Melee Battlegrounds is a "third person multiplayer kingdom warfare and economy simulator".
The world is ruled by two opposing kingdoms. Kingdoms consist of factions, player-run groups. Factions consist of cities - player built. And cities consist of individual players. You are put in a large world, empty in the beginning. Players will start building up economies to support cities. The cities profit from the economies that the players establish, and the players profit from the protection and influence the city provides them.
Everything, from the very top to the very bottom, is player run. There are countless of possibilities to find a niche and become successful. Cities need an efficient economy to provide the tools, food and weapon for expanding, and most notably, warfare.
The relations of players are not strictly defined - your opponent is whoever you choose it to be.
Rivals - and friends - can be anything from the other king to the "annoying" lumber mill run by another player in the same city who's ruining your business.
There will be betrayal, murders, intrigues, backstabbing - drama! The players write the story. There is no right or wrong, there are no rules, there is only the hunt for power.
Economy
The efficiency of any economy is to a large extent location based. Some locations are good for iron, some are good for wood, others for growing crops and so on. No city will have all it needs. To get what you need, you have to trade, raid, or steal from other cities.
Cities
All cities are player built and run. There are no predefined locations where you can settle - you
build wherever you see fit. You need to build a city which is strong enough to convince players
to settle there and profit from the increased economy. Strong can mean many things - Military,
Economy, Diplomacy.
Terra-forming
While the world is untouched in the beginning, players will clear forests, build roads, mine
rocks, construct cities, outposts, castles, and change the face of the world.
Warfare
We all love a good meat grinder. Sooner or later someone will want what someone else has,
and if verbal negotiations fail, armed negotiations will start. Large warfare will feature battles
with hundreds of players on in real time.
Intrigues
There are other ways to weaken enemies - diplomacy, betrayals, assassinations. Nothing
weakens an enemy faction or even kingdom like losing an important ally in the wrong moment
or killing the people in power.
Why?
We think that multiplayer games should be played by players - against each other. The more
powerful you become, the more you run into the risk of losing everything, and if you do, it will
be at the hand of an actual human being.
You will influence the story.
You will be the story.
first of all, it's not a survival game. it's not a game where you chop trees all day long. it's about fighting and it's about decisions.
- permadath: yes, however, very regulated. as a normal player, you should nearly never have to fear someone just killing you for the sake of it. We can't tell exactly what gameplay elements that will incorporate, but in general it means: if someone kills you, it is because he wants you specifically dead, and is willing to take that risk. not because he wants your stuff, it's not medieval dayz. Trying to kill someone puts a lot of risk on the killer, and will have to be carefully planned.
- permadeath alts: also, to soften the permadeath blow, you will have multiple characters, not just one. you will control one character at a time, the others are NPCs who do the grind stuff for you (run your economy)
- LiF: we have many different games listed as influence, LiF is not one of them. I haven't played it myself, I did watch a few youtube videos, it does not seem in any way similar to what we are doing, except that its medieval and you can build stuff. LiF seems to be a survival game. MBG is not. Our game is about territory control, faction wars, diplomacy, no grind, big wars, fighting. I haven't found any proper war video of LiF. Feel free to correct me if i'm wrong, as I said, it's really only hearsay/letsplay videos that I base this on.
- Resources: your family will take care of that, when you are online and offline. No grind.
- Size: Initially, one server with 225km², in the future, we will link multiple servers together.
- Warfare: there will be fights between players, and fights between armies. The first features permadeath (although not every defeat has to end in it), he other features massive warfare (like cRPG battles/sieges/strategus fights - the best elements of em all)
- schedule: yes, lords can move armies around that are slow and predictable. you cannot damage enemy territory buildings outside of warfare, so it is predictable when wars happen.
- diplomacy: yes to all. and not regulated at all. all drama goes :)
- size: we'll have older pcs in mind, but it will require some hardware.
- 2 kingdoms: we will figure that out as we go, in general we are willing to throw out any idea if it doesnt work out
- bands: yes, will be possible
- regarding gamemodes: there will be always fighting to do when you want. whenever you are ingame and feel like working on your skills, you can jump to a battle and play as an unnamed soldier (possibly with your own skills, we'll see about that). some of those battles are real faction battles, others are objective based games that the two kingdoms pitch against each other. in short: if you want to fight, you can always do that, wherever you are.
More like:
- to attack someone you need a levelled character (no throwaway)
- if you kill someone, it can be traced back to you
- put some negative perk on you, possibly one that you cant get rid of (eg being capable of being murdered in your sleep by the family of whoever you killed)
those are just a few ideas, not necessarily what will be in game. but that goes for anything in this thread, really, we are developing iteratively.
A few elements of h&h is an inspiration for sure. the grind of that game isnt :wink:
as for player numbers, we are very optimistic about some groundbreaking numbers, but dont want to say anything specific until we can back it up with a prototype.
Very good point. Also, wasn't taken as an insult :wink: We'll work on doing some rephrasings to make our differences more clear
- Will there be lvl´s? If yes, how big will be their impact?
We thought about having parallel fighting and economy skills, so you don't have to decide between them, but level them both. As for their impact, we want to stick to the original goal of sideway levelling instead of upwards. In general, though, we havent given that topic too much thought yet, as it's not that important for the first playable version, and wont have that much impact
- How will gear be handled? Like crpg/strat now? (gear of the faction for armies and gear of the player for fights between them and on normal servers)
yes, although instead of making armies carry a bunch of weapon, you draft people into a certain troop type, eg axe + armor = axeman. Also, the troops that are used in warfare will actually be the alts of the cities, which means drafting an army hurts your cities economy - what this means is that cities should be as inviting to players as possible, because the more players settle in their area, the more troops can be crafted.
