Tiny vital details

ArchivedUser

I find MMOs never focus on the small details.
You have showed us the environments, the dungeons and combat.
But could you show us a character walking into a tavern, I wanna see dimly lit tables, drunk folk, endless chatter, maybe a shady deal happening in the back corner.
Show me NPC interactions, conversations, show me this world is alive and people live and work here.

ArchivedUser

To be fair it is Alpha, the tiny details will come. I have always liked the Unreal engine so I am very much hoping they use the capabilities it has to create an atmospheric tavern experience

ArchivedUser

There is a twitch video out there where all the players start in a tavern.
It came out before Alpha-0 started though.

ArchivedUser

Yeah, those early promotional videos used out of the box UE4 assets. The stuff looks 1000 times better now that they have made their own assets.

ArchivedUser

don't forget players can and will run taverns so they should always feel alive and graveyards should always feel dead ^^

ArchivedUser

Expect that later on down the line, it would be pretty weird to see such minute detail in npc behavior in alpha.

ArchivedUser

nagash said:

don't forget players can and will run taverns so they should always feel alive and graveyards should always feel dead ^^

Why do I feel like your taverns would just feel like graveyards?

ArchivedUser

Atama said:

nagash said:

don't forget players can and will run taverns so they should always feel alive and graveyards should always feel dead ^^

Why do I feel like your taverns would just feel like graveyards?

*Gets mental image of Nagash leering over the bar and saying to the approaching patrons "Name your poison".*

ArchivedUser

Atama said:

nagash said:

don't forget players can and will run taverns so they should always feel alive and graveyards should always feel dead ^^

Why do I feel like your taverns would just feel like graveyards?

Oh come on, like you've never hit up your friends and went to a cemetery to pop a cold one with the guys

ArchivedUser

VoidShadow said:

Atama said:

nagash said:

don't forget players can and will run taverns so they should always feel alive and graveyards should always feel dead ^^

Why do I feel like your taverns would just feel like graveyards?

Oh come on, like you've never hit up your friends and went to a cemetery to pop a cold one with the guys

I let the cold ones stay buried.

ArchivedUser

Graveyards a great places for parties ^^

ArchivedUser

Grimseethe said:

I find MMOs never focus on the small details.
You have showed us the environments, the dungeons and combat.
But could you show us a character walking into a tavern, I wanna see dimly lit tables, drunk folk, endless chatter, maybe a shady deal happening in the back corner.
Show me NPC interactions, conversations, show me this world is alive and people live and work here.

I have an issue with this.

We are the first people to come to Verra for millennia. Essentially, if they are showing me that people live and work here, they are working against their own lore.

ArchivedUser

Noaani said:

I have an issue with this.

We are the first people to come to Verra for millennia. Essentially, if they are showing me that people live and work here, they are working against their own lore.

Issue solved. You are not "the first" but among the first. They have been sending people through for years before you pop out of the portal. Most were military expeditions by the various races, which then caused enough noise that the Tulnar took notice and decided to start sending people of their own to investigate the portals. Some of those people said screw it and deserted and made a bandit lifestyle for themselves, some of them found corruption to their liking and have changed horribly into twisted versions. There are base camps already set up at the landing zones, those people went before you. You are not Neil Armstrong. So while Verra was left alone for 10k years, you have no idea how long they been sending people through the portals just yet. Think of the Stargate series, maybe the portals opened up decades ago (a blip in 10k timeline) and the governments have finally just come clean. Steven can make lore all day that shuts down the naysayers and said he has deliberately seeded false information into the testing narrative so that once it goes live the story won't "have been spoiled"

So I agree, no pre-established cities, but there will be bandit camps and other out of the way stuff that you will stumble across that hasn't turned to dust in 10k years. Will there be a fat innkeeper npc running a gritty tavern in the beginning? No, he has been busy hiding in the woods avoiding getting eaten till enough people show up to provide a relatively secure place for his inn.

ArchivedUser

I want to add to what @UnknownSystemError said.  In a recent German interview Steven said Headstart will be like you are the first ones there as there will be nothing, and nothing will build until the actual launch.

ArchivedUser

Yep, what @T-Elf has said. There will be minimal services around the starting areas during headstart. Those areas are not nodes and do not advance, they remain static. The headstart people can head out into the greater world, but since all node progression is locked, and they have stated that node mob spawn tables are based on node level, they are not going to find much beyond wilderness and various low level mobs to spawn. While we still await confirmation on the mechanic, one way of limiting the "speedrunners" during this time is to make level disparity between players and mobs grant no exp towards progression. So a level 5 character killing level 1-2 mobs over and over may gain hides and loot, but they will not be advancing their vertical level beyond that. So since the max headstart is 48 hours, even if you managed to automate and grind low level mobs in the 1000s you would still just be a few levels ahead of everyone else come actual live launch. Also, since we dont know if the starter areas would have typical bank storage and such available, trying to stockpile 1000s of low level mats would also be problematic. Once again, they have not clarified that is the mechanic they are going with, but have hinted that they have plans to make headstart fulfill its true function of not being p2w but instead be a way for them to catch any live launch issues early.

ArchivedUser

The way I'm viewing Headstart right now is that it's a way to see if your character looks how you want them when you enter the world and gives you time to work on getting your look exactly right without missing out and people waiting on you.

ArchivedUser

T-Elf said:

The way I'm viewing Headstart right now is that it's a way to see if your character looks how you want them when you enter the world and gives you time to work on getting your look exactly right without missing out and people waiting on you.

They said there will be ways to save your character creations during testing phases (don't know if they specified when this feature will be available) and import them at launch. I think they even mentioned offline tools for that.

So everyone who's into headstart should already have plenty of fleshed out characters at release

ArchivedUser

I think most of us in headstart will already know how we want our characters to look.
Seems to me a key part of headstart is traveling to locations where you hope to establish a colony.

ArchivedUser

c0ug4r said:

T-Elf said:

The way I'm viewing Headstart right now is that it's a way to see if your character looks how you want them when you enter the world and gives you time to work on getting your look exactly right without missing out and people waiting on you.

They said there will be ways to save your character creations during testing phases (don't know if they specified when this feature will be available) and import them at launch. I think they even mentioned offline tools for that.

So everyone who's into headstart should already have plenty of fleshed out characters at release

Sure there will be a character creation app but in some games when you enter the world you don't look quite like you thought you would.  Anyway, that's just one use of Headstart, and as @Dygz mentioned heading out to a section of the world you want to develop that will probably be far away from starting zones.

ArchivedUser

Noaani said:

Grimseethe said:

I find MMOs never focus on the small details.
You have showed us the environments, the dungeons and combat.
But could you show us a character walking into a tavern, I wanna see dimly lit tables, drunk folk, endless chatter, maybe a shady deal happening in the back corner.
Show me NPC interactions, conversations, show me this world is alive and people live and work here.

I have an issue with this.

We are the first people to come to Verra for millennia. Essentially, if they are showing me that people live and work here, they are working against their own lore.

Doesn't really make sense.
I just want inns that are cool and feel alive.
At launch all players and NPCs don't get dropped in the world all at once and are told "here's a world, have at it"
There will be buildings and people and stuff going on.
Always think to the future, every comment I make is not for now but for later.

ArchivedUser

There will be establishments at the starting areas.
The other "buildings" will be ruins and abandoned dungeons, I think.
For the most part. I suppose there might be Tulnar buildings.

Beyond the starting areas, we won't be encountering friendly NPCs and camps or villages until node progression begins.
Inns will pop after node progression begins.

And, yeah, the headstart players are not the very first people to return to Verra.
We're among the first to return, but that's kind of relative rather than absolute.