@Maquiame, I appreciate your bringing this game to my attention. I will visit their website and read over their material. Certainly, there are some interesting aspects to the Revival game world that I feel bear some closer review and understanding. This looks like it could be an interesting experience, though I do have a few caveats (which I will keep to myself until I have had an opportunity to review the information on the Revival website).
As an aside, as a person who has been gaming since the early 1970's (Trek on mainframes), I am quite pleased, as I am sure most gamers are, with the plethora of new games being developed from both established studios and the "independent" gaming developers. There is no 'downside' to this development, in my opinion, as the genre is, in some sense, returning to its starting base of selective 'niche' type games. I perceive this to be one such venture and am pleased that it appears to be rolling along smoothly. I, for one, am tired of every game attempting to be a "WoW killer"--instead these new games appear to accept that it is not necessary to function with ten million subscribers. In the early days 500,000 subscribers was considered a 'windfall'.
Now we--gamers--have a selection of virtual worlds with different mechanics and experiences available to us. This can only be a positive occurrence. I look forward to spending time on the Revival website and reading more player commentary on, what appears to me, to be a very intriguing and well thought out world.
IMO SP is a dumb idea,it should be gold or and that's it.Instead of looking like a realistic currency it comes off more as a computer idea to bring the cash shop into play. I am guessing this will play out exactly like Kronos in EQ2 a lame idea to introduce RMT into the gaming economy.
A games economy should NEVER be influenced by outside sources of real money be it by the developer or rmt traders.It sounds like they are really beating around the bush with SP,there is going to be an obvious benefit to having it.Also to say it is better to get it via the game play than just buying it,that would not make any sense if they rely on that system to fund the game,i sense there is more incentive to buy it than via the game play.
I don't like the idea of live GM's i am not after that type of game experience.I want the entire game to be MY experience,what i make of the game.
Is the game interesting enough to keep an eye on it?Sure i think so but i just get the feeling the cash shop idea will be a big turn off.I also do not get the idea this game will have in depth systems but more so a fly by night game design trying to rely on GM's to keep players involved in content.My gut feeling also seems to notice that perhaps SP is going to give players the ability to warp directly to these GM events.
I am looking for a live GM experience. I enjoy pen and paper games and a bigger budget Neverwinter Nights Persistent World is right up my alley.
Besides I love the fact that RMT traders can get robbed because gold is physical currency.
Different strokes for different folks.
This can go another way to. SP can be used for immunities, house insurance and other "buffs". Say you hoard your gold to buy a house, to be able to afford to pay the taxes etc etc yet comes along a npc that robs you the more you "hoard" so what then...oh lets buy some SP...I wont even go into how DM events can outright destroy your house etc and how SP is used to impact DM events (politics) in game.
I voiced some worries about this game being for "rich" people only in the official forums way way back and one of the game spokesperson, I forget if it was a dev or not, actually replied saying and I'm paraphrasing here, "it was intended to be a niche game and wont be for everyone". He basically admitted the games targets those with lots n lots of cash to burn and anyone that feels the house are expensive,( think Star Citizen ship prices here) will only be peasants in game and have to "rent" from other players or be homeless.
1. Houses are not necessary, you can stay in inns like in any medieval world, there is even a blog post pointing out the negatives of owning houses. (Like your city being taken over by an evil faction)
2. Tenements go for as low as 37 dollars. There are plenty of Tenements around and personally I recommend getting a tenenment in Eastwatch or Stonemanor North or Stonemanor South in the first city. All three areas are pretty safe and the best thing about getting a tenement in Eastwatch is the fact that you can also join the Eastwatch Guard which patrols that neighborhood.
Idk about you but 40 dollars for a permanent home in a neighborhood where I can join the guard in that neighborhood is a good deal to me and a much better deal than your average 40 dollar contribution to an mmo Kickstarter. I can't think of one Star Citizen ship that sells for between 37 to 40 dollars. If you know of any list them.
