So does this mean 75% of creatures become completely trivial and exploitable once you have enough power to levitate a tiny piece of land to float on?
Um. I guess if you haven't been following my threads you might come to that conclusion.
Levitating a tiny piece of land us unlikely. Firstly you need to keep the mana batteries charged while levitating, and moving costs more energy than simply floating.
The way that crafting and magic work, it would take at least 100 players to even create a 10ft by 10ft piece of land and it would take a year to get efficient enough enchantments to not have to spend all day charging your mana batteries.
This isn't some gay ass instanced housing thing in a themepark where everyone and their grandma has a giant house.
Oh my, you can post a link to penny arcade? Boy I am blown away. I didn't have any idea about those things in that short web video.
"You just don't get my brilliance!" from the video completely characterizes the way you interact with people on this board. You seem completely immune to feedback and logical criticism.
That, more than anything, makes you a bad game designer.
And it doesn't help that you completely ignore the common design knowledge, "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." (ie design perfection is about reducing deep concepts to their simplest form -- not to pursue complexity.)
I am not. I talk to lots of people here who c an give good criticism. Posting an old few minute penny arcade video is not a valid criticism.
In fact if you read the topic at all, this concept can be reduced to very simple dynamics. its the interaction between several basic concepts in the game that lets you make a giant sky fortress.
I had a perfectly reasonable PM conversation with Loke about how to create counter balances to being untouchable by a lot of creatures. And about having to mostly stay on the ground and only move around for specific purposes.
I changed a significant part of my magic system because a poster suggested an implementation which would deal with a problem I was having about keeping magical power from diminishing to nothing because players would just hand out magic to everyone to win.
Oh my, you can post a link to penny arcade? Boy I am blown away. I didn't have any idea about those things in that short web video.
"You just don't get my brilliance!" from the video completely characterizes the way you interact with people on this board. You seem completely immune to feedback and logical criticism.
That, more than anything, makes you a bad game designer.
And it doesn't help that you completely ignore the common design knowledge, "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." (ie design perfection is about reducing deep concepts to their simplest form -- not to pursue complexity.)
Bullsquat!
There's been no "logical criticism". What there's been is "that can't be done because we don't do it that way".
And I await the game designer that says "it's my way, period" to all those who say "it can't be done". Because your way has left us with pure boredom of simplicity and sameness.
It's no wonder that we are where we are. You designers really believe that complexity is a no-no because you couldn't handle it. What we need are designers who can handle complexity.
Um. I guess if you haven't been following my threads you might come to that conclusion.
Levitating a tiny piece of land us unlikely. Firstly you need to keep the mana batteries charged while levitating, and moving costs more energy than simply floating.
The way that crafting and magic work, it would take at least 100 players to even create a 10ft by 10ft piece of land and it would take a year to get efficient enough enchantments to not have to spend all day charging your mana batteries.
This isn't some gay ass instanced housing thing in a themepark where everyone and their grandma has a giant house.
So now we're backtracking from Kickass Floating Citadels to "You need 1000 players to keep a 100x100ft citadel afloat, and you won't even be able to do it for a year."
Why even implement the feature at that point?
Why not solve for the singular problem (give mobs the ability to deal with flying thigns) and make floating citadels a cool part of your game that players will actually experience?
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Funny how the Themepark supporters come out to shoot down any idea that's not core Themepark.
75% of a game's content are exploitable. How is that not just flat-out bad game design?
How has this got anything to do with "themeparks" in any way?
Because Themeparks are the ultimate in "I can't handle complexity". They are the "Run Away, Run Away!" They are the reason we have less and less in our MMORPGs. They take out more than they put in. Because they can't figure out answers to problems, they just remove the problems instead. Leaving us with nothing but the same boreing game play over and over again.
Pick up quests
Go over there
Do what we say to do
Get rewarded.
Do it again.
Boy, if that's not exciting I don't know what is. Can I do it again?
There's been no "logical criticism". What there's been is "that can't be done because we don't do it that way".
And I await the game designer that says "it's my way, period" to all those who say "it can't be done". Because your way has left us with pure boredom of simplicity and sameness.
It's no wonder that we are where we are. You designers really believe that complexity is a no-no because you couldn't handle it. What we need are designers who can handle complexity.
We can handle complexity (and frequently do, behind the scenes, in order to achieve things which are simple from the player's perspective.)
But honestly if you perceive games as "simplicity and sameness" it's because you've pursued the same types of games. Meanwhile innovation is abundant in all the other types of games constantly being made. If you perceive a lack of innovation in the games industry it's because you aren't really looking for innovation: you're looking at the surface layer, and probably the same part of the surface layer (one particular genre of games.)
