Sandbox game I've following since near it's inception... We need all the help we can get to push the KS over and they've finally given us a video showing why it'll be worth it. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1784263141/topia-online Zen
Oh hey another sandbox mmo with permadeath. I'm sure this will go over as well as the last half dozen or so.
I love the way the music dramatically swells as they mouse over the guy to reveal... "A BANDIT" e: Oh my god you can kill a server in this game. That is an actual thing you can do. Oh wow. What are they thinking?
I dunno. It could be a good solution to folks like the Goons who tend to overpopulate servers. If there's no "good side, bad side" structure to worry about and the whole idea of a "server" is kinda in flux, I think horde mentality would actually give the servers equilibrium (and server annihilation actually becomes impetus to defend it). It's a far-out risky idea, but it can work, I think.
I've read this three times now, and it still doesn't make a lick of sense. You think that griefplayers being able to destroy everything on the server if they [ win enough fights / find a sufficiently overpowered build / log on when most people are asleep / find a new not-quite-exploit ] isn't a problem, because people will somehow flock to a server that has "equilibrium" and is somehow griefproof, instead of saying, "Fuck this shit, I'm resubbing to WOW." In fact, you think the people who just had all their shit deleted are going to do this in greater numbers than the people who just deleted that shit. If only someone had written an article about why this won't happen.
Yeah any time I see permadeath, mandatory PvP, destructible environments...anything that might cause me unhappiness I just stroll on by knowing that this game is not for me (or for most people for that matter.)
It's funny, I'd swear we already did this experiment. Oh well, I guess it's been too long since UO, so lessons have to be learned all over again...
I challenge you to either Join the irc or the skype conference and talk to the Devs about the game. Everyone comes at it with the same attitude initially and once things are explained they slowly go "Ohhhh!!! I see!" and become like this guy... http://puu.sh/1HWRj Bear in mind that no one including the creators of this game expect it to become the "WOW killer" and merely want to create a fun game. If you guys are still stuck in that whole "Anything but a Diku mud like WoW or Aion sucks!" phase of Mmog gaming then sorry, brought this to the wrong community, I thought this was Lum's forum.
*Shrug* Griefplayers are players too. There *are* still folks gaming on AC1's Darktide, and Darkfall does have players. It's just never going to be the population numbers that the big corporate companies are going to consider successful. But players still play, even after all the sheep have fled, and along with them the lazy wolves that only feed on easy kills. The truly weird thing is how many people who don't care for the "hardcore" gameplay don't even want a game to exist that caters to said hardcore. It's like if you don't like hot sauce, you don't even want there to be Mexican restaurants at all. Full scale PVP permadeath death to the server will always be a niche product, but so what? As long as that's what the devs expect, they can have a nicely successful little game. By the way, I won't be playing it. I no longer have the time or inclination to subject myself to such things. But if that's what floats your boat, have fun!!
It has nothing to do with "not wanting the game to exist" - check your feeling of persecution at the door, please. I simply believe that history has shown that you cannot successfully defeat human nature when it comes to this kind of offering. It's the tragedy of the commons in virtual form - when your game prides itself on being a hardcore full PVP with consequences environment, you are creating the perfect breeding ground for epic griefing, and that is exactly what you will get. You can either accept it, or attempt to devise a way to resist it, but to insist that it won't happen - that somehow, this time it will be different, and the emotionally stunted people who get cheap jollies out of other people's misery won't affect your game - is hubris or foolishness.
Pardon? You apparently stopped reading my post when you got to that phrase. I'm not even close to their target demographic, and my feelings of persecution are not in the house at all. I was just making an observation. People respond very harshly even to the idea, perhaps because of being burned so often before. They *want* there to be such a thing, but have lost faith that it is possible. Just surmising there -- I have no idea. As for the rest of your comment, I agree wholeheartedly. I'm just not sure how it contradicts the point I was making at all.
Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware this project is probably going to end badly if it ever even sees the light of day. I'm no huge fan of permadeath; there are a lot of balance issues that won't bear fruit until you get out there with a real-world server load. But there are some fundamental problems with the way most MMOs deal with PVP and I'm always open to seeing how some of these fringe concepts play out. Yeah, trying to push any game through PR as grief-proof is immediately toxic for obvious reasons, but I'm still curious to see where it goes.
There are many hilariously bad design decisions on that KS page. It's as though the creators believe that the game they want to make doesn't exist because no-one ever had those ideas before instead of the actual reason why not (which is that people put more than a picosecond of thought into it and realised why those were terrible ideas).
Except that this is a game where the wolves can eat everyone at once, sheep, lazy wolves, video game samurai, and all.
If I join the skype convo, will it make the game magically not have permadeath or even pvp? Just give me the crafting/survival part without the pvp.
