I want a recall stone.

I know you want us to travel everywhere manually, and for the most part I agree. However, it would be nice to have a "once a day" recall to the nearest city/town/whatever. It would help friends gather up when they first login or let a player relax and log off for the night in town...

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Vhaeyne

daveywavey wrote: »

If Player A is in a spot where they're not under attack and are in a game-legal position for logging out (i.e., not flying, etc), then why should Player B get to decide whether or not Player A's already existing logout request is completed?

If player A had a hard out at a set time, then they should have a good idea of how long it might take to get back to town or "safeish" area and plan accordingly. To me, this is just being responsible. If you were in a raid or something, maybe ask your guild mates to take your spoils back to town for you or protect you while you log? There are options for hard outs.

If there is like a fire in the house or something, and you need to quickly get out of the game, then I don't think there is anything that should be done game side. Such events are so random that I don't think game designers can really make fair contengency for them. Sometimes single player games don't even have a quick way to get out these days.

I have lost progress on single player saves due to storms so many times in my life. It storms a lot where I live though.

Voidwalkers

uninterruptible logout

My impression is that the solution's going to be either ...

a. A short, but interruptible timer. e.g. start logout -> you freeze in place for 20s -> if nothing hits you during that time you're gone, otherwise logout's cancelled. Now fight to secure your safe logout spot.

b. A long, but uninterruptible timer. e.g. start logout -> you freeze in place for 60s -> if whatever's hitting you can't kill you within 60s, your logout completes, otherwise you just ... die?

It's about about finding the balance between ...
1. Preventing players from simply "pulling the plug" when things go sour and escape death penalty.
2. Placing a burden of "finding a safe place to logout" and "plan your trip/adventure" on the player.
3. Player autonomy (when to logout).

daveywavey

Vhaeyne wrote: »

daveywavey wrote: »

If Player A is in a spot where they're not under attack and are in a game-legal position for logging out (i.e., not flying, etc), then why should Player B get to decide whether or not Player A's already existing logout request is completed?

If player A had a hard out at a set time, then they should have a good idea of how long it might take to get back to town or "safeish" area and plan accordingly. To me, this is just being responsible. If you were in a raid or something, maybe ask your guild mates to take your spoils back to town for you or protect you while you log? There are options for hard outs.

You can be attacked in a town or "safeish" area. As far as i remember, it's only non-sieged freeholds and in-town player stalls where you're guaranteed safety. I can't see people wanting to spend 20mins riding back there every time they want to log out.

And, if there was a fire in my house, I wouldn't be thinking about logging out... lol

Noaani

daveywavey wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

If you are attacked before the timer runs out, you aren't logging out.

Ugh, I always hated this.

There has always been two ways to get out of a game.

The first is to camp. Traditionally, this required you to be uninterrupted. You wait in game (often sitting) for a set period of time, and if you are not attacked in that time frame then you leave the game.

The second is to go linkdead (either accidently or on purpose). This can be achieved by your connection to the server going down, or by force exiting the game. Some game even have a force exit to character select that will do this. This method will always leave your character in the game for a short while after you have ceased to have control of it, and so has some risk associated with it.

Players that just want to get out of the game can just exist. There is a small amount of risk involved there, but you do just leave the game

Those that don't want that risk can simply find somewhere safe-ish and camp.

To me, the optimal times would be 10 - 15 seconds for camping, or your character being left in the game world for around 30 seconds by just exiting.

Being in control of a caravan or ship would alter all of this - you wouldn't be able to camp at all, and you would likely be in the game for several minutes (perhaps as long as 5 minutes) if your connection to the server is terminated.

Wokal

At the end of the day before its time to log off.....kill 10 random people steal their loot, hearthstone home put stuff in bank and log.

SoggyBandaid

I heard through some of the discord channels that people were already abusing hard shut downs during pvp battles. The general feedback seemed to be some sort of camping like mentioned will be implemented.

I'm fine with that, but I also agree with @daveywavey. Whether it's planned or not if I've need to log and I can't, that doesn't feel like risk versus reward, it feels like punishment. In a dungeon or other high stakes area there may be very limited safe zones. I've also noticed people in alpha "stuck" in dungeons because they can't get to safety. That won't be fun for anyone.

SoggyBandaid

Just out of curiosity, what are the major problems with the family summon? I thought the idea was 8 players could group up somewhere to play together. I guess it violates the idea of no fast travel, but I'm curious where the potential pain points would be? Seems to me like a genuine quality of life way to group up with your friends if you start playing at different times of day?