- Will there be still the tavern-server (wouldnt really make sense but still :D)
no :wink:
- Is the timesetting still the same? Will there only be european/eurasia equipment or also asian? (Would be fun to hire Ninja´s for assasinations)
we'll see. for now, we stick to the same timesetting, but it might change/expand
Currency: we want to implement some kind of player run currency. we need it so there is an easy way to trade and also a way to pay people playing in battles. how that is actually going to work is still undecided, as players need to trust the currency. The easy way is to back the money with an actual value (use money to buy something special), the hard way is to create a fiat system. We have a few ideas and will figure something out.
If you can be a banker? In theory yes. The question is if you can find a way to extract the debts of non-paying people. Will probably also depend on the city you are living in, what is allowed and what not.
In general, we will not impose any artificial limits - we give you the tools to produce stuff. What you do with the stuff is up to the players.
In MBG, anything you can possibly do, you are allowed to do. as in there are no rules of behaviour. there will most likely be ingame laws enforced by city authorities (=faction leaders), but there will be hopefully no need for admins. We'll see how far we can push this, maybe even to the point where you can mute someone permanently by cutting out his tongue if he gets on your nerves :wink:
Faction Leaders want people in their city. if they are cruel, they will drive away players to others, more save/welcoming cities. If you are too nice and dont take enough taxes of your people, you will not be able to defend the city from invaders, and people will leave. It will be a very large symbiosis between all players. Not just top down.
As for running a pure military faction, sure, that's possible. Eg as mercenaries or bandits. You don't need to set up a big city, just a camp. As it has no intrinsic value, no one will bother you. Probably.
As for running a pure economical faction, that might be difficult... If you can't protect yourself, people will take your stuff, I guess.
As for bullying:
It will be very difficult to send huge armies far away. The more agressive your army policy is, the weaker your economy gets. If you send off your army to the other end of the map, where it will take them days to get there, you are hurting yourself more than the faction you are attacking. So warfare is location based, to some extent.
As for fairness, there will (maybe not initially) be kings that may have an interest in keeping peace within their kingdom. So it's their job to make sure the factions in his kingdom dont rip each others throat out.
But apart from that... we won't protect small factions. If you are a small faction, you better excel at something (fighting, a very high quality item/resource, etc) so you have some leverage. There is not only miliary power, there is also economical power and diplomacy. If you figured out a way to produce something so unique that everyone wants it, people will trade with you, and money buys power.
The main character is your family, under that is your regular playable characters (the family members), and all of those are susceptible to get killed (permanent death) in the world.
Perma death is just what it sounds like, permanent death. Character is gone, skills and gear lost. After a while in comes a distant cousin to replace your loss (or something along those lines).
We'll have instant battle (battle-siege equivalent), what we are undecided on is how and if they'll affect The World, and 'where' they'll happen (disconnected instanced map? instanced part of the world? in the world? Lots of questions to figure out).
We'll have mechanics governing faction size, something we're keenly aware off with Strategus in hindsight.
I'll answer the other questions soonish, but it seems perma death is a hot topic:
I can't tell you exactly what game mechanics killing someone will have to prevent it. One idea is in fact that you can only kill people of certain power, so you are actively putting yourself in danger by seizing power.
possibly yes
Definitely yes. If highwaymen kill you, I would expect every lord in the vicinity to hunt them down. you gain nothing from killing your victim, but you risk everything you built up.
What I can tell you is the idea behind it: It's not killing, it's murder. Murdering someones character should be one of the most horrible acts in the game you can commit. It's a powerful tool that can be used to weaken enemies, but will come at a great price. Once you murder someone, that character has crossed a line that will make the rest of his virtual life and his family different.
I think "randoming" someone is one of the worst possible game mechanics, and before that happens, I'll remove the feature of permadeath alltogether.
One idea in my mind is also that, to kill someone, you need to watch him for some time. So there will be a way to disguise your identity and then kill him. The one who is killed (his family or faction) doesn't know who it was. He does however know that it was one who was within his vicinity. It must be someone he interacted with. Murder weapons will not be disposable, but must be hidden for some time. When the murder weapon is found, or the killer, it will be possible to backtrace where his weapons or money came from, so you cant just make a pure throwaway killer account.
Those are just ideas to give you an idea about the permadeath feature. Murders will be rare, special events, and something that will always be investigated.
On the other hand though, a murder will hurt. A lot. It will be very disruptive, possibly destroying your economy or political agenda. I have a few ideas how to do that, but will also take a lot of testing.
You won't "live" only with the people you like. You live in cities, very public to some extent, and you will not like everyone within that city. There are people coming and going, traders, new immigrates, and lots of social tension.
As I said, that feature will take a lot of finetuning to get right. But I think when we get it right, it will be an interesting concept of the game, because some murders will be executed in a way where the murderer can't be found, and will cause distrust in communities. Possibly wars between families. Drama. Stories :wink:
The gameplay meant for MBG (KS) is also to be incorporated into this. There will be objective based battles to join etc (ranked arena), similar to just jumping into a Battle/Siege server where you can quickly get in and have some fun, play a few rounds and quit.
Also in regards to the overall gameplay don't think of it as an MMO, we're specifically trying to hit that middle-road where the focus is on fun gameplay and less any sort of tedious tasks.
I'm trying to fix that problem at the root. As in, even if you are super strong, you will have an unquestionable control of your current location, but you will never rule the entire world.
But at the same time, locations only offer a certain amount of resources. If your group is too big, you are not as efficient as when you would split up a bit.
All the ideas regarding punishing factions for too many members... It's not gonna work out. Too easy to bypass.
Good questions. For the beginning, however, I want to keep it simple. There will be different qualities depending on who/where/how it was crafted, but maybe not visible in the beginning.
The entire economy boils down to one goal in the end: support your military power. So everything you do, either top or bottom of the resource chain, ends in either weapons, armors, troops or military structures at one point.
This is not a survival game, it is not a death match open world, it won't be either. It's something else you haven't seen before, just like everyone doubted everything about how cRPG/Strat would work in the beginning :wink:
There's battles of various types you can play in at any time (like instant battle via joining/queue), e.g. "cRPG" as we've stressed (a lot). Then there's also the world, where you don't need to participate if you don't want to. There will be consequence-free combat whenever you want, at any point of the day, even at 4 AM in the night.
