Bored Druid ThreadFollow

I DON'T UNDERSTAND YOUR JOKES, BECAUSE I'M NOT FROM AMERICA!

I know meds are bad; that's why I went off them.

Imagine a soccer team that has the insane budget to assemble one of the best teams in the league - nothing but really expensive talent for both players and coaches.

Then imagine them having a mediocre win/loss ratio, never making it to the world cup, etc.

And you have the Mets.

Also. I love how they call it the world cup with baseball when it's only American teams in the competition. It's very American.

Whatever, basically the same self centered thing.

i gave up on the shift key months ago

also why is it always a slow posting day when i play hooky from work?

The thing I'm most interested in is the fact that the companion Minecraft-esque game essentially allows the devs to crowdsource material for the game, which allows for an extremely fast content cycle that can actually allow things to change over time.

Yeah. It's something of a shame that they decided to split the construction stuff into another game. If only because it would have been nice to have that content thread in the actual game, with all the kind of crafting additions it could involve.

But I suppose I get it, since they don't seem to be planning to make the build areas instances. And since you're using dev tools, you might not be required to harvest materials, like with Minecraft?

And it's possible they'll give you a private build arena in the actual game, for something like personal home construction. Or maybe have a series of instanced housing maps, where you claim a land plot, build there, and have to bargain for the cost of land if someone else claimed it already, etc. Would probably be a solid way to create a gateway to get players moving between the two games.

Very true.

I'm the opposite; I'm desperately hoping for a game where endgame isn't really an applicable concept, and that things to do means checking rumor boards, etc., to see what's going down, where, what bounties are up, etc. Maybe a port town has been under siege by pirates for two weeks and their defenses are failing, and they send out a rallying call for aid, for instance.

And that town only issues the rallying call because:
1. Events cause the pirates to focus on that town (maybe because a lot of adventurers are running anti-pirate activities out of it?)
2. Pirates eventually attack the town in force, and the town defends itself (the AI defenders only being able to push them off for so long).
3. Players fail to defend the town, so the defenses are going down fast, so the town puts up enough gold to pay for reinforcements (which will affect the rate of rebuilding).

And then the actual content of the battle will be relative to what you want to do, and how difficult you want it to be. Maybe you're weak, so you mostly hang out in the main avenues to reinforce the bulwark. Maybe you're a little bit stronger, so you tag along with a vanguard unit. Maybe you want a real thrill, and you charge out into the docks with a small group of like-minded players, and divert pirates away from a causeway where they're trying to bring in cannons. Or maybe you want something really tough and you go ahead and sneak onto ships and fight there.

Then say you actually succeed in driving off the pirates. The way the players drove them off will affect both the future of the town and the pirate gang. Maybe they just created a sufficient headache for the pirates that they went to sack a different, less wealthy town. Which means that they'll fall faster, and that players will receive less support (making the content more challenging).

Or maybe it was a huge victory, and the pirates need to retreat completely to regain their strength.

Or maybe a group of players decided to actually go all the way and fight to the Pirate King (think raid level difficulty in getting onto his ship, through his officers, and to him - and he'd be a raid-level boss). Killing him means that the pirate organization is thrown into shambles until they elect a new king, there's anarchy in the ranks in the meantime so all pirate-related events associated with that faction are weaker, the towns normally under siege by them are more profitable overall, etc.

And I would hope these events see a decent variety in levels of success, and that there's a certain scale for effort. Taking out 3/5 officers only, for instance, would lead to 3/5 of the smaller raids being less powerful for the next two months. Or something.

That's the game I want.

[EDIT]

I swear I don't set out with the intention of these things ending up so long...

Edited, Aug 3rd 2013 11:01am by idiggory

I guess I'm just rejecting the notion of endgame itself. I want events to have a big range of difficulties and a bunch of different tasks and for each of them to influence the future development of the game.

Always taking the easy route might mean you win and live to see another day, but it means the next battle comes that much sooner and is that much larger.

But if players really invest in the conflict, and challenge themselves with the more difficult content, then they get better rewards, they create a stronger position after the battle, and enjoy the benefits of winning for longer.

I don't want there to be this perception that all you do "at endgame" is head out to fight the pirate king. I want players to be seriously weighing their options between trying to take down the king or trying to recapture the northern wharf. I want the Pirate King to be a real achievement to defeat, I want the Pirate King to be different every time you have to fight him (and perhaps totally different after he's killed and a new King comes to power).

Essentially, I don't want "endgame" to be anything other than having a full field of viable options with regards to the content, and the skill/confidence to access the most difficult options.

But if the most difficult options translate into being the best option for competitive development, I think the game will fall into the exact same trap as every other game. I don't think this changing world can work, at a fundamental level, if progression looks like it has a holy grail of progression content.