Um. This is the part where I admit that I read a write-up of this project and only gave their Kickstarter page a cursory glance until now. Yeah. Jesus. The environment is player-scripted. That's not asking for trouble at all. Never mind, apologies, carry on.
They have some interesting ideas, but a lot of terrible ones and absolutely no awareness of previous failures in the market. I give them an F for effort.
They also have two coders (assuming the owner is also a coder, one if he isn't). There is zero chance that this game or anything remotely approaching it is ever going to be made.
They have 6 coders and the Beta begins in the next 2 weeks. You people have problems with reading comprehension. 4 of the 6 Devs are UO vets from as far back as 97/98 and have played pretty much every PvP-centric game that anyone else has.
It's a good idea to be less snarky if you don't understand that 'coders' doesn't mean artists, community managers, etc.
I am aware of what a "coder" is and am also aware that they are all coders in addition to the "Titles" placed on them for the purposes of the Kickstarter. I'm going to leave the IRC info for anyone who's interested and let this be since you all would apparently prefer to be "Forum Warriors" than to check out a new game. Off Topic / Anything Goes channel: Webchat: http://webchat.quakenet.org/?nick=Topia ... t=1&uio=d4 Browser friendly link: irc://irc.quakenet.org/topiaonline Network: irc.quakenet.org Channel: #topiaonline On Topic / Moderated channel: Webchat: http://www.ircnode.org:9090/?nick=&channels=topiaonline Network: irc.ircnode.org Channel: #topiaonline
Well I will say thanks for the info even if I don't think I'll be jumping in. It'll be an interesting project to follow in any case. Say, you are the Zen from the old Corpnews forum, aren't you?
Why yes, it's such a good sales pitch to have your programmers listed as "community manager" and "sprite artist". Where are you getting this information from? You know having specialists is a plus point for a development team, yes?
Yes, Same Zen/ZenScrotum from all the way back to lumthemad.net/org (When I bet most of these kids were still learning to use pull up diapers.) That's me, I joined this when it was it's last iteration? But then my link died and figured Lum just shut it down, just realized a week or two ago that my login still worked. It's actually a link someone posted on here 2 years ago about Salem that led me to my current community (Haven & hearth), Salem and now ultimately Topia Online.
Hey, he's been thrown out of classier joints than this.. But anyways Zen, it's good to hear from ya and see that you're still gaming and having some fun. So Haven & Hearth is still around too, huh? I've got to add that one to my list of games "nobody" plays, except the players who play them. What lots of folks don't get is that, even in broken "failures" (hey! somebody should coin that phrase! maybe change it up a bit, hmmm...) these games are more interesting and exciting to some than the most polished theme park MMO. But then, what has this got to do with Shadowbane anyway......
They have to actually get made before they can be more exciting than whatever else. This is the latest in a long line of bedroom coders thinking that preTrammel UO was pretty great and that it can't be so hard to make an MMO with every feature ever. Here is my prediction, there won't be a beta, there won't be a game and a year from now you'll be getting excited over another vapourware project that promises the moon on a budget of beans.
Yeah, World 4 of haven had about 1400 concurrent players 24/7 (Not bad for a niche) but then they changed the leveling system and that brought down numbers a bit. By World 6 the numbers had rebounded a bit then they started development of Salem and an upgrade the coder made caused massive amounts of lag making the game near unplayable and that won't be fixed until Salem is "released" (More likely cancelled by Paradox.). I played haven 2 years straight without even "looking" at another game, it was that much fun before the Lagapocalypse. I expect Topia to ultimately be more successful than Haven owing to a much larger feature set. Good to see a "couple" of community people are still around.
I fully look forward to coming back here and laughing at you in a month when beta is going strong. I'm doing a live chat with the Lead Designer tonight in our Topia voice conference so if any of you people who "haven't" made your own games would like to come in and tell him why his is going to fail, add chaosovum and I'll be happy to add you to the conference. I'll probably start the call at around 9 P.M. Central U.S. time.
There's a whole thread full of you guys attempting to be clever but...you aren't. If I feel like using quotation marks on every word I will and that's just tough shit for you, Nancy. I think the problem you are all having is that you don't realize that I've been a part of this community for close to 15 years now and none of your attempts at cleverness is anything I haven't seen 100 times before over the years. There isn't a Boogaleeboo among you and apparently he's not here or he'd be telling you all what nimrods you are. Now you can keep spamming up the thread with dumb shit about punctuation, what a dick I am or how much you hate my haircut or you can discuss the game. I could give a shit either way. Edit:I wait patiently for your next amateurish attempts at trolling... it really is cute.
Right. We're the spammers. Got it. Lum, you don't half attract some weird "veterans" of the industry (that's how you use those quotation marks, by the way)