We're talking layers combined into a nice middle-ground, without being too broad, without being too specific. No doubt very different from other games. The idea and concept of this is not new within the team, it has been around from before MBG/Asinus was even known, and it is by far what attracted me personally to this project more than anything else.
Combat will still be key, it will be a focus, there will be plenty of battles and fights to participate in, and we'll do everything we can to make the combat amazing because without that the game doesn't work, combat needs to be top notch.
It won't go away until someone takes it over. Which should be rather easy if it's not defended.
In general, just because you knock someone out, doesn't mean he's dead. If you beat someone, he is unconscious or similar. Then you actively have to decide if you want to end his life OR take his stuff (it might be mutually exclusive, realism aside)
Also, murders will depend a lot on where they happen. Killings in a city can be pardoned by the city, so it is possible to kill people if you are in power of the location.
You will most likely have a family name (=your last name), and can only change the first name. Everyone knows that you and your "brother" are in fact the same person.
There will be constant fights, nonstop; some are more important, some are less important, but they happen all the time.
As for the 2nd sentence; For this game to work, there needs to be some persistancy. So usually you will never be overrun because of being unsuspecting. When you go to sleep, you will wake up next morning and know that all the stuff you had yesterday will still be there.. unless something very catastrophic happened.
So you will know when an army approaches you. Unless you fucked up your intel.
We'll probably have a few different states:
- Healthy (anything from 100% to 1% of HP)
- Gravely wounded (knocked out for hours, possibly days -> play a different family member)
- Conscripted (tied to an army on the move -> play a different family member)
- Dead (well... dead... -> get a new family member :wink:)
falling off a cliff means "gravely wounded". no one likes dying to gravity :wink:
Is there plans to have a NPC population in cities (even if merely numerical, not actually NPC characters in the city), outside of player families?Ideally, none: If we manage to pull it off, everything is player run. If that doesn't work out, we'll introduce NPCs, but the goal is 100% player driven.How much emphasys will be on crafting/businesses that are unrelated to combat and wars (aka not wall building, weapons, armor) but more on general medieval economy, as in ale production for taverns, paper/scriptures for the church, food production, pottery, tool making, etc etc?None and a lot at the same time. As we have no NPCs that you can sell to, everything that is produced must have a meaning. And ideally, everything that is produced, must be used up somewhere to keep the economy going. That's why offensive and defensive objects are just perfect for that: They will always get used up. There will always be fights, wars, and they will get rid of those items that are produced in the economy.
There will still be many intermediate objects, though; There will be food for armies, there will be ale for armies; Having versatile nutrition for your armies will allow them to move faster/further/have more HP/to be decided.
If you want to craft an advanced armor, it will probably take 10 to 20 different economical steps inbetween, and each one will require someone with the right tools, skills and resources to create the best possible outcome.
It's intentional that no one can do everything by himself, trading will be a big factor, and not just external trading, there will be a lot of trading within your own city. But all items come from (more or less infinite) resources, get manufactured by players, and then exit the cycle through wars. By wars, you can seize control of better resources. Increase manufacturing cycles. etc.
I'd like to implement more medieval stuff later (after alpha) to make the economy even more nuanced, but for now it's important to get the basic cycle of resources right.
tl;dr: no NPCs, no NPC economy, therefore, every object will have a meaning.
Who will be the King? For balancing reason i think it could be an admin, but for gameplay i think there should maybe be something like a voting from the factionns (1 vote from every faction, so bigger factions themselves got a disadvantage). It would be a problem if the title of the King would stay always in the same faction/on the same person, it would, why you can imagine yourself.
Either voting, a certain territory you have to hold (army power) or an object you need to posess (personal power). Which one it will be, we'll test, and maybe we try different variants in different rounds.
Hm.Hmmmmmm.
Will there still be "old"gamemodes that you planned earlier?
It sounds like a nice idea,but I would like to see some more...
Also,how big will the map be and how will loading be handled?I mean,if I would have the whole map loaded the whole time,my laptops cpu would die.
Currency: we want to implement some kind of player run currency. how that is actually going to work is still undecided, as players need to trust the currency, but we need it so there is an easy way to trade. We have a few ideas and will figure something out.
If you can be a banker? In theory yes. The question is if you can find a way to extract the debts of non-paying people. Will probably also depend on the city you are living in, what is allowed and what not.
In general, we will not impose any artificial limits - we give you the tools to produce stuff. What you do with the stuff is up to the players.
Too early to tell. Maybe some original backers who have access to the prototype and a similar system can give you an answer on their performance with the showcases that we implemented, but we havent been optimising the game fully yet. Time will tell.
While I can't give you a real answer, I'd imagine they wouldn't stop them. To be completely realistic, a smaller faction would just overrun by larger ones, because thats how it works in real life. I see no reason why a stronger group of players would not be allowed to take advantage of weaker groups..+1.
Awesome. Another quick question, which i'm sure you have answered a million times already... what would I need to run this game on good settings? If I'm going to ever be dedicated to a game of this kind of scale, I would love to be immersed both by the gameplay and the graphics, and what i've seen looks very pretty. Currently my little shitty laptop can hardly run crpg, but I plan on bulding this (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/kkHwK8) in the near future.
Also i think you guys forget that there is not only war between factions themselves but between the two kingdoms.Its gonna be the person with the most influence I would guess.Would make the most sense.
The King has a interest to keep the border safe, conquer things from the other kingdom etc. For that he needs troops and resources and military/bigger factions will propably contribute a high amount of troops and equipment, while merchant/smaller faction contribute gold and other resources.
So in the end the military factions wouldnt have that more troops, still it would be significantly more so that 1 merchant/smaller faction wouldnt stand a chance. But what will their tradingpartner do if they get attacked? :D
I think it will balance itself out, with a larger playerbase than crpg ofc. .Its pretty easy to get high numbers of players and steamroll in a community which is existing out of 500 players, while its way harder if it got several thousands.