In some neighborhoods you can get a tenement for around 37 dollars, the neighborhood won't be as safe but if you really can't afford 40 bucks well then perhaps 37 is a better price.
Name one mmo kickstarter where you can get an apartment in the game (in a good area at that) for fourty dollars?
Why not do some research and ask some questions instead of assuming that everything is super expensive? - which its not.
Now if you can't afford 37 dollars well then perhaps mmos right now shouldn't be on your list
Eastwatch - The Eastwatch tenement building is probably the
safest in all of Crowns Rock, as many the guards who patrol the
adjoining Eastwatch Tower and its sections of outer wall live or have
relations in the building. Class may be low, but morale is high because
of the Eastwatch Tower Company’s solid leadership, high standards, and
professional regard.
Bastets Rest - As the city of Crowns Rock grew around the
Cathedral to Nodens, other followers of the Elder Gods also came to the
isle, and eventually settled with others of their own faith. This
neighborhood began as a cluster of hovels wherein a small coven
dedicated to Basct came to live. As more devotees arrived, the smaller
buildings were built together, and patched into one large building.
These days a much more diverse crowd of tenants shares the walls of
Bastet’s Rest, but one group remains even from the first days of the
district, droves of feral cats.
Now for anyone else who hasn't done the research please feel free to head over to the site and ask questions on the forums or ask questions here. This thread is for answering them.
You can buy an apartment in the game for 40 dollars, next question?
First I was in their forum right from the start. Second you tenement isn't an apartment or "house" but more like a rinky dink shed,
The key word I used is HOUSE and anything of that size or larger is super expensive. The rest of your post is pretty much irrelevant and SP will be used for more that you admit unless they have gone back on what the have said originally which is possible as I haven't followed the game for awhile.
tenement are hovels 40$, cottages are slightly bigger hovels 80$+, HOUSES 380$+
Houses can be bought for around $200, its $380 and up for the manses- mansions. Please stop telling mistruths.
@Maquiame, I appreciate your bringing this game to my attention. I will visit their website and read over their material. Certainly, there are some interesting aspects to the Revival game world that I feel bear some closer review and understanding. This looks like it could be an interesting experience, though I do have a few caveats (which I will keep to myself until I have had an opportunity to review the information on the Revival website).
As an aside, as a person who has been gaming since the early 1970's (Trek on mainframes), I am quite pleased, as I am sure most gamers are, with the plethora of new games being developed from both established studios and the "independent" gaming developers. There is no 'downside' to this development, in my opinion, as the genre is, in some sense, returning to its starting base of selective 'niche' type games. I perceive this to be one such venture and am pleased that it appears to be rolling along smoothly. I, for one, am tired of every game attempting to be a "WoW killer"--instead these new games appear to accept that it is not necessary to function with ten million subscribers. In the early days 500,000 subscribers was considered a 'windfall'.
Now we--gamers--have a selection of virtual worlds with different mechanics and experiences available to us. This can only be a positive occurrence. I look forward to spending time on the Revival website and reading more player commentary on, what appears to me, to be a very intriguing and well thought out world.
Thanks again.
You're so welcome! One great thing about these guys is that they have mmo experience and have worked on Rift and Auto Assault!
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
https://www.revivalgame.com/blog/19-weekly-blog-update-19-vote-for-me One of the things in Revival that really piques my interest from a
player perspective is the political system. Our goal was pretty
ambitious, we didn't just want to give players a way to change the laws
of the countries we are part of or rise to the rank of king or queen; we
also wanted to create an environment where the terrible dirty tricks
and backstabbing that make for good political drama had a natural place.
I think that to really pull it off in a comprehensive way requires NPC
participation. It can’t be a player only mechanic, or you're going to
feel like kingdoms where players rule are less or more fun than other
kingdoms (depending on how you feel about politics).
While we
want players to experience different political systems and different
political environments, we want each of them to provide the full range
of potential experience, from coming up as a grassroots candidate with
the “right ideas” and taking your message all the way to the peak of
political power, to the shady backroom deals, character assassinations
and outright poisonings of an ancient hereditary lineage. We want it all
and that means we need our NPCs to play the game, too.
