We're being discouraged from interacting with each other in multiplayer

Oh wait, I just remembered you're a PvP RPer.

He called me dishonest! Won't someone defend my honour from this scoundrel? Where's the champion of the common people when you need him? *bats his eyelashes cutely at all the PvP men*

 

No defense necessary Royal, we don't serve your kind really.

Captain Jack clears his throat.
And we'll never be royals (royals).
It don't run in our blood,
That kind of luxe just ain't for us.
We crave a different kind of buzz.

 

Sorry but you don't exactly fit my definition of a damsel in distress.

 

You guys! I'm a princess dammit! *stamps his foot prettily and puts on his pink hat*

 

While Captain Jack r-e-s-p-e-c-t's the Sexy's opinion, he too thinks it is a little short sighted. Captain Jack has to watch a great deal of SotA through the YouTube and the Twitch because he has no pledge to play as Captain Jack. Even watching as a third party, Captain Jack does notice a good lack of density in most of the game. There is density around scheduled events for a short period of time, yes, and perhaps if one "go find 'em" one could find a scheduled event frequently?

What will we do once the game is released though and the everyone on a single server then gets split into hundreds? Nobody can predict how many people will play the game at the same time once this first part is released, and Captain Jack feels that Baron has a point in giving the Dev team feedback about general points of interest.

Captain Jack also notes that Baron has a POT also, and that POTs will detract greatly from general points of interest!

 

Captain Jack wonders, if nothing ever could tempt Bowen into doing something he doesn't ever want to... What exactly does Bowen want to do? If the Devs put enough interesting things into the game for people to do from a diverse enough source then perhaps there could be something for everyone and just maybe some activity or location or something could spark Bowen's very iron clad, unwavering, nonmanipulative persona.

You have said you have been involved in NWN and it seems like you have much more experience in manipulating games around others, but everybody can be manipulated. Captain Jack assures you of that So Bowen tell us what are your top three enjoyable things to do inside SotA or any other video game you have ever played.

 

I guess it all boils down to what motivates us. I can't speak for Bowen, but in my case the things that I like most are
- social interaction
- being creative
- interesting story and quests

SotA as currently designed gives me a good framework within which to indulge the first two of those interests. It remains to be seen whether the story and quests will be interesting, but based on BotA I am optimistic.

 

Well first I'd like to make the distinction here between manipulated and forced. It's one thing to try to encourage or direct players, it's quite another to try force behavior.. and on that note.. the stick approach within the context of this particular topic just isn't very effective.

So.. top 3 enjoyable things *I* like to do in games. You know you don't always pull your punches.. I hope you know that. For that I'd have to really simply things quite a bit. I tend to like to build things. I'm not sure why. In the context of SotA I'm building a guild, a town, a story (in a manner of speaking). In UO I spend a lot of time working on setting up guild facilities.. we almost had our own little town.. DAoC I spent a lot of time crafting, got a guild house first chance I got cause I wanted the guild to have everything it needed. Skryim I build up every house, collect followers to live in them etc.

None of which is going to get me to just hang out in a tavern, particularly because I'm usually more interested in promoting my own town. Would rather hang out there. I'd have my own tavern if my town had room.

What might get me to hang out in a tavern.. is other players.

 

Captain Jack knows a great many things

Captain Jack did note that the OP has a POT and that will be the biggest draw, that he can see, of people out of collective areas and into their own little worlds. Captain Jack understands that since you have one also the majority of your time quite rightly should and would be spent in your own POT also.

Since this game isn't quote an MMO, as everyone seems to already agree on, and when it is released will decentralize the player infrastructure as we see it now... Captain Jack sees no possible future for players to meet randomly at Points of Interest and begin to form anything from a grass roots perspective. It will then fall to the most popular POTs and Personalities to draw people into their own segmented communities to play SotA.

It doesn't matter what you can do in the game right now everyone, it is all going to be very different when you start playing the release. The friend play online thing or whatever it is called is going to be king.

 

I'm not so sure about this. Though I do think it will be popular. A lot will rely on population density and what services NPC towns actually have. From the RP point of view, taverns are a natural draw to hang out because it provides a commonly understood social environment. People will go there because they know that's where people go. That being said however, player owned and operated taverns will always be more popular than NPC taverns because of the naturally higher odds of real players actually being there (such as the tavern owner).. and those who run taverns are almost universally interested in the RP of it all.. which again is a draw.

The decentralization can't really be helped now but get enough players and you'll hit a point where there's always going to be people in every town. Decentralization is only a serious problem when there aren't enough people to fill the world. We notice it now because only a % of backers actually get involved and play over the long term during testing.

I think when the time comes it will be interesting to watch as regional communities form.

 

Example of simple creation of Social Interaction.



In Savage Lands we all are freezing when the Cold wind blows and it snows.

Social interaction with random players at the fire place is one if the things i love in this game.

We are from the game system forced to find a warm fire or shelter to survive.

Thx to this i had wonderful chats. We forgot basically the game and just laugh and talk around the fire.

Currently SotA has 3spots that could lead to random social interaction.

The free crafting area. And the Bank. And the trainer.
But bank and trainer do not require it to stay.
Maybe one day traiding will be in front if banks.


But as we are pulled in to a close view and not noticing who id who and where the person in the chat is - this talks do not start.

If there would be a reason to go to the tavern : chatting in a tavern leads to mana bonus . Max bonus after staying in tavern 10 min.


You know what i mean.

Kind regards.

 

One thing I hate in games is caps on scenes .... I for one like open world with EVERYONE on it But that's not what we have , SO ....... wish they would allow more people in the scenes ..... or remove the dang caps all together....

 

caps get raised from time to time as optimization improves, basements just had a huge cap increase

 

Got no problem finding social interaction. There's even a player-operated mail service operating in a bunch of towns. Every day i run into people out in the world who stop and talk, want to play instruments, dance, etc

No it isnt.

 

I've never seen this mail service. I've heard about it. I know it exists. But I've never seen it.

This is the whole essence of the problem though. The game is currently supporting a few groups that enjoy going to the same events together very well. Does that mean it will scale to 100k players at launch? I don't see how it possibly could, the cap on scenes is 100 or so people. So what are the other 999.9k people going to be seeing as they travel through the game?

 

Promote the addition of a mail mechanic in game

 

Yeah, I'd have no problem with that. That's what this thread is about....designing a game that will scale to more people. Not just assuming that our little tiny community (which is great) is going to somehow make events for everyone at launch.

 

The other 999.9K people playing the game? There's no reason it can't scale but frankly we won't know until launch.

 

I have a pretty good idea that the player run mail service is not going to scale to almost 100k people at launch. These are people with day jobs. How long does it take your mail carrier to deliver the mail each day? That's about 100 people, not 100k. I don't see any reason to believe this is going to scale well.

And just so I'm clear, I'm not in any way bad mouthing the player run mail service, I think it's awesome that they did that. But the impact is minor in the grand scheme of things. It's a very localized and fun RP event basically. Hats off to them! But I'm looking at this on a macro level, and an overall game design level.

 

Well considering how they aren't delivering house to house (THAT WOULD create a scaling problem) but to post offices they really only have to do it once or twice a day? Considering how light paper is, I could see it scaling.