And this leeds me to another questions:
Who will be the King? For balancing reason i think it could be an admin, but for gameplay i think there should maybe be something like a voting from the factionns (1 vote from every faction, so bigger factions themselves got a disadvantage). It would be a problem if the title of the King would stay always in the same faction/on the same person, it would, why you can imagine yourself.
Would add a bit more depth I reckon, having more opportunities for alliances, Non-Agression Pacts as well as commerce and trade.
If there are no rules, or rules made by the strongest players, shit will go down like PW if its open world. RDM's etc.
Cities should be safe places, but in certain areas (taverns - small alleyways - outskirts/slums etc) it is still mildly dangerous to be killed.
well theres gonna be a lot of grinding so to see, so cRPG players do what they did best - GRIND MOTHERFUCKER, GRIND! - and nolifers will have super power while casual players will have shit
I hope we will erase you from the map hehehe
Not sure if I am totally on board with the idea of removing Warband's bread-and-butter gamemodes or not. I never particularly cared for LiF-type games or the Persistent World mod. However what you are proposing most certainly sounds like it has the potential to be better than both, but only time will tell. Anyways, a few questions for you guys...
1) Will there be an arena or some sort of building that you can enter and it takes you to what is essentially an NA1/EU1 style battle server ( or also "mock" sieges similar to NA2/EU2)? Is this how you would level up your character? I don't really see how you can level up to a warrior from a peasant if there is perma-death.
2) Just how large of an impact does your level or your skills have on your combat performance? Will it be similar to what you originally planned for M:BG where everyone has a cookie-cutter basic build and leveling up simply allows for you to customize this build to be agility or strength biased?
3) What do you gain from leveling up? The ability to customize your build/weapons to tailor them to your preferred fighting style? How does one go about leveling up, exactly?
4) I am assuming since this is not a survival game that food/water/other essential resources won't be necessary? I mean, maybe you sell your city's famous wines to another for profit, but you don't need to constantly worry about your "hunger bar" emptying, do you?
5) Let's say that there is a group of 5-10 friends who decide to roleplay bandits. They camp a major trade route where they intercept the (player-controlled) workers/AI/whoever does the trading between different outposts/cities/towns. Now this band of outlaws are all highly skilled players, let's say that they played crpg and their skills transferred over to M:BG. The city they are harassing are is run by a brand new faction who has had limited combat experience. The city sends out a band of 10-15 of their best warriors to uproot these brigands. Their assault gets decimated since they did not expect players in a "new" game to have such a high skill level already. Obviously it would be rather difficult to get a surplus of players online at once to march on these skilled bandits with overwhelming numbers, so is there some way that the city could deal with them? Could they send out a small AI-army of 50 or so soldiers to march against this small band, similar to how you would march against another large AI-army?
6) Along the lines of that last proposed scenario, would there be some way to post wanted posters in cities, where people can then be killed on sight (without consequences befalling the killer) if they are listed on a bounty board? This way skilled bandits may be able to harass people in the wilderness, but if they ever wanted to use all that gold then they would have to risk entering a hostile city sooner or later to buy better gear.
7) Finally, what are the consequences of "permadeath?" Do you lose all of your skills and customized/heirloomed weapons (if customized weapons still exist) when you switch over to an "alt" character? Or maybe you only lose a small percent of your skills/level because your main character was busy "training" your alts in their downtime? Or do you lose nothing at all, except maybe the gear you have on you (which would still really suck if customizing weapons is a chore)?
Sorry for having so many questions, but I figured it would be best to get them all out of the way in one post. :P
- 2 kingdoms: we will figure that out as we go, in general we are willing to throw out any idea if it doesnt work out
- diplomacy: not regulated at all. all drama goes :)
I know you guys will be trying to go for historical accuracy, but what will come first? Accuracy or balance?
Sorry for having so many questions, but I figured it would be best to get them all out of the way in one post. :P
However, please don't completely take the original battle/conquest gamemodes off the table.+1
While I'm not a fan of "permadeath=lose everything" in any game, really, your approach doesn't sound all that bad. However, is there any chance of conserving a percent of your skills, instead of getting set back to zero/starting values? Well, perhaps it would be better if we knew how leveling up/customizing gear (if that even exists) works. Is it something you do as soon as you play a new character, and they never level up, or do you have to grind, slowly gain xp, and therefore dying is a huge setback?Imo permadeath can add an imensly deep immersion aspect and mechanics if designed right. It all depends on how and how well this aspect is integrated into the game concept ... if done right, it can make the difference between a cheap 0815 meatgrinder and an ultra addictive and immersive fun game :)
Also, how exactly does this "family" mechanic work? Will everyone in my family magically be named Jona? Will my family consist of men and only men? :lol:
In my opinion you should be absolutely uncompromising and try to achieve exactly your dream. Do not listen anybody.
Keep the questions coming, I'll respond soon-ish :wink:
(They help us in figuring out how to present it to the public, what is unclear, what is of interest, etc)
Yes, this feature could either be really good or really bad, something like committing to perma-death really requires absolute faith in solid combat mechanics and that the server will not be a lag-fest.Please stop talking about "the permadeath mechanic" as if you already knew exactly HOW it works and how it will be integrated as a FUN component of the game, its completely unlogical since nobody knows that yet ... its also not only "death by force" but also "death by age",which are two completely different points that add alot of possible aspects ... there are myriads of ways to do it ... good ones and bad ones .. some that make it very cheap some make it expensive to die. Some with benefits some with drawbacks for gameplay ... Ofcourse its silly to add it in a bad way that scares away players or newbees; But why would one want to do that?
If someone has a lag spike where their character just keeps running in a straight line for 12 seconds and when it stops they realize they've been killed and it's permadeath, they'll rage quit.
If a relatively new player has done whatever initial grind/tutorial is needed to get ok-ish armour and weapons and they see someone running towards them jerking left and right feignts like a nutter, then get 1-2shot and lose everything. They'll rage quit.