Vhaeyne

SoggyBandaid wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, what are the major problems with the family summon? I thought the idea was 8 players could group up somewhere to play together. I guess it violates the idea of no fast travel, but I'm curious where the potential pain points would be? Seems to me like a genuine quality of life way to group up with your friends if you start playing at different times of day?

To put is short "Abuse". Such a system opens the gates for all sorts of coordinated ways to move coordinated groups around the open world. A number of ways the system could be abused have been laid out on the forums and even YouTube over the years. Some more complex than the others.

The main common theme is that "Family Summons" was designed, so small groups of friends can play together, but there is no way to stop large groups of competitive players from abusing the system.

McShave

SoggyBandaid wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, what are the major problems with the family summon? I thought the idea was 8 players could group up somewhere to play together. I guess it violates the idea of no fast travel, but I'm curious where the potential pain points would be? Seems to me like a genuine quality of life way to group up with your friends if you start playing at different times of day?

Here's an example. A full party of 8 people are doing a dungeon, and another party comes and is looking for a fight. If everyone in the original party is in a different family, and they each summon one person, now it's 16 vs 8. Adding any sort of summons like this will lead to unfair situations, no matter how hard they try to balance it.

Sathrago

McShave wrote: »

SoggyBandaid wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, what are the major problems with the family summon? I thought the idea was 8 players could group up somewhere to play together. I guess it violates the idea of no fast travel, but I'm curious where the potential pain points would be? Seems to me like a genuine quality of life way to group up with your friends if you start playing at different times of day?

Here's an example. A full party of 8 people are doing a dungeon, and another party comes and is looking for a fight. If everyone in the original party is in a different family, and they each summon one person, now it's 16 vs 8. Adding any sort of summons like this will lead to unfair situations, no matter how hard they try to balance it.

It's even worse than that, they can summon 7 people each. So if the entire group has 7 extra family members you just turned an 8v8 into a one sided slaughter.

Dygz

It's easy to come up with paranoid, sky-is-falling scenarios before testing the feature.
Since Steven wants to prevent zergs of this type, we can be sure that Family Summons will not allow such a one-sided fight to be possible.

Family Summons will be tested. And if it allows zergs, Steven will not include it for Launch.

SoggyBandaid

I see what you're saying, and that would definitely be a drag, but without testing I think it will be tough to tell if it's really unbalancing. I'll also mention if the issue is adding people to fights that not much different that just calling your friends, guild, or whatever. I'm with @Dygz on this one.

Noaani

SoggyBandaid wrote: »

I see what you're saying, and that would definitely be a drag, but without testing I think it will be tough to tell if it's really unbalancing. I'll also mention if the issue is adding people to fights that not much different that just calling your friends, guild, or whatever. I'm with Dygz on this one.

The problem with just seeing how it tests is that test environments aren't competitive.

You cant test out how people will abuse a system in a competitive environment, unless you are in a competitive environment. Since both alpha and beta are temporary, people dont get even close to as competitive (or as organized) as they do in a released MMO.

So, the smart thing to do is to brainstorm ways they would be abused in a competitive environment, ideally by discussing the idea with players that are competitive - the people that would do that abusing.

These are the discussions that have already happened, where we came up with many ways they will be abused.

Based on that, it should be fairly clear how narrow sighted the notion of "just see how it tests" actually is.

CROW3

I’m hoping Alpha 2 will have a few ‘ok, try to break x system’ weekends. My testing team loves when I give them that challenge.

SoggyBandaid

Idk @Noaani it seems sort of narrow sighted to me to say discussions you've had, for a system that is not even in place, have already revealed the problems without knowing the specifications. Without any test for how the family summon system works I don't think you can reliably say how it will be abused.

I'm also not really sure if you suggested an alternative to testing the summon system or if you're just trying to shoot it down sight unseen? I'm not saying the feature won't have issues, but like some others, I'm suggesting, test it, try to break it, and trust that Steven and IS will make a solid call on the final model.

Noaani

SoggyBandaid wrote: »

Idk Noaani it seems sort of narrow sighted to me to say discussions you've had, for a system that is not even in place, have already revealed the problems without knowing the specifications. Without any test for how the family summon system works I don't think you can reliably say how it will be abused.

I didn't say discussions have revealed all the problems, I said a temporary test environment won't reveal them.