My criticism was quite logical. Things can float and 75% of monsters can't deal with floating. Your assumption based on this criticism was that the feature shouldn't be implemented at all, whereas I'd make the opposite assumption. Especially if players like the idea of floating citadels, they should be made more common and gameplay should remain consistently challenging* (if not more challenging) once you get your floating citadel going.
(*Meaning genuine challenge, not just "Welp I gotta grind out more mana for the batteries today to keep my citadel afloat" which is just a timesink not a challenge)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Um. I guess if you haven't been following my threads you might come to that conclusion.
Levitating a tiny piece of land us unlikely. Firstly you need to keep the mana batteries charged while levitating, and moving costs more energy than simply floating.
The way that crafting and magic work, it would take at least 100 players to even create a 10ft by 10ft piece of land and it would take a year to get efficient enough enchantments to not have to spend all day charging your mana batteries.
This isn't some gay ass instanced housing thing in a themepark where everyone and their grandma has a giant house.
So now we're backtracking from Kickass Floating Citadels to "You need 1000 players to keep a 100x100ft citadel afloat, and you won't even be able to do it for a year."
Why even implement the feature at that point?
Why not solve for the singular problem (give mobs the ability to deal with flying thigns) and make floating citadels a cool part of your game that players will actually experience?
Brilliance! When every player owns a floating fortress, that solves the problem of houses taking up all the land. Just brilliant thinking.
Can I just have my floating fortress? Can I buy it in a game shop?
Um. I guess if you haven't been following my threads you might come to that conclusion.
Levitating a tiny piece of land us unlikely. Firstly you need to keep the mana batteries charged while levitating, and moving costs more energy than simply floating.
The way that crafting and magic work, it would take at least 100 players to even create a 10ft by 10ft piece of land and it would take a year to get efficient enough enchantments to not have to spend all day charging your mana batteries.
This isn't some gay ass instanced housing thing in a themepark where everyone and their grandma has a giant house.
So now we're backtracking from Kickass Floating Citadels to "You need 1000 players to keep a 100x100ft citadel afloat, and you won't even be able to do it for a year."
Why even implement the feature at that point?
Why not solve for the singular problem (give mobs the ability to deal with flying thigns) and make floating citadels a cool part of your game that players will actually experience?
Its not backtracking. Did you not read the first post? If you want I can link you to my blog which was posted before you or awa posted here which talks about the difficulty of creating a functioning flying citadel:
www.lordofthedawn.com/wp
100 feet is huge. 100x100 is 10000 square feet. The number of players involves all the gatherers and crafters who make the components as well as the mages. Once the citadel is built it takes a little bit of time a day from a large guild or kingdom to keep it floating. Big deal.
I have always stated that my game is not designed for casuals. Yes 75% of players will probably not be a member of a group with a fortress but so what?
What are you talking about implementing a feature?
Do you not understand how systems interact in sandboxes to produce a possibility?
There is no "feature" for sky forts. There is the ability to enchant items, and the ability to produce player made buildings and objects. Those are base level g ame systems. It just so happens that if you work hard and work smart you can make a giant floating sky fortress.
This is what Ama means by themepark mindsets. Where you have to implement anything cool as a separate feature with separate code. This "feature" natrually arises from low level game systems.
I've made a lot of threads about crazy stuff I wanna do with my game, but you don't even know the half of it. I am going to give you some facts about my game and I want you to try and guess what crazy sandbox shenanigan I am up to now:
Mages can transfer mana between each other with a special spell.
Some words of power lower mana usage in spells.
Mages who cast lots of spells get more and more proficient at mana efficiency.
Players can enchant items to be mana containers.
Mana containers have specific capacities based on construction.
Mages can have any number of mana containers they can carry or are in range of.
Mages have to do an active meditation type thing to fill mana containers.
For obvious abuse based reasons meditation is not one of the offline activities. This may change given that it would prevent you from other activities but I am not sure yet.
Enchanted items require a charge of mana to produce effects. This is useful because all players have mana even if they can't create or use spells. Even powerful spells may have low mana costs based on the words to reduce mana and the mage who cast the spell.
You can connect an enchantment to one or more mana batteries.
One enchantment effect is the levitation of objects.
Levitation spells have a total weight they can raise.Any object can be levitated.
75% of creatures cannot fly or deal significant ranged damage.
Objects can hold a number of enchantments based on materials, crafting processes used, and size.
Objects can be "bound" together.
What am I thinking?
You can do 1 guess per post. If no one gets it in 50-100 posts or people stop trying to guess after a while, I will tell you.