So permadeath is an exciting mechanic and makes everything much more tactical and less rambo, but at the same time it will need incredibly well balanced combat to be successful. Not even just a better version of cRPG combat, genuinely just a flat-out better combat system, sounds like they were on the right track with realistic weapon collisions etc.
Can you show me a video of the largest combat situation you can find? I did not find proper videos depicting people fighting, or anything resembling a siege situation.
If you have more specifics to tell me exactly about 'Perma-death' in M:BG (something which i'm sure is far from set in stone at this stage) then please enlighten me.
So I imagine that participating in a battle and dying won't actually mean permadeath for your character, the way I read this permakilling is more of a political act. Seems like getting ambushed by highwaymen won't permakill you, unless they have a grander reason than your purse and are willing to take the costs of permakilling.
- permadath: yes, however, very regulated. as a normal player, you should nearly never have to fear someone just killing you for the sake of it. We can't tell exactly what gameplay elements that will incorporate, but in general it means: if someone kills you, it is because he wants you specifically dead, and is willing to take that risk. not because he wants your stuff, it's not medieval dayz. Trying to kill someone puts a lot of risk on the killer, and will have to be carefully planned.
- permadeath alts: also, to soften the permadeath blow, you will have multiple characters, not just one. you will control one character at a time, the others are NPCs who do the grind stuff for you (run your economy)
If you drop everything that can be used as a weapon from your inventory, you will run slightly faster than the fastest build possible "with a weapon attached."
This should make running away an option at all times, at the cost of loosing a tool or a weapon.
- Size: Initially, one server with 225km², in the future, we will link multiple servers together.
Maybe it could be a possibility that the player has to open the permadeath perk by either reaching a certain political rank or participating in an enterprise with the known risk of permadeath.possibly yes
So I imagine that participating in a battle and dying won't actually mean permadeath for your character, the way I read this permakilling is more of a political act. Seems like getting ambushed by highwaymen won't permakill you, unless they have a grander reason than your purse and are willing to take the costs of permakilling.Definitely yes. If highwaymen kill you, I would expect every lord in the vicinity to hunt them down. you gain nothing from killing your victim, but you risk everything you built up.
Could you elaborate on civilian roles and their impact in the game, and what danger you'd be in not speccing into combat/training for fighting?
archey stuff
Once you murder someone, that character has crossed a line that will make the rest of his virtual life and his family different.
One idea in my mind is also that, to kill someone, you need to watch him for some time. So there will be a way to disguise your identity and then kill him. The one who is killed (his family or faction) doesn't know who it was. He does however know that it was one who was within his vicinity. It must be someone he interacted with. Murder weapons will not be disposable, but must be hidden for some time. When the murder weapon is found, or the killer, it will be possible to backtrace where his weapons or money came from, so you cant just make a pure throwaway killer account.
Those are just ideas to give you an idea about the permadeath feature. Murders will be rare, special events, and something that will always be investigated.
Murders will be rare, special events
This may seem completely idiotic, but what are you going to do with ranged ? Let me explain myself : imagine a ranged player, being a good archer/crossbowman/dagger thrower/whatever you can think of. Imagine this player being paid for killing one or several targets, or just being a bandit. I suppose there won't be kill notifications with names of anyone, so the ranged player can kill targets on the road, take all the stuff of the target/innocent traveler, and move to make this kind of stuff again. My point is ranged is stealthy, fast, and efficient. And this point causes several gameplay problems.
1) Will ranged be some kind of hard, even harder than backstabbing to avoid that ?
2) Will there be a permadeath protection for peasants, like being gravely wounded (1hp for 1 or 2 mins while on ground/until someone helps you out), or something like that ?
I don't want ranged being nerfed to ground, or being on the opposite too easy, but there should be a way to make this kind of actions rather hard, even for ranged players.
Third question, related to the development of the game in itself : will you add gamemodes (different than battle/siege) in the future which allow the player to use a persistent character ?
By different of battle/siege, I mean PvP/PvE competitive gamemodes like some kind of Conquest, or a survival in an arena/town where players must survive waves, or beat a time "record", with the difficulty becoming higher after each stage (similar to Survival in Insurgency; this game got interesting gamemodes to inspire actually, just giving out ideas).
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Projectile physics - lots of arcing and leading
Or that toggling it even provides slightly (nothing OP) higher stats or more HP or something to encourage people who want the 'edge' to take that risk more often, whilst more casual people who care less about min-max need not toggle it.
The mystery has been solved! It was colonel chadz in the conservatory with the candlestick!
The great thing about the Perma-death feature that people here seem to be talking about is the potential for Player Killing :D
If you suck-up to the in-game authorities enough you can surely have their permission to hunt CRIMINALS and MURDERERS and put them to justice. Imagine the joy of Player Killing a Player Killer, you've committed their crime but have done so legally and are therefore safe :P this must be how American executioners get to feel IRL.
Or ride them down and butcher them like a hog... for JUSTICE!
'He was trying to escape!'
or
'He had a shiv!'
I sure hope there is some mechanic that allows you to kill in self defense while avoiding the penalties of being a murderer, you know, 'murican style. If a known PKer walks up to me, blade drawn, I sure as hell ain't gonna just let him have his way with me. I hope you can kill any PKer on sight without consequence, and if anything you get a reward if they have a bounty on their head. If so, I will be rolling a hired assassin/manhunter, for justice.
If so, I will be rolling a hired assassin/manhunter, for justice.
If I buy the game, I may be tempted to do the same, but for money, because massive greed.
Do mine eyes deceive me or do we have all the ingredients for the most badass, amazing, trolling, PK-bullying clan/guild to ever be conceived?
M:BG deserves players like us lol.
Can we talk about servers... Where will they be hosted? Will NA / EU get different servers? What will the specs be (ex. max players..)..?