So how do we do it?
We
start by giving our NPCs opinions on the things happening around them.
In the way that we might have political parties today, the people and
organizations of a nation will fall into factions, each faction
representing a political platform. Individually, NPCs inherit from their
faction a basic sense of what they value and what they don’t that is
then modified by the NPCs own experiences. For example, a faction might
hold that all magic is wrong, and while an individual NPC in that
faction might generally feel that way, that feeling would be tempered
if, say, they were saved by healing magic or rescued from a bad
situation by a mage. However, generally speaking an NPC will adhere to
the tenants of its faction. Don't misunderstand, these “factions” aren't
in-game organizations, they simply represent common collections of
beliefs that different types of people might possess. An NPC’s faction
isn't even visible to players. Instead it informs our tagging system,
applying tags to the NPC based on those beliefs.
However, despite
being invisible, an NPC’s faction plays a big part in the way political
influence works. Take for example a city where representational
democracy is more or less the way things work. A candidate running to
represent a neighborhood in the city’s senate is most likely to gain the
votes of NPCs with the same set of beliefs. This means that it is up to
a player to make it known what he or she stands for politically and if
that doesn't match what the NPCs would normally want, then it’s up to
the player to change their minds.
How do you change an NPC’s
mind? Mostly, the same way you would as a politician today. You get your
message out. If your message isn't to their liking, you make a case for
being someone they can trust and in doing so, maybe you get them
to vote for trust over political beliefs. Of course, if their beliefs
are too strong, you'll have to get dirty and destroy your opponent's
credibility so that you're the obvious choice - the only choice left
standing. To do that you'll have to find ways to associate your
opponents with the things the folks voting for you don’t like.
How best to do that is up to you, but the go to method of the day is pamphleteering.
Using the journaling skill and your political skill, you'll produce a
pamphlet decrying the way your opponent, say, summons zombie babies from
the graveyard every night. In doing so, this will apply tags to the
pamphlet that NPCs will see, getting your message across. Then, NPCs
that come across your pamphlets (as you or a hireling distributes them
in the city) will see those tags and, if they are inclined to believe
it, they'll adjust their views of you and your opponent accordingly.
But once you've won a political position, what then? What’s it all for? The answer is agendas.
In our case Agenda is the word we use for a long term plan meant to be
executed at the deity, organizational or national level. For example, a
kingdom might want to invade a neighbor; this would be an agenda of many
steps, including raising an army, arming that army and then conducting
the actual war. Agendas can take many forms and they come in many sizes
from passing a single law up to complex campaigns and multi-year
projects, but all of them encapsulate a goal and series of steps
necessary to complete that goal. Agendas can be constructed by players
and offered up to a king or a senate as a plan the city, country or
organization (e.g. a church or a guild) should execute. Such votes or
decisions are made whenever current agendas are either failed or
completed successfully and they represent the way large moves are made
by the various nation-states of Theleston. Once an agenda is decided,
the first step of the agenda will become the goal the organization or
nation-state is working towards, changing the standing orders of guards,
armies, political offices, etc. as it moves to complete this step of
the plan.
The progress of each step of an agenda is monitored by
the virtual DM and the related systems of the game. If the step is
completed successfully, the organization or nation moves on to the next
step and the content the world changes again in response, but should
that step fail, so to will the agenda and that nation or organization
will have to suffer the consequences of failing.
Which is
something players will have to think about as they construct proposals
for new agendas. The system isn't going to show you the outcomes of what
you propose before they happen, so senators, council members and
similar office holders are going to have to carefully consider the paths
they send their nations down, because the consequences of some actions
could be dire, should things fail to go your way.
Of course,
success typically means furthering the influence you wield and the power
of your organization or nation state. Maybe the path of greatest risk
is the path to ultimate achievement. Just remember, the gods and other
great powers of the cosmos have their own agendas that work their way
across the world. Things will not always go as planned as the paths of
each power’s agendas intersect.