I have one request, but first, how about we do away with pointless fluff and instead focus on the basics of a fun mmorpg? Think you CAN do it? Good luck because no one has yet, which statistically means whatever game you are putting together is bound to fail. Now, all that negativity aside, why not do something different and we can use pvp as an example.
Meaningful pvp means more than just having objectives. It means getting to fight people that are different than you, not some copy paste race and or class. And why is that important? Because it makes the game more believable.
To make fiction immersive, you have to make it as believable as possible (i.e,, George R.R. Martin). On the contrary, to make reality entertaining, you have to add as much fluff as you can. Today's mmorpgs chose to add fluff on fluff or just boring pointless concepts and they wonder why they fail en masse.
----------------------------------------The one request--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So I will just make one request, that you make a game where the enemy is actually different than you. Not sure that's possible? Go check out Dark Age of Camelot. You could take ALL the red names away, and players would still be able to identify an enemy realm, including their race, and probably their class, from bow range. You can do that in WoW too, but of course the classes would be exactly the same - which is failure in creativity.
The second part of this, as we can see, is avoiding the mirror concept, and ensuring that the Tauren Paladin who fights your dwarf paladin, is not a feccken paladin, no matter how much people cry. The smart folks will thank you. So (a) different races (b) different classes = a more believable pvp experience.
Do what you will with your titile, it's the privilege of the person with the money. But it would be nice if one sandbox or mmorpg of any kind actually had some sense of variety and variation. Lazy developers abound and throw fluff at folks, meanwhile everything is still just my jedi with a light saber vs your sith with a light saber, my GW2 ranger vs your GW2 ranger, my Priest of Mitra, vs your Priest of Mitra, and so on.
Epic has never been Hobbits vs Hobbits, that particular story was written with a much more epic concept in mind.
There's been no "logical criticism". What there's been is "that can't be done because we don't do it that way".
And I await the game designer that says "it's my way, period" to all those who say "it can't be done". Because your way has left us with pure boredom of simplicity and sameness.
It's no wonder that we are where we are. You designers really believe that complexity is a no-no because you couldn't handle it. What we need are designers who can handle complexity.
We can handle complexity (and frequently do, behind the scenes, in order to achieve things which are simple from the player's perspective.)
But honestly if you perceive games as "simplicity and sameness" it's because you've pursued the same types of games. Meanwhile innovation is abundant in all the other types of games constantly being made. If you perceive a lack of innovation in the games industry it's because you aren't really looking for innovation: you're looking at the surface layer, and probably the same part of the surface layer (one particular genre of games.)
My criticism was quite logical. Things can float and 75% of monsters can't deal with floating. Your assumption based on this criticism was that the feature shouldn't be implemented at all, whereas I'd make the opposite assumption. Especially if players like the idea of floating citadels, they should be made more common and gameplay should remain consistently challenging* (if not more challenging) once you get your floating citadel going.
(*Meaning genuine challenge, not just "Welp I gotta grind out more mana for the batteries today to keep my citadel afloat" which is just a timesink not a challenge)
Again this is not a part of the sky fortress exclusively. Enchantments require charges. You have to charge them. Mana batteries can hold extra charge to power enchantments.
The sky fort wasn't a planned aspect of the game. I just noticed hey, I have levitation and mana batteries and player buildings. I bet I can build a sky fortress. Turns out I can, if I work hard.
In fact there is a natural consequence of using a massive number of enchantments and mana channeling to produce a sky fortress. It creates a giant magic aura which can be senses over vast distances. Instead of having to visually explore the world and report back to find player settlements those creatures with high magic sense capability will know where the fortress is and attack it. Gryphons, dragons, demons that can fly, all sorts of things. And depending on the height of the building a giant wurm could attack it and if it got there and it was too high the wurm would just wait till it had to land unless a better target came along. So then when you finally land you are immediately assaulted by a mass of wurms.
And every single example I used arises naturally from the interaction of simple game systems. No new features had to be added to the game to create a sky fort or to make it dangerous to build one and hard to keep it in the air.
Because I never put any thought into my game design. At all. I just decided I wanted sky forts. Had nothing to do with how sandboxes with complex interacting systems work.
I've made a lot of threads about crazy stuff I wanna do with my game, but you don't even know the half of it. I am going to give you some facts about my game and I want you to try and guess what crazy sandbox shenanigan I am up to now:
Mages can transfer mana between each other with a special spell.
Some words of power lower mana usage in spells.
Mages who cast lots of spells get more and more proficient at mana efficiency.
Players can enchant items to be mana containers.
Mana containers have specific capacities based on construction.
Mages can have any number of mana containers they can carry or are in range of.