More like:
- to attack someone you need a levelled character (no throwaway)
- if you kill someone, it can be traced back to you
- put some negative perk on you, possibly one that you cant get rid of (eg being capable of being murdered in your sleep by the family of whoever you killed)
those are just a few ideas, not necessarily what will be in game. but that goes for anything in this thread, really, we are developing iteratively.
One idea in my mind is also that, to kill someone, you need to watch him for some time. So there will be a way to disguise your identity and then kill him. The one who is killed (his family or faction) doesn't know who it was. He does however know that it was one who was within his vicinity. It must be someone he interacted with. Murder weapons will not be disposable, but must be hidden for some time. When the murder weapon is found, or the killer, it will be possible to backtrace where his weapons or money came from, so you cant just make a pure throwaway killer account.
Those are just ideas to give you an idea about the permadeath feature. Murders will be rare, special events, and something that will always be investigated.
On the other hand though, a murder will hurt. A lot. It will be very disruptive, possibly destroying your economy or political agenda. I have a few ideas how to do that, but will also take a lot of testing.
You won't "live" only with the people you like. You live in cities, very public to some extent, and you will not like everyone within that city. There are people coming and going, traders, new immigrates, and lots of social tension.
As I said, that feature will take a lot of finetuning to get right. But I think when we get it right, it will be an interesting concept of the game, because some murders will be executed in a way where the murderer can't be found, and will cause distrust in communities. Possibly wars between families. Drama. Stories :wink:
Who will be the King? For balancing reason i think it could be an admin, but for gameplay i think there should maybe be something like a voting from the factionns (1 vote from every faction, so bigger factions themselves got a disadvantage). It would be a problem if the title of the King would stay always in the same faction/on the same person, it would, why you can imagine yourself.
iirc, it was mentioned that there will be an always-on battle mode where you can join if you want to fight anytime ... just like cRPG ... additionally i dont think i heared people complain about lack of fights in strat. So, i dont think it will be a large problem, since also, iirc, you will be able to join battles for battleing factions (aswell similar to strat) ... not sure if you can join as random merc (like strat) but at least you will be able to join if you(your character/family/army) are located or traveled to the region of the conflict ...
also: WB DaveUKR :mrgreen:
What happens if you have own castle or city and few players join to your faction and kill you.
You will lost your castle? Or how will be castles/cities linked to player/king?
Players can't just join your faction,andwhat if the king А and the king В would not love Russians and Polish for expl and will not accept them in the fraction. :((click to show/hide)
... mega carebear alliances like the UIF could form in your concept. I personally find it makes the experience very stale without there being anything you can do about it as a player. Will you implement any mechanics to discourage disproportionally large alliances? I imagine something could be done with diminishing returns for having more members/vassals, however these mechanics also need to be metagaming proof, as in people not officially allying to avoid mechanics while still cooperating for all intents and purposes.
Will be there a family tree system ? (shown in the player's profile would be great though! :D)
Other good features in that I think it's adding the cause and time of death of the specific family member who deceased :)
Crafting.
How detailed will it be? How customizable will it be? Will players be able to create custom textures for items like swords, etc, so that you can tell who made a sword just by how it looks? Will there be a skill tree for crafting in general, or will it be split up further into various fields (i.e leatherworkers, tailors, smiths, etc.) that a player will have to specialize in?
Will it be a 15x15 square map(which the number implies) or a stretched rectangle to increase max distances?
Yeah, I didn't misunderstand it. chadz said that he wants a unimap for everything (225 sq km) means that there will be an open world for everyone to play there. So if there is a battle and you want to fight there - you'll be moved or will have to move there somehow. But I'm speaking about the stuff behind it. The daily small fights look more promising to me, like defending a caravan against the ambush or attacking it, punishing trolling kids (there is no way any game can avoid it), fighting people beyond official battles. Permadeath is too harsh (don't tell me that I didn't understand it, I foresee people claiming it, just reread what I say) and having no penalty makes no sense either.I think, the best approach to balance the occurance of aggressive/any type of encounters (as : how often they occure, what kind of conflicts are the majority) always by balancing the profit for it ... not only material gain, but also , how much can you boost your reputation with your act, either as bad-boy or cyber police man. The hope should be to model an environment where against all "evil" gameplay (like robbing, murdering, and even trolling) the "counter" gameplay is evenly strong ... to hold everything in balance. You can motivate people to do anything in a game by injecting some sort of virtual currency .. be it in-game-gold or reputation.
I'm all against making things difficult like that. If you don't know how things will work - don't do it. Make simple things work well first.
Nessaj is a fan of it, though, so you might see something like that :)
What will happen to abandoned settlements or property of inactive accounts?
If someone builds a huge complex but goes afk how long before it can be removed / taken over?
I sure hope there is some mechanic that allows you to kill in self defense while avoiding the penalties of being a murderer, you know, 'murican style. If a known PKer walks up to me, blade drawn, I sure as hell ain't gonna just let him have his way with me. I hope you can kill any PKer on sight without consequence, and if anything you get a reward if they have a bounty on their head. If so, I will be rolling a hired assassin/manhunter, for justice.
Also I kinda wonder how the alternate character system works, if there will be one at all. It would be pretty damn fun to be able to play as both sides in the cops vs. robbers (manhunters vs. murderers?) dichotomy. However, I wouldn't want people knowing about my highwayman pastime (on my alt) when my main is rolling around as the most respected manhunter in town.
I feel there should be a constant legal war going on, maybe between those 2 kingdoms? And if you wanted you could gather some troops, ride over there and kill some unsuspecting players.
Another question about permadeath:
What will happen if i jump down a 500 meters deep cliff in one of your beautiful nordic fjord maps or mountains ... or when i stand underwater to observe the sealife for a few days in the beautiful lakes you will design ? :mrgreen:
Is there plans to have a NPC population in cities (even if merely numerical, not actually NPC characters in the city), outside of player families?Ideally, none: If we manage to pull it off, everything is player run. If that doesn't work out, we'll introduce NPCs, but the goal is 100% player driven.