Where agendas meet, chaos reigns.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Maquiame said: You're so welcome! One great thing about these guys is that they have mmo experience and have worked on Rift and Auto Assault!
Which ex NetDevils are working on the Revival?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Thanks for the link! Looks like they picked up the content design leads from Auto Assault. The atmosphere and style of that game was great, so it should be really interesting to see what they bring to The Revival.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
https://www.revivalgame.com/blog/23-weekly-blog-update-23-hoist-the-colors-high In Revival, guilds and clans take the form of either Chartered Organizations or Secret Societies.
In terms of functionality they are very similar, but with one key
difference that plays into quite a few ways these organizations interact
with the world: Chartered Organizations are public, legally registered
associations that participate in politics. Secret Societies on the other
hand are private associations, many of which prefer that knowledge of
their existence is not readily available.
Two different types of
organization means two different methods for constructing a clan or
guild, as well. Chartered Organizations are commissioned at a city’s Charter House.
To found one, a player will register a guild charter, specifying the
type of charter organization and, where appropriate, its focus. For
example, someone might found a martial order, focused on enforcing the
law, becoming something like a neighborhood watch. Another player might
found a craft guild, focused on smithing. This registration does several
things. First, behind the scenes, it seeds your organization with a
series of guild tags, which will open windows of opportunity for
your guild in the form of NPCs and other organizations approaching you
with propositions, rivalries and political maneuvering, all of which in
turn will earn your guild new tags, opening up new content and
opportunities. One of the other things it does is give your organization
a seat at the political table in that city. Different cities have
different political systems, but in Crown’s Rock, for example, a charter
organization votes like a neighborhood.
There are restrictions
on who can form a charter organization in a city (only a citizen),
however. For example, the chartered organization must have an address in
the city that is considered its headquarters. But, one of the benefits
of forming a charter organization is that they can own property,
allowing you to transfer ownership of a property to the guild you are a
part of so that the guild’s communal resources can be used for paying
the taxes on the property.
The counterpart to charter
organizations is secret societies. Secret societies don’t have to be
“Secret” in the sense that no one knows they exist (more on that a
moment), but it does mean that the internal details of the group are
private and not subject to government regulation. Where Charter
Organizations are registered with the government, secrets societies are
instead formed when the founding members agree to a pact and
swear an oath of common fealty to the newly formed group. Like charter
organizations, secret societies decide their organizational style and
focus when they form their pact. This seeds them with guild tags
as well, though the tags in question are markedly different and thus
open very different content opportunities. This is because, more often
than not, secret societies interact with the criminal underworld or the
arcane more than the government and the public. Where a registered
scholarly society might engage in archeological expeditions to publicly
release their findings in new publications, a like-minded secret society
is more likely to hoard what they’ve learned to put it use for
themselves.
However, this doesn’t mean that secret societies are
“evil” - like people, both charter organizations and secret societies
maintain their own karma values, based on the actions that their members
take on behalf of the organization. Imagine, for example, a secret
society of protectors, a group of vigilantes that patrol Crowns Rock at
night, intent on making sure justice is done. A, if you will, League of
Justice. This is a group that might not want folks to know who they
are, but who are both good and not “secret” in the sense that no one
knows they exist.
Of course, some secret societies probably are
evil, but so to are some public charter organizations, I’d wager.
That’s actually up to the members of both types of organizations, to be
fair. In fact, how your guild is viewed depends on its renown. Renown is
scale that runs from “infamous” on one side to “famous” on the other,
with shades of negative and positive obscurity in between. Your guild
will gain and lose renown in its home city based on how the guild
behaves there. Every action a player takes as a member of a guild will
carry with it a cost in the form of renown. Renown is used alongside
guild tags to help steer content to your guild, both in the form of
actual events as I mentioned earlier, and in the form of setting the
stage for political action. If a guild is infamous, it will have a much
harder time convincing NPCs and other guilds in the city to vote with
them, for example.
This might imply that a guild needs to be
famous to be effective in its city, but that’s not necessarily the case.