Mages have to do an active meditation type thing to fill mana containers.
For obvious abuse based reasons meditation is not one of the offline activities. This may change given that it would prevent you from other activities but I am not sure yet.
Enchanted items require a charge of mana to produce effects. This is useful because all players have mana even if they can't create or use spells. Even powerful spells may have low mana costs based on the words to reduce mana and the mage who cast the spell.
You can connect an enchantment to one or more mana batteries.
One enchantment effect is the levitation of objects.
Levitation spells have a total weight they can raise.Any object can be levitated.
75% of creatures cannot fly or deal significant ranged damage.
Objects can hold a number of enchantments based on materials, crafting processes used, and size.
Objects can be "bound" together.
What am I thinking?
You can do 1 guess per post. If no one gets it in 50-100 posts or people stop trying to guess after a while, I will tell you.
I have one request, but first, how about we do away with pointless fluff and instead focus on the basics of a fun mmorpg? Think you CAN do it? Good luck because no one has yet, which statistically means whatever game you are putting together is bound to fail. Now, all that negativity aside, why not do something different and we can use pvp as an example.
Meaningful pvp means more than just having objectives. It means getting to fight people that are different than you, not some copy paste race and or class. And why is that important? Because it makes the game more believable.
To make fiction immersive, you have to make it as believable as possible (i.e,, George R.R. Martin). On the contrary, to make reality entertaining, you have to add as much fluff as you can. Today's mmorpgs chose to add fluff on fluff or just boring pointless concepts and they wonder why they fail en masse.
----------------------------------------The one request--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So I will just make one request, that you make a game where the enemy is actually different than you. Not sure that's possible? Go check out Dark Age of Camelot. You could take ALL the red names away, and players would still be able to identify an enemy realm, including their race, and probably their class, from bow range. You can do that in WoW too, but of course the classes would be exactly the same - which is failure in creativity.
The second part of this, as we can see, is avoiding the mirror concept, and ensuring that the Tauren Paladin who fights your dwarf paladin, is not a feccken paladin, no matter how much people cry. The smart folks will thank you. So (a) different races (b) different classes = a more believable pvp experience.
Do what you will with your titile, it's the privilege of the person with the money. But it would be nice if one sandbox or mmorpg of any kind actually had some sense of variety and variation. Lazy developers abound and throw fluff at folks, meanwhile everything is still just my jedi with a light saber vs your sith with a light saber, my GW2 ranger vs your GW2 ranger, my Priest of Mitra, vs your Priest of Mitra, and so on.
Epic has never been Hobbits vs Hobbits, that particular story was written with a much more epic concept in mind.
This is what Ama means by themepark mindsets. Where you have to implement anything cool as a separate feature with separate code. This "feature" natrually arises from low level game systems.
Those low level game systems are the feature, because they make the feature possible. That's how features work, guy.
Meanwhile if you don't approach things holistically, these emergent systems can completely cripple a game's ability to be fun when they break core systems designed to provide challenge to players.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
This is what Ama means by themepark mindsets. Where you have to implement anything cool as a separate feature with separate code. This "feature" natrually arises from low level game systems.
Those low level game systems are the feature, because they make the feature possible. That's how features work, guy.
Meanwhile if you don't approach things holistically, these emergent systems can completely cripple a game's ability to be fun when they break core systems designed to provide challenge to players.
You said that a good game designer breaks everything down to the lowest level and implied that I didn't. I was just pointing out that I did do that. And you said I implemented a sky fort feature which I didn't. Way to back track though.
It doesn't break the game. Most people can't do it, its hard to keep going, if you do keep it going their are consequences. Also creatures who can't attack your town because sky fort will just move on to attack other players towns. And all the effort you put into making a sky fort is effort you can't spend on every other aspect of the game. No clearing out dangerous lairs, no crafting other items and so forth.
You said that a good game designer breaks everything down to the lowest level and implied that I didn't. I was just pointing out that I did do that. And you said I implemented a sky fort feature which I didn't. Way to back track though.
If you implement systems that make a sky fort possible, you've implemented a sky fort feature. No backtracking here.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
from what ive read it seems like alot of you are getting stuck on the idea that a sky fortress is this big magical thing that is ever lasting and breaks a game whereas the dev is calling it a cool ability that takes alot to master and only provides the ability of a sort defensive stance or the ability to say that you can just do it and not that its intended to be a ongoing feature just useable in short bursts
I've made a lot of threads about crazy stuff I wanna do with my game, but you don't even know the half of it. I am going to give you some facts about my game and I want you to try and guess what crazy sandbox shenanigan I am up to now:
Mages can transfer mana between each other with a special spell.