How much emphasys will be on crafting/businesses that are unrelated to combat and wars (aka not wall building, weapons, armor) but more on general medieval economy, as in ale production for taverns, paper/scriptures for the church, food production, pottery, tool making, etc etc?None and a lot at the same time. As we have no NPCs that you can sell to, everything that is produced must have a meaning. And ideally, everything that is produced, must be used up somewhere to keep the economy going. That's why offensive and defensive objects are just perfect for that: They will always get used up. There will always be fights, wars, and they will get rid of those items that are produced in the economy.
Are the current testers all committed min-maxers who are going to test all the features based on the assumption that everyone is going to try and play the game 'well' on launch, or do you have a healthy amount of troll-testers who will fuck about trying to break everything as much as possible (like you'll get in the full release)?I'm in. :wink:
Krems are a valuable cRPG resource you could exploit to try and troll-proof M:BG closer to release.
As for the 2nd sentence; For this game to work, there needs to be some persistancy. So usually you will never be overrun because of being unsuspecting. When you go to sleep, you will wake up next morning and know that all the stuff you had yesterday will still be there.. unless something very catastrophic happened.
So you will know when an army approaches you. Unless you fucked up your intel.
do you have a healthy amount of troll-testers
Dave, RE! Now l2read all info before commenting, don't be lazy :( :P :twisted:
All I can say is that you're thinking in completely generalized terms, e.g. Rust/DayZ gameplay or any sort of regular gameplay you've experienced in mods/MMOs these last years. Many projects had initial success but couldn't sustain it long term. It would be concerning if we were going in that sort of direction of course :)
This is not a survival game, it is not a death match open world, it won't be either. It's something else you haven't seen before, just like everyone doubted everything about how cRPG/Strat would work in the beginning :wink:
There's battles of various types you can play in at any time (like instant battle via joining/queue), e.g. "cRPG" as we've stressed (a lot). Then there's also the world, where you don't need to participate if you don't want to. There will be consequence-free combat whenever you want, at any point of the day, even at 4 AM in the night.
We're talking layers combined into a nice middle-ground, without being too broad, without being too specific. No doubt very different from other games. The idea and concept of this is not new within the team, it has been around from before MBG/Asinus was even known, and it is by far what attracted me personally to this project more than anything else.
Combat will still be key, it will be a focus, there will be plenty of battles and fights to participate in, and we'll do everything we can to make the combat amazing because without that the game doesn't work, combat needs to be top notch.
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I can barely come up with one or two decent character names... and now you expect me to be able to create a reasonable surname (in addition to many, many first names)?!?! :( Jonasson just doesn't sound all that great.
Do mine eyes deceive me or do we have all the ingredients for the most badass, amazing, trolling, PK-bullying clan/guild to ever be conceived?
M:BG deserves players like us lol.
I can barely come up with one or two decent character names... and now you expect me to be able to create a reasonable surname (in addition to many, many first names)?!?! :(
Innnn.
Also I'm glad you guys are focusing on epic now. My wallet is ready.
Also this.
Aw fuk bai.
Taser Tazerington.
Taser Can'ttouchthis.
Taser Thunderthighs.
Taser Sirshockington.
And what about alfred? Aw shit mang.
So yeah, is there going to be a system to stop sad people disconnecting before they die? (and get murdered on the ground).
Also, have you thought at all about the player map? Will everyone have a mini-map and easy compass/a dot that magically shows exactly where they are? Or will maps be more vague and general just showing natural features and not any player-made ones, and people must discover settlements etc manually?
... but netcode worries me the most because that is by far the worst side of mod you've been developing ...
I blame chadz for developing the netcode of a mod in a game he has no involvement in whatsoever since day one tbh...enough to lick their asses! you have an alpha tester already! What else do you need from them !? :P
Damn you, chadz, for screwing up Warband's netcode this much *shakes fist in anger at the screen*
And you too, cmp, damn youuu... *shakes fist furiously at screen now*
Will you be able to end feuds with players through duels either to first blood or if you so wish to death with out getting any penalties for killing? Would be quite sweet to kill your rivals in an honourable way :twisted:Also will you be able to kidnap people and demand ransoms and so on?
Also will you be able to kidnap people and demand ransoms and so on?
Will there be boats and sail able seas/lakes/rivers?
Will wildlife and hunting? The king demands some entertaining boar hunting!
Would very much appreciate an in depth hunting system where you can manually break down the various parts of the animal for use. There should be a risk of ruining the pelt, meat, bones etc if you screw up.
Also, hunting parties. Would be hilarious watching people get torn to pieces by bears, wolves, wild boar etc
I honestly do not hope that the devs wil use many (if any) resources on a hunting system.
From what I understand the game is supose to be a war/diplomatics/fightning game and not a LiF type survival game.
a bit off topic, but do you know this project?
http://gloriavictisgame.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hICRzBgx6SI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOxSw83PMIg
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1688404825/gloria-victis-dark-medieval-mmorpg
Kickstarter unsuccessful on Dec 2012, but from http://forum.gloriavictisgame.com/ i know that somebody is alive and doing something...
ofc combat system looks terrible, but look at the overall fate of of this project...
Will it be simliar to this one?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/314700/ (http://store.steampowered.com/app/314700/)
not sure if serious but funny regardless
how can you play this kind of games like warband or melee in 1st person?R
I am not asking how to toogle 1st/3rdSorry we misunderstood you 8-)
my question was about how can someone play with first person, it is very shit view
I am not asking how to toogle 1st/3rd
my question was about how can someone play with first person, it is very shit view
8-)
Is it too late to "preorder" this game?? : )
I'll surely buy it when it comes out though
I hope it won't be too big and complicated. Look at Mortal Online or Wurm, you can do whatever you want, literally. And who plays it? 10 people at most.
This will probably attract bigger audiences and stuff but it feels kinda sad to ditch the good ol battle gameplay many of us still play for. I was hoping Melee would be a game we would finally drop cRPG for, but now it seems like it will be more of a fun survival game kind of deal, play it for a month then go back to crpg.