Even public chartered organizations with a focus on helping the city
may find themselves with a need to do something terrible to further
their ends, so how do they avoid the damage to their reputation in the
process? As with everything else in Revival, there’s more than one way, but we expect that for most such moments, what will happen is covert activity.
A
member of a chartered organization is marked as a member by default;
other players can see that. On the other hand, secret societies don’t
brand their members this way. However, members of either organization
can elect to toggle that mark on their own. A charter organization
member could “strike his colors” and go covert to deal with members of a
rival guild without being caught doing so. On the other hand, a secret
society might want to strike fear in their enemies, only hoisting their
colors as they execute an ambush so that all will know the extent of
their power and influence. Hoisting or striking your colors can affect
the renown that is awarded to you as a result of your actions, making
possible things like covert warfare, but there’s always a risk: A player
in a guild that dies will leave a guild badge on his or her body,
revealing for all where their loyalties truly lay.
Whether your
guild or clan forms as a charter organization or a secret society, a
whole suite of benefits are available to you. Both types of guild
provide a guild-only bulletin board for internal discussion and both use
the game’s political system to organize internal politics, allowing
guilds to be democracies or dictatorships organized into arbitrary
divisions and “sub-guilds” with ranks and rights that can be assigned
individually. Likewise, guilds can own property, including bank vault
space that can be configured by the guild’s leadership to be accessible,
or not, based on rank and rights. A whole structure is in place to make
it easier for you to work together, to common purpose.
Perhaps the most important aspect of that, is the idea of Guild Agendas.
Guild agendas are much like the agendas that rise out of city politics,
but they are approved by the guild’s leadership and generally pertain
to the guild’s long term goals. In a way, think of guild agendas as
something like guild quests, but these are accepted by the guild
leadership, and often created by members of the guild themselves. Some
agendas, such as contracts from governments or other guilds, will come
from external sources, but generally speaking, guild agendas are a way
for all members of your guild to see what the guild’s present focus is
and to track the guild’s progress towards their current goals.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Types of Guilds in Revival 1) Association: your standard "group of friends united by common banner" sort of thing. 2) Craft Guild
(further specialized by trade, if desired): A group dedicated to
production of goods or provision of services others may purchase. 3) Trade Guild:
A guild dedicated to "trade," to the acquisition, transport and sale of
goods to and from exotic locations. (e.g. caravaners, freight captains,
etc.) 4) Merchant Guild: A group dedicated to commerce more generally 5) Company
(further specified by trade): A merchant guild organized under single
name for the purpose of conducting business focused on a specific
pursuit. 6) Naval Order: A mercenary guild or honor guard dedicated to combat on the sea. 7) Soldiers Guild: A mercenary guild, or honor guard dedicated to combat on land. 8) Martial Order: A mercenary guild or honor guard dedicated to combat of all types. 9) Ship's Crew: A chartered association of crew members on the same ship, dedicated to the interests of the ship as a whole. 10) Scholarly Society
(further specialised by topic, if desired): A group of teachers,
researchers and investigators dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. 11) Arcane Order
(further specialised by type of arcana, if desired): A group dedicated
to exploring the arcane arts and mysteries. Magic seekers. 12) Religious Order
(further specialized by god, or type of god, if desired): A group
dedicated to the will of a deity or deities. A cult, a brotherhood of
monks, etc.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Interestingly enough, the tagging
system is also one of the most simple systems in the game. It’s a
“moment of beauty” for a designer when a elegant solution to a problem
is found and tags was one of those moments for us. You see, at their
heart a tag really isn’t much more than a word, with a macro attached to
it, but that simple thing makes possible elements of role playing that
many still believe are impossible in an MMO - things like having a
legitimately personal story, or making it possible for everyone to
experience content others won’t ever experience or see in the same way.
Tags really are the source of Revival’s magic.
So how does it work?