Some words of power lower mana usage in spells.
Mages who cast lots of spells get more and more proficient at mana efficiency.
Players can enchant items to be mana containers.
Mana containers have specific capacities based on construction.
Mages can have any number of mana containers they can carry or are in range of.
Mages have to do an active meditation type thing to fill mana containers.
For obvious abuse based reasons meditation is not one of the offline activities. This may change given that it would prevent you from other activities but I am not sure yet.
Enchanted items require a charge of mana to produce effects. This is useful because all players have mana even if they can't create or use spells. Even powerful spells may have low mana costs based on the words to reduce mana and the mage who cast the spell.
You can connect an enchantment to one or more mana batteries.
One enchantment effect is the levitation of objects.
Levitation spells have a total weight they can raise.Any object can be levitated.
75% of creatures cannot fly or deal significant ranged damage. Objects can hold a number of enchantments based on materials, crafting processes used, and size. Objects can be "bound" together.
What am I thinking? You can do 1 guess per post. If no one gets it in 50-100 posts or people stop trying to guess after a while, I will tell you.
I have one request, but first, how about we do away with pointless fluff and instead focus on the basics of a fun mmorpg? Think you CAN do it? Good luck because no one has yet, which statistically means whatever game you are putting together is bound to fail. Now, all that negativity aside, why not do something different and we can use pvp as an example.
Meaningful pvp means more than just having objectives. It means getting to fight people that are different than you, not some copy paste race and or class. And why is that important? Because it makes the game more believable.
To make fiction immersive, you have to make it as believable as possible (i.e,, George R.R. Martin). On the contrary, to make reality entertaining, you have to add as much fluff as you can. Today's mmorpgs chose to add fluff on fluff or just boring pointless concepts and they wonder why they fail en masse.
----------------------------------------The one request--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So I will just make one request, that you make a game where the enemy is actually different than you. Not sure that's possible? Go check out Dark Age of Camelot. You could take ALL the red names away, and players would still be able to identify an enemy realm, including their race, and probably their class, from bow range. You can do that in WoW too, but of course the classes would be exactly the same - which is failure in creativity.
The second part of this, as we can see, is avoiding the mirror concept, and ensuring that the Tauren Paladin who fights your dwarf paladin, is not a feccken paladin, no matter how much people cry. The smart folks will thank you. So (a) different races (b) different classes = a more believable pvp experience.
Do what you will with your titile, it's the privilege of the person with the money. But it would be nice if one sandbox or mmorpg of any kind actually had some sense of variety and variation. Lazy developers abound and throw fluff at folks, meanwhile everything is still just my jedi with a light saber vs your sith with a light saber, my GW2 ranger vs your GW2 ranger, my Priest of Mitra, vs your Priest of Mitra, and so on.
Epic has never been Hobbits vs Hobbits, that particular story was written with a much more epic concept in mind.
from what ive read it seems like alot of you are getting stuck on the idea that a sky fortress is this big magical thing that is ever lasting and breaks a game whereas the dev is calling it a cool ability that takes alot to master and only provides the ability of a sort defensive stance or the ability to say that you can just do it and not that its intended to be a ongoing feature just useable in short bursts
Well sky forts can do things, but its a lot of resources you could have devoted elsewhere. And a boatload of time. It can move and you can put weapons on it. But nothing you couldn't do on the ground. I think the most important aspect is that its just pretty cool. I will say that being able to relocate is a big plus, depending on how fast you made the fort.
I agree with you in general. He seems to be getting uptight over nothing imo.
only thing ill add to what i said i didnt read your other posts this is my first but to have things like that and no pvp .... makes me a sad panda the pvp implements and strategy you could pull with something like that would be astounding but it is your game not mine just an opinion
only thing ill add to what i said i didnt read your other posts this is my first but to have things like that and no pvp .... makes me a sad panda the pvp implements and strategy you could pull with something like that would be astounding but it is your game not mind just an opinion
PvP just really limits what I can do with PvE and crafting and having an open world with a complex skill system with no hard skill cap. Also I couldn't use the magic system. Its based on only a small group of people being mages.
I can integrate PvP in some sense if there are enough people who want to play, because the PvP still integrates with the game. Its just it would be open world PvP based on strategic thinking and not making a single player too important. I dunno if you would like my PvP.
i dunno if i would either but limiting a game to pve sololy imo isnt the best idea because the kingdom battles group battles and cool stories you could generate from some of the pvpness is just amazing cause no matter how bad ass of a developer team you got you can never ever compete with the complexities and the way a real person can get under your skin and make you want to hunt them down just for the satisfaction of knowing you are better at your class or that situation than they are again this isnt me trying to make you do something you dont wanna do just an honest opinion
Why are you wasting time seeking approval on these forums? Just go make your game, prove us all wrong.
