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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
A hero's journey or Just another NPC
Koopasu
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Limiting quest to certain amount of individual will reward HC/ players that are willing to no life this game. With this I wanted to ask should a story treat you like a champion from the region after a certain amount of quest and rep increase ? Then the quest arises if everybody is a hero is nobody a hero in this case ?
I have a mixed opinion toward this subject when the quest line is portraying you as a hero and you have no clue of your heroic deeds or your deeds are so common that makes it have no value. But then how does a ranking system work ? we can see the constant competition happening test out random thing just to get that X point above of your competitor, but with it can consequences of rage/grief, granted these type of communities are funny to watch and they will mostly be there unless the game is dead.
The system I wanted to talk about is maybe a little bit more complex of achieving max rep within all regions. it's more like a game of balancing quest amount and who can be a significant figure within a region. We can say in a sense a mayor system is one of those type of system, but what if we conceptualize that not all quest should be taken certain quest can increase rep in one place but at the same time reduce rep into another faction. While you can become a hero of one region, but not all of them so it creates a game where a sense of choice can jeopardize your character. Incentivizing for you to read the quest line to understand who you are helping and books across the lore to understand that certain race hates another one. Granted a guide will probably min max everything again, but changes can make a guide obsolete ( I'm not talking about how to fight a raid). One of the ways to increase that timing of the games uniqueness is in my opinion limiting the amount of questlines so a guide can't teach you how to min max your way up to lv X. Adding the risk of reduction in faction rep for doing a quest, will also incentivize the player to not just go for 100% completion on all regions.
Not sure if this concept is fun for yall or not, but I got this idea from reading 2 comments from my previous post. This is how this idea came to me.
I have a mixed opinion toward this subject when the quest line is portraying you as a hero and you have no clue of your heroic deeds or your deeds are so common that makes it have no value. But then how does a ranking system work ? we can see the constant competition happening test out random thing just to get that X point above of your competitor, but with it can consequences of rage/grief, granted these type of communities are funny to watch and they will mostly be there unless the game is dead.
The system I wanted to talk about is maybe a little bit more complex of achieving max rep within all regions. it's more like a game of balancing quest amount and who can be a significant figure within a region. We can say in a sense a mayor system is one of those type of system, but what if we conceptualize that not all quest should be taken certain quest can increase rep in one place but at the same time reduce rep into another faction. While you can become a hero of one region, but not all of them so it creates a game where a sense of choice can jeopardize your character. Incentivizing for you to read the quest line to understand who you are helping and books across the lore to understand that certain race hates another one. Granted a guide will probably min max everything again, but changes can make a guide obsolete ( I'm not talking about how to fight a raid). One of the ways to increase that timing of the games uniqueness is in my opinion limiting the amount of questlines so a guide can't teach you how to min max your way up to lv X. Adding the risk of reduction in faction rep for doing a quest, will also incentivize the player to not just go for 100% completion on all regions.
Not sure if this concept is fun for yall or not, but I got this idea from reading 2 comments from my previous post. This is how this idea came to me.
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Comments
But then do you think limiting quest to certain amount of people a solution to this. Like you can go train soldiers for the empire and become a captain there, but with it you are also become hostile towards the Rebels across the river. or even if you have passed a certain amount of prestige or rep you are locked out from quest like Gather 3 flowers right outside the castle.
But then certain places will have those types of quest like an Inn with request from townspeople or other players that you can pick up. There should not be a limitation there unless you got a major negative rep for the place and you don't have an item like a Mask of Concealment for example.
Good actions, such as participating in civilization building, may result in that character gaining positive Node reputation. Bad actions taken, such as failing certain quests, may result in gaining negative reputation. This reputation is gained or lost on a per-node basis.[1]
Certain NPCs react differently to player characters based on their node reputation.[2][1][3]
This might result in higher prices (for goods or services sold at that node).[1]
NPC guards will kill corrupted players on sight.[4]
NPCs will add a player to their hate list if that player heals, buffs or otherwise assists any player on their hate list.[5]
Negative reputation may also open up certain quest lines that the darker, seedier side of the world are interested in.[1]
Excessive negative reputation may cause a character to be deemed "enemy of the state" of a node.[1]
Mayors may also declare foreign citizens of other nodes as enemies of the state.[6][7]
The more good aligned or civilization building aligned tasks that you complete, you get higher positive reputation. But if you get low or bad reputation you could be deemed enemy of the state of a node. You could be deemed kind of a bad actor and it might raise prices for you, but it also might open up certain quest lines that the darker, seedier side of the world are interested in.[1] – Steven Sharif
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Reputation
There are thousands of players in your server, every day playing with them is a mission.
"Let's go farm in that area for xp"
Isn't it a quest? Didn't you receive a reward by gaining xp and loot? Didn't you increase your reputation with those people?
Why dont you aim to become recognized by the players of your node, or your server, gain their respect and be named a captain or whatever by a guild. Why not train new members?
Everytime someone mentions ways to interact with npcs in an mmorpg, I imagine a person with a computer/iphone waifu.
I mean people are immersed in a story line, but now lets say you play in a guild and the meet up is Tuesday-Thursday because we need to do raid, which I will be honest sounds like a clock in at my work place, now there is different consequences if you were to fuck up and have a bad rep with players vs consequences with NPC, which is none or you can't enter a zone. Now not all guilds are like that some are more lax and try to be social instead of achievement bond but this leads to another scenario is people that just doesn't want to play with other people be it anxiety or just antisocial. The approach that you are mentioning means that you are completely trying to disregard a significant group of MMO players.
Its not the intrinsic appeal of them being npcs lol. Of course real players are more appealing to interact with, if exclusively "interaction" itself is the primary goal. The point is that npcs can provide curated experiences and gameplay through interaction that you can't necessarily get consistently with a real player. Npcs are just a tool for providing alternative forms of gameplay, just like any other game has its own mechanics to produce its own unique gameplay experience.
Some examples include:
1. They can be used to consistently reward knowledge of the world, by learning how that npc fits into the world
2. they can be used as a means to consistently produce emergent gameplay, through clashing with other moving parts in the game world
3. they can be used to consistently reward social type skills, by asking for specific types of reasoning and knowledge of character personalies or lore that is important during dialogue sequences
4. Etc.
These are very different types of experiences you would get by relying soley on other players.
while you are right, you cant make a game for every single mmorpg player. no matter wha direction you choose, a group or groups will always be left out.