Information
Tags are a way to mark players with attributes. For example, if a
player does something "heroic" the heroic tag can be applied to the
player and whether the player possesses that tag or not can be queried
later in several ways. Each player can only store a certain number of
tags and they are stored in a queue; when a new tag is added to a player
who already has the maximum number of tags in his queue, the oldest tag
(the tag at the front of the queue) is removed to make room for the new
tag.
Just as I mentioned, the data for a tag is mostly just the
tag's name (a word), which can be used as a prerequisite or trigger
criteria for blueprinted in-game scripting, game effect packages,
dialog, adventuring events and spell effects. However, information tags
can also contain any number of Game Effect Packages each with its
own set of triggering conditions. Game Effect Packages are the macros I
mentioned earlier - they are essentially a list of game-alterations
that occur when the package is triggered. (e.g. “Remove tag X, then
apply spell effect Y target Z, then add tag A, but only to the people
nearby who also already have tag B”)
Figure 1 - Information Tag action
For
example, a player may possess the “heroic” tag and a game effect
package in that tag could have a condition that triggers when nearby
NPCs with the “fan” tag that when triggered, causes an NPC farmer to
throw confetti at the player and cheer about the player when the player
first enters the NPC's awareness. (Proximity to NPC with the “fan” tag
being the package’s trigger condition)
Tags can be applied or
removed in many ways, including equipping an item with a tag attached to
it, reading book pages with tags attached to them, blueprint scripting
actions authored by the content team, game effects executing in a game
effects package, adventure event rewards, and through direct storyteller
action. Additionally the storytelling team can arbitrarily apply a tag
to a player using their tools. When a tag that the player already
possesses is added again, the old instance of the tag is removed from
its place in the queue and the new instance is added at the end of the
queue, thereby “freshening” the tag so it takes longer to drop out of
the player’s queue.
Figure 2 - A character’s Tag Queue
This
functions this way so that we are able to author numerous tags, but
only store a certain amount on the player to avoid data bloat, but it
also means that what content is available to a character naturally
changes over time, which is key to ensuring that all characters have
differing experiences in the world. Tags will be used for more
transitory things like tracking temporary states or qualities (e.g.,
"Did a good deed" [good] or "has seen a ghost" [spirit-touched]) that we
would expect to fade over time. As they function this way, tags can be
used to do things like open windows of availability for quests or
trigger events based on past actions.
For example, a player
might actively kill the NPC they were tasked to defend in an event,
earning them a betrayer tag. Possession of the betrayer tag will fade
after the player has done other things to earn other tags, but while the
player has this tag, they will be able to talk to NPCs who would
otherwise shun them as “too good” or be treated poorly by those NPCs
that value valor and loyalty over survival. Alternately, if the player
saves the NPC, he will earn a goodguy tag. Possessing the goodguy tag
triggers good NPCs to lavish some praise and maybe even apply a "hero"
buff, when the player comes within range(possession of the goodguy tag
makes the player a valid target for the hero buff, which the NPC casts
via a game effect attached to the “hero worshipper” tag the NPC
possesses, playing a cheer animation and issuing some chatter to praise
the player at the same time via the gossip system. Mind you, this is a
hypothetical example, one far simpler than most of the tag arrangements
in the actual game, but hopefully it helps to highlight the sorts of
ways tags can trigger emergent, and thus “one off,” behavior in the
game.
Another important aspect of the system is that tags are
never shown to players. In fact, the tags never “leave” the server -
your game client will contain absolutely no reference to the tags at all
and you’ll never see them in a packet sent to or from your client. They
are a storytelling tool and deliberately not exposed to the player to
see directly, instead players will have to use the divination skill and
its related abilities to “read” objects and people to get a sense of the
tags attached to them.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
https://www.revivalgame.com/forum#/discussion/942/weekly-blog-update-48-a-day-in-the-life-of-a-caravaneer This week in A Day in the Life, we focus on an occupation that has the
potential to be very powerful, even while maintaining a low profile: The
Caravaneer. Players who choose this profession must invest large
amounts of wealth in starting up their endeavors, but stand to reap
great rewards, as well as wield a subtle, but pervasive sort of power
with their influence over local and regional markets. Let’s take a more
personal look at how that is done, then, shall we?