I am making it. I also have time to post on this forum, play league of legends, and attend college. My bad. I'll try to be less productive with my life.
While a floating fortress would be cool, you're kinda being short-sighted about your own features. (not trying to flame, just keep reading).
The system (as currently described) could certainly make for floating buildings, but what else can it do that you AREN'T thinking of?
I can think of a whole host of ways a system like that could be exploited in a manner harmful towards the game. First of all, it would be very hard to see why anyone would play anything except a mage given how powerful you are making them. Secondly, even if the only class in the game was a mage (and various kinds of mages) the ability to share mana alone could be exploited to make fights basically last forever. A mini-version of this happened in LotRO with their lore-master class.
Basically, cool idea, but the system needs a lot of balance-tweaks. Maybe just have mana channels that can be bound to an object, and you can charge them to do a number of things (from levetation to small energy leaching). Think it through, you've got endless possibilities at this point.
Comments
Um. I guess if you haven't been following my threads you might come to that conclusion.
Levitating a tiny piece of land us unlikely. Firstly you need to keep the mana batteries charged while levitating, and moving costs more energy than simply floating.
The way that crafting and magic work, it would take at least 100 players to even create a 10ft by 10ft piece of land and it would take a year to get efficient enough enchantments to not have to spend all day charging your mana batteries.
This isn't some gay ass instanced housing thing in a themepark where everyone and their grandma has a giant house.
75% of a game's content are exploitable. How is that not just flat-out bad game design?
How has this got anything to do with "themeparks" in any way?
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I am not. I talk to lots of people here who c an give good criticism. Posting an old few minute penny arcade video is not a valid criticism.
In fact if you read the topic at all, this concept can be reduced to very simple dynamics. its the interaction between several basic concepts in the game that lets you make a giant sky fortress.
I had a perfectly reasonable PM conversation with Loke about how to create counter balances to being untouchable by a lot of creatures. And about having to mostly stay on the ground and only move around for specific purposes.
I changed a significant part of my magic system because a poster suggested an implementation which would deal with a problem I was having about keeping magical power from diminishing to nothing because players would just hand out magic to everyone to win.
This is a huge assumption on your part. And its not true.
Bullsquat!
There's been no "logical criticism". What there's been is "that can't be done because we don't do it that way".
And I await the game designer that says "it's my way, period" to all those who say "it can't be done". Because your way has left us with pure boredom of simplicity and sameness.
It's no wonder that we are where we are. You designers really believe that complexity is a no-no because you couldn't handle it. What we need are designers who can handle complexity.
Once upon a time....
So now we're backtracking from Kickass Floating Citadels to "You need 1000 players to keep a 100x100ft citadel afloat, and you won't even be able to do it for a year."
Why even implement the feature at that point?
Why not solve for the singular problem (give mobs the ability to deal with flying thigns) and make floating citadels a cool part of your game that players will actually experience?
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Because Themeparks are the ultimate in "I can't handle complexity". They are the "Run Away, Run Away!" They are the reason we have less and less in our MMORPGs. They take out more than they put in. Because they can't figure out answers to problems, they just remove the problems instead. Leaving us with nothing but the same boreing game play over and over again.
Pick up quests
Go over there
Do what we say to do
Get rewarded.
Do it again.
Boy, if that's not exciting I don't know what is. Can I do it again?
Once upon a time....
We can handle complexity (and frequently do, behind the scenes, in order to achieve things which are simple from the player's perspective.)
But honestly if you perceive games as "simplicity and sameness" it's because you've pursued the same types of games. Meanwhile innovation is abundant in all the other types of games constantly being made. If you perceive a lack of innovation in the games industry it's because you aren't really looking for innovation: you're looking at the surface layer, and probably the same part of the surface layer (one particular genre of games.)
My criticism was quite logical. Things can float and 75% of monsters can't deal with floating. Your assumption based on this criticism was that the feature shouldn't be implemented at all, whereas I'd make the opposite assumption. Especially if players like the idea of floating citadels, they should be made more common and gameplay should remain consistently challenging* (if not more challenging) once you get your floating citadel going.
(*Meaning genuine challenge, not just "Welp I gotta grind out more mana for the batteries today to keep my citadel afloat" which is just a timesink not a challenge)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Brilliance! When every player owns a floating fortress, that solves the problem of houses taking up all the land. Just brilliant thinking.
Can I just have my floating fortress? Can I buy it in a game shop?
Once upon a time....
