Turning in to a Hack/Slash and Magic MMO

Seems likely, but wouldn't it be handy to discuss the actual detailed mechanics prior to alpha, you know, during the next two months?
Almost as if... 750+ pairs of eyes might find an issue that was missed by Portalarium?
It could even turn out that it might be more efficient, in the long term, rather than having to re-code more than would otherwise be required. Who knows, eh?

 

You know I agree vjek, but how do they combat the inevitable fact that people will FREAK THE F OUT when they hear an idea they don't agree with? We already see a good deal of that on the forums without the Devs releasing detailed gameplay design docs.

P.S. That's why I think they should be using the Dev+ community a lot more - an argument can be made that anyone that contributed $400+ dollars is not likely to throw their hands up and leave over an idea.

 

Agreed on using Dev+ more, that would be ideal. How an idea is presented has a lot to do with peoples freak-out level, in my experience.

As an example, there's some videos where Chris explains the combat innovation as possibly in addition to having a standard set of skills/spells available. As in, it's in addition to the known and familiar. IF that is the case, great. No issue, for me, at least.

How it's been presented so far, though, that's not clear. That lack of clarity, in my opinion, is creating more drama/frothing than if that one single point were clarified.

 

I've got to assume that RG et al. have a pretty good idea of their audience. They've experienced and analyzed many types of games. After all, it's their profession.

There are some things that are better left to single vision rather than committee. The time for feedback should be after the experience, not before.

There are too many aspects that can't be predicted. Think of pachinko. You can build it but you won't know the outcome until you drop the marbles. Releasing too many details just encourages people to predict the unpredictable, the very aspects that running a system is supposed to discover.

 

That bit right there is why I'm flagging my concerns now. Most of the balancing, at the end of the day, comes back to "How powerful does this make me?" And the main metric of that power is "How good am I at killing things?" because that's really the only way the game tries to stop you.

If we're already working on balance, then we need to know what we're balancing against.

 

There is more to balancing than just how hard something hits. It also considers economic costs, it's relation to both in-circle and out-of-circle equivalents, buffs and nerfs to and from other items, counter defenses and attacks,...well, you get the idea. All these things can be applied no matter what combat system is finally employed. The fine tuning to total rejection of that system can only come after the initial rollout.

Combat is primarily important to many. That makes it a highly contentious issue. Releasing details and descriptions before rollout would surely create more heat than light.

I encourage the team to envision a combat system and design it to that vision rather than be swayed by a thousand tugs. The time to sway is after the invention has been presented.

 

I did not doomsay, I just pointed out we need to focus more on Social skills and Crafting, Custimized items and what people need to really get this game off the ground. But hey follow the crowd of about 10-15millon on Steam and jump from game to game. lol @mugly wumple

 

The economic considerations are based partially on rarity, but also on effectiveness of the item... which ties back to killing things. Very few, if any, things will have powers beyond that...

Questing, conversation, and exploration all will have some things to balance, but questing and exploration are directly influenced by a character's combat ability, and while conversation isn't, we've seen the conversation system. And notice how it was contentious before, but seems to have quieted down now.

But speaking of economic considerations, that's part of the problem, in a very real world sense. We may have raised what seems like a lot of money for them, but not enough to completley revamp such a large portion of the game after it's complete, and each day that goes by without talking about this elephant in the room risks a push back on the release date if it does need to change.

So, no, the time to raise questions is not after it's done. Unlike other inventions, there's a timeline on this, and discussing the direction early means less time wasted on things that aren't going to work. Enough people have winced and commented on this system and their concerns that if just to get people used to the idea before the release date, so that they accept it, they should probabably talk about what it is we're getting.

But then you didn't say done, you said presented... which is what we're asking. We want them to present the idea for us to talk aobut it, and not just hint at the corners.

As for raising more heat than light, then nothing should have been said at all. The fire's started now, at this point we're trying to determine whether we're going to add wood or water.