If I understood it correctly there will still be instanced battles similar to cRPG.
That's the only thing I'd play actually. Seen enough bullshit on PW likes mods going on everytime, plus if you add permadeath, it's not going to be some pure fighting and besieging, more like trying to hide in a bush with a crossbow so you never get into dangerous situations to keep your stats/items.
That's the only thing I'd play actually. Seen enough bullshit on PW likes mods going on everytime, plus if you add permadeath, it's not going to be some pure fighting and besieging, more like trying to hide in a bush with a crossbow so you never get into dangerous situations to keep your stats/items.
You can play as a random soldier for fights. The point is that these soldiers will effectively be less good than permadeath characters (e.g. lower level, worse equipment (not your own), and so forth), so there is an incentive to play with you real character.
At least this was the plan some months ago.
By risking permadeath?
permadath: yes, however, very regulated. as a normal player, you should nearly never have to fear someone just killing you for the sake of it. We can't tell exactly what gameplay elements that will incorporate, but in general it means: if someone kills you, it is because he wants you specifically dead, and is willing to take that risk. not because he wants your stuff, it's not medieval dayz. Trying to kill someone puts a lot of risk on the killer, and will have to be carefully planned.
You can play as a random soldier for fights. The point is that these soldiers will effectively be less good than permadeath characters (e.g. lower level, worse equipment (not your own), and so forth), so there is an incentive to play with you real character.
At least this was the plan some months ago.
Look at us, discussing gameplay concepts again here!
Look at us, discussing gameplay concepts again here!
There will be betrayal, murders, intrigues, backstabbing - drama! The players write the story. There is no right or wrong, there are no rules, there is only the hunt for power.
I only request that there will be the existence of a tutorial when this game comes out.
Because the people noobish enough to try playing and be confused are going to already be looking into the modding community...
Talk about going in the wrong direction.
All the flaws with the mod crpg was based upon a wrong perception of what people really want to play.
If all focus had been on creative a awesome fighting game it would not only still be a popular mod, it would be hugely successfull.
Strat and shitty maps and weird patches changed all that, and the mod is dying.
Making a shitty lowbudget sandbox mmo (it has been done before, about 100 times) wont be played by anyone.
It should be like crpg 2012, with 120players on siege. Except better.
That would be worth playing.
Making a shitty lowbudget sandbox mmo (it has been done before, about 100 times) wont be played by anyone.
It should be like crpg 2012, with 120players on siege. Except better.
That would be worth playing.
Talk about going in the wrong direction.2012 best gaming year of muh life
All the flaws with the mod crpg was based upon a wrong perception of what people really want to play.
If all focus had been on creative a awesome fighting game it would not only still be a popular mod, it would be hugely successfull.
Strat and shitty maps and weird patches changed all that, and the mod is dying.
Making a shitty lowbudget sandbox mmo (it has been done before, about 100 times) wont be played by anyone.
It should be like crpg 2012, with 120players on siege. Except better.
That would be worth playing.
No strat ticks mechanic plz
Why not have the hub city in the middle of the "epic" land, a place people can go to hang out, do dueling, jousting etc. Also join standard battle/siege servers. If you leave the city that then takes you to the "epic" game mode where you've got to fend for yourself.
A shitty round-based medieval fighting game, cos that hasnt been done before.
Let's compete with Bannerlord by making an IDENTICAL (yet cheaper) game.
Lots of people came to cRPG because they wanted a multiplayer version of the native map, a persistent competitive multiplayer with fiefs and conflict on the map. Many of them found it to be clunky, poorly explained and with no up-to-date guides. Making something that is a competent version of Strategus with an actual guide or tutorial in-game would be awesome.
Strategus was like a cancer in crpg, if it had been cut out early maybe the game would gave survived.I'm pretty sure most people would agree that strategus is the best part
The native strategic map was pure shit, strategus was pure shit. The only good thing to ever come from mount and blade and crpg was the combat mechanics.
Too bad the were constantly changed into unrecognition, and thus the decline of interest in all the players.
Consider the huge success of singleplayer mods for M&B, people loved that base game and fief ownership etc is still a big selling point, notice how many newbies we (used to) get asking how they get a fief in this game? Dont make a game only the few survivors of this mod will play, other people are allowed opinions too and tbh the people who liked campaign mode will vastly outnumber the people in this community, the devs would be daft to ignore that.
Strategus is a divider, for sure. Personally I was very interested in it initially, but that quickly faltered once the flaws showed up.
Epic (and Strategus) gives a much needed persistency to battles. A random village battle, Or, defending your own village where a win might turn the conflict in your favour?
Context matters.
On hub city:
We have the functionality to have a massive amount of players (tried and works) on the same server at the same time, but that would means no open world combat in that area/server (like an MMO). We have ways to allow duels and other small scale combat to happen real time on in the hub, the questions is rather, do we want to tie it into Epic?
Truth be told we aren't sure we Want a hub city in Epic, or any infrastructure on the [Epic] map that isn't player built. Something we are discussing continuously and will be decided by play testing and feedback rather than what we think works or doesn't.
Edit, typos etc.
Truth be told we aren't sure we Want a hub city in Epic, or any infrastructure on the [Epic] map that isn't player built. Something we are discussing continuously and will be decided by play testing and feedback rather than what we think works or doesn't.
How are battle are organized. As i read it's won't be a huge open world ?
FYI for the 2 above posters, one of the devs said the following on the previous page:
So there will be the larger open world, but also a more immediate 'battle' server without the same persistency. For me personally, i'm excited by the concept of the open world game type, but others may prefer a strictly battle-only style of gaming and use the dedicated server for that. Devs are currently discussing linking the 2 features in some way that doesnt give a massive advantage over players who only prefer to use one or the other.
I also think that chadz stated in previous threads that economics will largely be AI, you're playing a hero/awesome character, you dont see characters in Game of Thrones go out and chop wood or mine.
Old concept was better :|:rolleyes: :wink: