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Rallying calls, they need to be failable and players should be able to play both sides of the fence.
Stiler
Member Posts: 599
From watching the Q&A panel this was two of the main things that to me are disappointing.
One guy asks what happens if there's a rallying call and if no one helps or does it, will it fail? They answer that no, it won't fail, it'll just "Wait" for players to progress it.
Doesn't that kind of defeat the point?
Then another person asks if you will be able to play on the other side of the fence in terms of like say Orcs are laying siege to a city and the rallying call asks for players to defend it, can you help the Orcs instead to overtake it?
Again the answer was no you can't.
This one was really disappointing imo, because with all the talk about the NPC factions and things, being able to get friendly with certain factions while others are KOS to you, it would be FAR more "meanginful" if you could actually use these factions and be able to have the players take part in the rallying calls on both sides (in terms of conflicts with npc factions and events).
I don't know about youg uys, but answering a rally call and having to fight against other players who have made different choices then I (in terms of npc factions and who they have gotten friendly with/their allies) to me that'd be a lot more meaningful of an experience, not to mention more challenging then just fighting npc's.
So maybe I'm missing something here, but if rallying calls can't fail, and you can't play them out but one way, how the developers want, then what is the point?
They talk about how servers will be "different" based on player choices, but where's the choices at? IF rallying calls can't fail, if you can't have players on the other side, where's the choices? Where's the different outcomes?
IT seems it will only play out the way the developers have designed it to.
Comments
your building halas if you bring them orc longswords it will build twords an Weapon shop give them orc armor and it will build twords an armor shop whatever one finish first is the one that gets put on that plot of land the other is lost forever
Even though this is a somewhat alternate ending to the rallying call I still agree with OP in that if they are touting that worlds will in fact be different there should be different solutions or even thwarting the attempt to build the city entirely. otherwise, 1 year down the line all servers will likely have events 1-5 at the same end state with the same result.
YES and NO.. It definitely pulls PvP into the picture, and we all know that is one topic that is taboo to talk about with the devs.. LOL However you could make the PvP part be consensual.. Example: Halas wants to build a city for the Barbarians.. You being a dark elf don't give a rats ass about then, so since "storybrick" says you have the right to hate them, and disrupt them, what better option then for you to be a spoiler in the Halas Rally Call.. The only thing, by killing the guards or similar action you might earn yourself a "TEF".. temporary enemy flag.. This means you are subject to being attacked by other players, BUT you can't attack them, unless they consent by attacking you first..
WoW and others have done TEF for years, and I see nothing wrong with that type of PvP in a game..
I think you're not entirely correct...
There are two kinds of the PvE events in EQN,
a) Controlled by emergent AI: This is the one where you can make completely opposite choices.
b) run with the rallying call: This is the one where you have to go with the flow.
The reason why rallying call is made to succeed is simple: development time. There will be a lot more stages and branches in rallying call, so if the devs want to make it so you can go against other people and make it fail, the amount of work will increase exponentially.
I actually think the two will be tied together more tightly than you're implying here. I do agree, however, that the Rallying Call will be more scripted/linear than the straight emergent content. The impression I have is that the RC will cause the world to spawn emergent content based on the situation at that time, which will then change when the 'stage' changes. That's my feeling about it right now, anyway.
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The look and feel of each NPC city could very greatly across all servers depending on what the players do. Do they use wood or brick to build the city, do they want armor or weapon vendors as another poster mentioned. Maybe people enjoy the size of a budding city and never want it to get larger, so they never continue the progression.
I am taking a huge guess here; but maybe they have these specific rally calls for NPC cities so we take part in the world from the very beginning. However when it comes to not so common areas of the game, they could be waiting to release an EvE style system where further away from NPC cities, guilds acquire land and build on that.
I do agree that I would like the option to have a rally call stopped. But think about the implications of stopping the building of Halas. The city of Halas might have other rally calls associated with it later on in the game. If the devs put in rally calls associated with Halas, but there is no Halas, then players on that specific server that don't have Halas will never be able to participate in the future rally calls associated with Halas.
Hopefully devs don't design a system that is so dependent on x city being in y location. Instead a more fluid system where they have the largest city has this rally call, while the smallest city has that rally call would work much better. Then if Halas was never built, or it was only a small city you would still be able to have rally calls around the world. We need conditions with the rally calls that allow them to take place no matter what has happened in the world, or what cities are built or not built.
Perhaps thinking of a Rallying Call as an Expansion will help. No, you can't 'defeat' an expansion, even if it is 99.9% unoccupied at any given time (check DoN or GoD in EQ1 for an example). To me, the prime purpose of the Rallying Cry is to introduce new content into the game world, just like a game Expansion. The only real difference is that the expansion 'story' plays out over time as the players do actions to progress the story.
If the Rallying Call is to build a new Halas and no one participates, then there is no new Halas in that world.
My concern is actually in the other direction. A rallying call is new content. How long will it take the early adapters to burn thru the various 'chapters' of the 'story'? If someone doesn't get off work until 7, will the 'story' be in the final stages and they find themselves unable to participate due to a lack of prerequisite activities, or even simply not knowing where the current events are? We know the propensity for guilds blowing through content, even racing others to be 'first'. Will the content of a Rallying Call survive this rush?
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They said you can slow down the progression. So instead of a rallying call taking 2 months maybe it takes 3 or 4. That should be enough to satisfy your average griefer.
The Rallying Call are the "main story" of EQNext, I see them as scripted GM events, except without GMs. SOE is using these to advance the world of EQNext, going against them just make you stagnate in the story they want to tell with the game.
good idea.
not a good game mechanic.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
Ya, its a pretty simple concept. If you work against a rallying call, it flags you for pvp. Nothing more complicated about it.