or LoL), but that's for when I'm in the mood for it. I find that, when I'm in the mood for "crafting", combat just becomes an annoyance. That's why I often end up playing Minecraft in solo / peaceful, because I'm playing it to discover the content, and combat just becomes an interruption.

Take for instance "A tale in the desert", in this game there is a ton of crafting (with lots of side activities), but no combat whatsoever. However, you are still competing with other humans for resources and progress. Not being able to just destroy the others through combat means that you have to work hard, cooperate with friends, contribute to your region's progress, explore, be smart, and above all you find that information is the key to success.

When you can lose everything you have, dozens of hours of work or more, to a single raid, it just breaks the positive mood.

An analogy come to mind : say you are building an intricate sand castle on the beach. Are you ok with kids running around destroying your castle whenever they want, having to restart from scratch at their whim ? You could say that the guy building a sandcastle is being a pussy, but maybe the kids are also assholes. Should the guy forget about his castle and just ruin other people's fun for his own entertainment ? Or should he keep working on his castle ? Or leave the beach ? Either way it's a sad tale.

[PrimusRibbus]

Wurm's also pretty grindy once you get past the initial stages. Have to spend hours (Literally, in a fair few cases) making things over and over in order to progress.

That's the biggest thing that I'm afraid of. I love Full PvP MMOs, but too many of them use heavy grinding as a way to slow people down and attempt to "balance" the game without actually looking at the game mechanics.

I'm looking at you, Haven and Hearth.

Hah! H&H was exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote that!

For both Wurm and H&H I found that the first week or two on a new server/world was super fun, but after that the botters/macroers become so established that there was no longer a point to playing.

[WhitiusOpus]

I am both for and against the idea of Full Loot and PvP.

Let me explain.

I like the idea that everything you have could be challenged at any time, but I don't like the fact that it can be utterly destroyed. If I want to battle and raid someone, I'll gather what equipment I'm willing to risk and set off for it. It's not as if the "random knights" don't have anything to loose. In fact, they may be more at risk, since they'll have the full armor and weapons, which would be worth more than the small village or such that you'll have built. In short, they say the game is about realism, and full PvP is realistic. You just need to be strong enough to defend yourself, or make a pact with a nearby "lord" (aka, "good knight") to defend you.

[E. Albright]

I am both for and against the idea of Full Loot and PvP.

[...]

In short, they say the game is about realism, and full PvP is realistic. You just need to be strong enough to defend yourself, or make a pact with a nearby "lord" (aka, "good knight") to defend you.

It's not "realistic" when all you're losing is your progress. The real disincentive to random marauding would not be fear of losing your leet lewtz, it would be catching a random arrow or spear from some random peasant. And not being able to ever maraud again. Because you're dead. Forever. So don't try to bring in "realism" as a justification for unlimited PVP. It can certainly be justified, but when you can freely reincarnate yourself - even if you have to do it naked - "realism" isn't a meaningful thing to bring up in terms of incentives and disincentives to being aggressive/predatory vs. being passive/cooperative in a PVP environment. The basic element of realistic cost/benefit analyses in the sorts of environments you're aluding to here is fear for life and limb. Absent a meaningful sense of that, there can't be an honest parallel in terms of analyses, and you'll have people engaging in all the typical "unrealistic" behaviors that are the norm in PVP environments.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

The reason I like PVP in games like FPS shooters is because dying just means you failed to capture your objective and you need to wait to respawn and travel to an objective again. Secondly, you are guaranteed to have a bunch of people on both teams, although it's possible if you're scouting alone or skirmishing to distract or just goofing off you could get attacked by a half dozen guys. Third, the teams are generally even, and any disparity in stats can be made up for in luck or player skill.

H&H featured harsh penalties for death, long recovery time, lonesome play, other players are almost guaranteed to attack in groups that outnumber you, and stats matter far, far more than player skill.

A game like Ultima Online allowed you to level up to a point where you could PVP in a few weeks, max out a little while later, and wearing standard NPC-purchased gear you could survive an ambush or ambush someone and have a reasonable chance of success. The disparity between a 3-week character and a 1-year character was not so completely overwhelming as it was in H&H. And player skill made a significant difference. There were also guarded towns where a newbie could find safety, meaning the whole world wasn't a free-for-all.

Similarly, a lot of FPS shooters feature spawn protection, whether a short invincibility duration or a spawn room that's extremely easy to defend and/or injures enemies who enter it.

I'd also appreciate a "newbie protection" period where players get a high reputation / criminal hit for killing the newbie, but it goes away after X amount of time or the first time the newbie raises a skill to a journeyman-level or obtains a personal wealth over X amount.

[Paul]

Reading about this game, I don't really get the whole skill loss thing.

On the one hand, it's all "No grind! Raise skills to 90 easily and get full benefit out of skill, 100 is only for titles and stuff!" then on the other hand it's all "You don't want to die because that causes skill loss! Low alignment people get worse skill loss penalties so don't kill people!"

If skills are so easy to raise (all the way to 90 in 2-5 days of "power gaming", which is effectively maxed for the benefits according to their site) then where's the big penalty for being a murderer?