Its not backtracking. Did you not read the first post? If you want I can link you to my blog which was posted before you or awa posted here which talks about the difficulty of creating a functioning flying citadel:
www.lordofthedawn.com/wp
100 feet is huge. 100x100 is 10000 square feet. The number of players involves all the gatherers and crafters who make the components as well as the mages. Once the citadel is built it takes a little bit of time a day from a large guild or kingdom to keep it floating. Big deal.
I have always stated that my game is not designed for casuals. Yes 75% of players will probably not be a member of a group with a fortress but so what?
What are you talking about implementing a feature?
Do you not understand how systems interact in sandboxes to produce a possibility?
There is no "feature" for sky forts. There is the ability to enchant items, and the ability to produce player made buildings and objects. Those are base level g ame systems. It just so happens that if you work hard and work smart you can make a giant floating sky fortress.
This is what Ama means by themepark mindsets. Where you have to implement anything cool as a separate feature with separate code. This "feature" natrually arises from low level game systems.
I have one request, but first, how about we do away with pointless fluff and instead focus on the basics of a fun mmorpg? Think you CAN do it? Good luck because no one has yet, which statistically means whatever game you are putting together is bound to fail. Now, all that negativity aside, why not do something different and we can use pvp as an example.
Meaningful pvp means more than just having objectives. It means getting to fight people that are different than you, not some copy paste race and or class. And why is that important? Because it makes the game more believable.
To make fiction immersive, you have to make it as believable as possible (i.e,, George R.R. Martin). On the contrary, to make reality entertaining, you have to add as much fluff as you can. Today's mmorpgs chose to add fluff on fluff or just boring pointless concepts and they wonder why they fail en masse.
----------------------------------------The one request--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So I will just make one request, that you make a game where the enemy is actually different than you. Not sure that's possible? Go check out Dark Age of Camelot. You could take ALL the red names away, and players would still be able to identify an enemy realm, including their race, and probably their class, from bow range. You can do that in WoW too, but of course the classes would be exactly the same - which is failure in creativity.
The second part of this, as we can see, is avoiding the mirror concept, and ensuring that the Tauren Paladin who fights your dwarf paladin, is not a feccken paladin, no matter how much people cry. The smart folks will thank you. So (a) different races (b) different classes = a more believable pvp experience.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do what you will with your titile, it's the privilege of the person with the money. But it would be nice if one sandbox or mmorpg of any kind actually had some sense of variety and variation. Lazy developers abound and throw fluff at folks, meanwhile everything is still just my jedi with a light saber vs your sith with a light saber, my GW2 ranger vs your GW2 ranger, my Priest of Mitra, vs your Priest of Mitra, and so on.
Epic has never been Hobbits vs Hobbits, that particular story was written with a much more epic concept in mind.
Something to chew on.
Again this is not a part of the sky fortress exclusively. Enchantments require charges. You have to charge them. Mana batteries can hold extra charge to power enchantments.
The sky fort wasn't a planned aspect of the game. I just noticed hey, I have levitation and mana batteries and player buildings. I bet I can build a sky fortress. Turns out I can, if I work hard.
In fact there is a natural consequence of using a massive number of enchantments and mana channeling to produce a sky fortress. It creates a giant magic aura which can be senses over vast distances. Instead of having to visually explore the world and report back to find player settlements those creatures with high magic sense capability will know where the fortress is and attack it. Gryphons, dragons, demons that can fly, all sorts of things. And depending on the height of the building a giant wurm could attack it and if it got there and it was too high the wurm would just wait till it had to land unless a better target came along. So then when you finally land you are immediately assaulted by a mass of wurms.
And every single example I used arises naturally from the interaction of simple game systems. No new features had to be added to the game to create a sky fort or to make it dangerous to build one and hard to keep it in the air.
Because I never put any thought into my game design. At all. I just decided I wanted sky forts. Had nothing to do with how sandboxes with complex interacting systems work.
My game doesn't even have PvP.
Those low level game systems are the feature, because they make the feature possible. That's how features work, guy.
Meanwhile if you don't approach things holistically, these emergent systems can completely cripple a game's ability to be fun when they break core systems designed to provide challenge to players.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You said that a good game designer breaks everything down to the lowest level and implied that I didn't. I was just pointing out that I did do that. And you said I implemented a sky fort feature which I didn't. Way to back track though.
It doesn't break the game. Most people can't do it, its hard to keep going, if you do keep it going their are consequences. Also creatures who can't attack your town because sky fort will just move on to attack other players towns. And all the effort you put into making a sky fort is effort you can't spend on every other aspect of the game. No clearing out dangerous lairs, no crafting other items and so forth.