The family summons, as an example. I can think of many ways to abuse it, but abusing it in the way I have in mind requires knowing other players habits - or various aspects of them. Players won't even form habits in a test environment, let alone strong enough habits for others to learn and then abuse. That isn't even factoring in the need for 16+ people to all be in on it, to all learn the habits of others.

And no, I have not suggested any alternatives, because despite what some people think, I am not arrogant enough to presume to tell Intrepid how to do their job.

I am happy to discuss things things as I see them, and I am happy to discuss exactly how I will deal with certain situations. However, whether Intrepid agrees with me or not, what to do is up to them - not me.

Khronus

One perspective to think about, wow classic was a thing because players missed the good old days of mmorpgs. One of the biggest positives I kept seeing was no flying mounts. Roaming the world again without flying mounts was a beautiful moment in time to experience again for the majority of the players.

Nobody complained about the hearthstone at the time. I'm not sure it even crossed anybody's mind as a negative. If AoC had no flying mounts, got rid of this ridiculous family summoning thing and just gave a long cooldown teleport back to your own home (or possibly to the node you are a citizen of) life would go on and we would all thoroughly enjoy this game. Yes, there are some negatives but overall, there are less negatives than quick cooldown teleports, family summoning loopholes, or no hearths at all. I'm really dreading leading a guild to roam and then having to travel back after a long day. People have lives and I want the game to be filled with fun and engaging moments, not long drawn out travel times. Teleportation was added into games as they evolved because players needed better QOL updates. Eventually these QOL updates became "let's make the game as easy as possible" and that is not right. Find the middle ground.

Difficult but fun and engaging community driven organization is precisely what I hope to see from any mmo I play.

Sathrago

Khronus wrote: »

One perspective to think about, wow classic was a thing because players missed the good old days of mmorpgs. One of the biggest positives I kept seeing was no flying mounts. Roaming the world again without flying mounts was a beautiful moment in time to experience again for the majority of the players.

Nobody complained about the hearthstone at the time. I'm not sure it even crossed anybody's mind as a negative. If AoC had no flying mounts, got rid of this ridiculous family summoning thing and just gave a long cooldown teleport back to your own home (or possibly to the node you are a citizen of) life would go on and we would all thoroughly enjoy this game. Yes, there are some negatives but overall, there are less negatives than quick cooldown teleports, family summoning loopholes, or no hearths at all. I'm really dreading leading a guild to roam and then having to travel back after a long day. People have lives and I want the game to be filled with fun and engaging moments, not long drawn out travel times. Teleportation was added into games as they evolved because players needed better QOL updates. Eventually these QOL updates became "let's make the game as easy as possible" and that is not right. Find the middle ground.

Difficult but fun and engaging community driven organization is precisely what I hope to see from any mmo I play.

We cannot compare this game to wow in any of its forms because this game has something that wow does not have. Material loss on death. Caravans for transporting materials from city to city that can be plundered.

If you allow a player to teleport somewhere with these resources you cut into the open world pvp dynamic. Why take a caravan home when you can just teleport back with all your materials? Why walk back to a node after gathering for an hour if you can just hit that button and safely return?

This is why so many are adamantly against even the family system, players will abuse it and hurt the game.

Khronus

@Sathrago You CAN compare this game to wow. You can compare it to any other game. It shouldn't be considered a sin to compare to some of the other games that have done things "right" at one time or another. Yes, AoC has additional content that drastically alters the way wow implemented a hearth stone.

Limits can be set to using the home teleport. Just like they balanced the hearthstone in wow, the teleport can be balanced to accommodate for what content Intrepid brings to the table.

Walking back to town after spending time gathering would be ok as long as you don't have above "X" materials or weight. What if the teleport was weight based? Why walk the caravan back? Because maybe the caravan can transport high quality materials and teleporting doesn't allow you to take materials of item level "X" or higher? There will always be a way for them to balance the system so that players are unable to abuse it and still be a thicc boi target for you and I to slaughter.

Yeah, the family system sounds terrible and I am assuming it's only a matter of time before Steven makes an announcement on a live stream that it won't be coming out as originally planned. Fingers crossed.

Shoklen

Hard Pass. I thought this was decided already and was a little surprised to hear about the friend/family. I thought the decision was, in part, due to the markets of the game... where an item selling in one node could be a different price in another far away node; just based on the players, resource availability, ect... Enter caravans.

Even at once a day, Friends, Family, Alts, a lot of goods could be moved outside the caravan system; unless when fast traveling you go completely naked and without inventory (but I'd highly doubt that).

Anyway just my thoughts.

Child Item