If they're using that as this big anti-pk measure and then saying skills are super easy and "no grind"... I just don't see it being an effective measure to prevent random killing. Full loot in itself is probably a pretty good risk vs reward thing, but the skill loss seems like it would annoy casual players who are neutral alignment and getting murdered by random people while trying to craft/etc (who then have to keep re-learning all their craft skills using resources) more than the hardcore random player killers who will probably have a training area set up to get all their combat skills right back up again at no cost after every death anyway.

Other than that I like the idea of the game. Will just have to see how it ends up being implemented and how the community of the game ends up being.

[WhitiusOpus]

Well, they did mention that it was a greater skill loss for the murdering than the victim, but that remains to be seen through testing.

The real advantage in this game, as I've interpreted it, is that being cooperative with others is a huge bonus. If you die, they can save your stuff for you and defeat the aggressor.

I am both for and against the idea of Full Loot and PvP.

[...]

In short, they say the game is about realism, and full PvP is realistic. You just need to be strong enough to defend yourself, or make a pact with a nearby "lord" (aka, "good knight") to defend you.

It's not "realistic" when all you're losing is your progress. The real disincentive to random marauding would not be fear of losing your leet lewtz, it would be catching a random arrow or spear from some random peasant. And not being able to ever maraud again. Because you're dead. Forever. So don't try to bring in "realism" as a justification for unlimited PVP. It can certainly be justified, but when you can freely reincarnate yourself - even if you have to do it naked - "realism" isn't a meaningful thing to bring up in terms of incentives and disincentives to being aggressive/predatory vs. being passive/cooperative in a PVP environment. The basic element of realistic cost/benefit analyses in the sorts of environments you're aluding to here is fear for life and limb. Absent a meaningful sense of that, there can't be an honest parallel in terms of analyses, and you'll have people engaging in all the typical "unrealistic" behaviors that are the norm in PVP environments.

See, there is an advantage to playing peacefully/cooperatively. You don't have as high a risk of losing your hard earned shit when working with others, as apposed to the random marauder. If you're randomly attacking others, you may have to restart due to dying and no one giving two shits. If you cooperate with others, there is less of a risk. I'm not saying that it isn't harsh to lose your gear when you die, but it is more realistic than the alternative. If you're looking for the minecraft style, "I can respawn with all my stuff." Then go play that instead.

[Paul]

From what game does this magic individual random marauder come from, anyway? Random single marauders really aren't a problem in games like this. They get killed pretty quick and lose their stuff. They don't really exist on a large scale. It's more like a person who sees you in nice stuff and just decides to take it than it is a person who just roams the world killing everyone they see.

Groups of PKs, on the other hand... That's the thing that will discourage people who dislike pvp. And that's the kind of people attracted to games like these. It really depends on what kind of community the game has, and if it's all forced into one world (ala old UO) or split into pvp and non pvp worlds (ala newer UO or other similar games). If it's all in one world, as this game is currently described as, then you get a nice mix of murderous savages and nice folks who just want to get along, and you might actually meet people who don't want to murder you. Then you get interesting dynamics like roving bands of killers and spontaneous groups of "good" folks banding together to do something about them.

It all really comes down to what kind of community the game attracts. If it attracts a well balanced community then the game could be great. If it attracts a bunch of pvp guilds and not really anyone else then it will end up being a murderfest. And that all depends on how well the game is balanced and how attractive the non-pvp aspects of the game are to folks who don't really like pvp.

[WhitiusOpus]

You lose your stuff on death in minecraft.

Were you thinking of terraria?

It depends on what your settings are, and if it's CP minecraft. And I was probably thinking of Terraria


Also, I agree with Paul. Even if it's a single map, it is 450 square kilometers. to put that into perspective, DayZ's world is only 250 Kilometers. Which still can take over ten days to cross.

[Puzzlemaker]

Me wants! NAO! Or even better - yesterday!
I hope they won't change full loot, free pvp due to crying pus**es.

To be fair it's a very strong disincentive for a lot of people. Why bother to build anything/train your character knowing you're gonna get ROFLstomped by some guy in a kingdom with a ton of gold and resources?

and to be fair again, it DOES look like they've taken steps to make sure the game isn't just a total murder-fest, and that if you at least belong to a village people can't just fuck with your stuff. However it all seems rather tentative to me, and I hope they lay out a strong plan to discourage random knights going around terrorizing the populace.

That, uh... that's how it pretty much worked in real life, actually.

[Cheedows]

In real life chivalry was damned, there are plenty of accounts of knights pissing off the general populace.

[Sensei]

Any word on how much this will cost? The FAQ said something about how they were planning to charge a monthly subscription and only allow free accounts to play in an area that was reset each day (a free trial, basically).

[Rift]

Yes, it appears that their income strategy is: there's a 'starter zone' that is reset daily, and you have to pay basically real money to get off the zone. So basically a 1 day free trial, that you can pay a [one-time per character?] fee to allow you to get into the rest of the game.
Doesn't sound that bad on the face of it, although it could change, and the amount that it will cost looks un-announced/decided.

It does look like their will be a closed alpha [with paid access: 50Euros, or by social-network promoting the game] starting in the next few weeks, followed by possibly an open alpha, then beta several months from now.

Does look interesting, wouldn't suggest dropping 50Euros until after some feedback from when the alpha starts, assuming they keep the paid-closed-alpha-access.