If you implement systems that make a sky fort possible, you've implemented a sky fort feature. No backtracking here.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
from what ive read it seems like alot of you are getting stuck on the idea that a sky fortress is this big magical thing that is ever lasting and breaks a game whereas the dev is calling it a cool ability that takes alot to master and only provides the ability of a sort defensive stance or the ability to say that you can just do it and not that its intended to be a ongoing feature just useable in short bursts
I have one request, but first, how about we do away with pointless fluff and instead focus on the basics of a fun mmorpg? Think you CAN do it? Good luck because no one has yet, which statistically means whatever game you are putting together is bound to fail. Now, all that negativity aside, why not do something different and we can use pvp as an example.
Meaningful pvp means more than just having objectives. It means getting to fight people that are different than you, not some copy paste race and or class. And why is that important? Because it makes the game more believable.
To make fiction immersive, you have to make it as believable as possible (i.e,, George R.R. Martin). On the contrary, to make reality entertaining, you have to add as much fluff as you can. Today's mmorpgs chose to add fluff on fluff or just boring pointless concepts and they wonder why they fail en masse.
----------------------------------------The one request--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So I will just make one request, that you make a game where the enemy is actually different than you. Not sure that's possible? Go check out Dark Age of Camelot. You could take ALL the red names away, and players would still be able to identify an enemy realm, including their race, and probably their class, from bow range. You can do that in WoW too, but of course the classes would be exactly the same - which is failure in creativity.
The second part of this, as we can see, is avoiding the mirror concept, and ensuring that the Tauren Paladin who fights your dwarf paladin, is not a feccken paladin, no matter how much people cry. The smart folks will thank you. So (a) different races (b) different classes = a more believable pvp experience.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do what you will with your titile, it's the privilege of the person with the money. But it would be nice if one sandbox or mmorpg of any kind actually had some sense of variety and variation. Lazy developers abound and throw fluff at folks, meanwhile everything is still just my jedi with a light saber vs your sith with a light saber, my GW2 ranger vs your GW2 ranger, my Priest of Mitra, vs your Priest of Mitra, and so on.
Epic has never been Hobbits vs Hobbits, that particular story was written with a much more epic concept in mind.
Something to chew on.
Awesome idea. I want to add this to my game ideaPhilosophy of MMO Game Design
Well sky forts can do things, but its a lot of resources you could have devoted elsewhere. And a boatload of time. It can move and you can put weapons on it. But nothing you couldn't do on the ground. I think the most important aspect is that its just pretty cool. I will say that being able to relocate is a big plus, depending on how fast you made the fort.
I agree with you in general. He seems to be getting uptight over nothing imo.
only thing ill add to what i said i didnt read your other posts this is my first but to have things like that and no pvp ....
makes me a sad panda the pvp implements and strategy you could pull with something like that would be astounding but it is your game not mine just an opinion 
PvP just really limits what I can do with PvE and crafting and having an open world with a complex skill system with no hard skill cap. Also I couldn't use the magic system. Its based on only a small group of people being mages.
I can integrate PvP in some sense if there are enough people who want to play, because the PvP still integrates with the game. Its just it would be open world PvP based on strategic thinking and not making a single player too important. I dunno if you would like my PvP.
i dunno if i would either but limiting a game to pve sololy imo isnt the best idea because the kingdom battles group battles and cool stories you could generate from some of the pvpness is just amazing cause no matter how bad ass of a developer team you got you can never ever compete with the complexities and the way a real person can get under your skin and make you want to hunt them down just for the satisfaction of knowing you are better at your class or that situation than they are
again this isnt me trying to make you do something you dont wanna do just an honest opinion 
Why are you wasting time seeking approval on these forums? Just go make your game, prove us all wrong.
I am making it. I also have time to post on this forum, play league of legends, and attend college. My bad. I'll try to be less productive with my life.
While a floating fortress would be cool, you're kinda being short-sighted about your own features. (not trying to flame, just keep reading).
The system (as currently described) could certainly make for floating buildings, but what else can it do that you AREN'T thinking of?
I can think of a whole host of ways a system like that could be exploited in a manner harmful towards the game. First of all, it would be very hard to see why anyone would play anything except a mage given how powerful you are making them. Secondly, even if the only class in the game was a mage (and various kinds of mages) the ability to share mana alone could be exploited to make fights basically last forever. A mini-version of this happened in LotRO with their lore-master class.
Basically, cool idea, but the system needs a lot of balance-tweaks. Maybe just have mana channels that can be bound to an object, and you can charge them to do a number of things (from levetation to small energy leaching). Think it through, you've got endless possibilities at this point.