Our subject is
Paro, a reasonably wealthy citizen of Valir. His business is run out of
the Caravan House, but he lives in Valir’s interpretation of a style 4
home, a manse in the parlance of the land agents. It is here that he
begins his day, in his courtyard of red brick, under the bright Valiri
sun. He is concerned with the fate of his last shipment, as he has not
yet received a notification that it has arrived. He scans the sky
nervously, but no messenger-bird is in sight.
The caravan left
far too long ago, and now Paro is cursing his decision not to go
himself, but the road to Falcreek is long and the ride a tedious one.
Still, perhaps he could have better navigated the perils of the trip,
had it been him at the helm and not a hireling. Paro curses, scanning
the sky again, nothing. There goes a cartload of fine melomel from his
own meadery, easily a few hundred coins in product alone, let alone two
dray animals and a cart.
This is the third time in as many
months, and the losses are starting to mount. Paro’s Valir manse isn’t
cheap to maintain, and if he loses any more shipments, he won’t be able
to make his taxes, and will be forced to sell off significant parts of
his business. That will not do. Besides that, Paro has lost four dray
horses and two carts on top of these in that time. He sighs heavily.
Paro
decides that, for the foreseeable future, he’ll stick to sea-freight
and selling via his agent in Tide’s End. Better yet, he’ll go himself to
Crowns Rock and sell his wares there himself, as he used to in the old
days. The Crowns rock mead market is always strong, and he has always
had good luck selling his mead there. This was true of Falcreek for a
time, and the profits there were even richer, but the road between Valir
and Falcreek is a long and tedious trip, hence Paro’s eventual hire of
an agent there, and use of hired caravan drivers. Still, despite the
convenience of an agent to handle buy or sell orders remotely, and his
not having to spend personal travel time to sell in Falcreek, Paro’s
business is suffering from mounting losses at the hands of bandits.
Clearly
some spot along the route to Falcreek has become the favorite of a
bandit crew, and rather than go back to driving the long road himself,
or hiring more guards per shipment, Paro decides to take his business
elsewhere. He didn’t build his business from a mule and a pack to this
manse and vineyard just to ship free mead to bandits, and the cost of
proper guardsmen would undercut his mead profits a bit too much for
Paro’s liking. His whole business is a balancing act of costs, time, and
risk, and the caravan route to Falcreek from Valir is too slow, and too
risky, for Paro’s taste.
Still, it could have been worse. Paro
has been saving his last four kegs of Spiced Reserve for an opportune
time to send a caravan to Skypass. the four kegs alone are worth quite a
bit, but a full caravan would have brought a small fortune upon sale.
Instead, Paro has a plan to sell them in Crowns Rock, to try to make up
the loss of the lesser wine. With luck he will be able to recoup the
cost of the horses and the cart, if not much more. Thus resolved, Paro
heads out from his villa, and through his gate into the open avenue. He
will need to fetch his last cart and horses from the city stables
next-door to the Caravan House, as he has no stable of his own. Oh, to
be so wealthy as to have his own stables! Then Paro could load a cart
directly from his home, and ride out from there. Sure, he’d still need
to go to the Caravan house to hire an NPC driver or guard, but if his
friends were online, they could simply meet up at his manse. As he is
not that well-heeled, Paro has to store his gear at the Caravan House,
and he’ll have to go there to retrieve it.
Following the tiled
street to the nearby canal, Paro looks along the stone-paved walk for a
valet-boat. Finding one empty, Paro hires a ride to the larger market
plaza dominated by Valir’s Caravan House. The boat slides away from the
stone walk, and along the narrow waterway to the quay at the plaza’s
edge.
After arriving at the stables, retrieving his cart, and
hitching the horses, Paro takes a moment to consider how much space will
be left in his cart after loading the four kegs. This, a medium cart,
has room for six kegs fully loaded, so Paro looks over the market for
something he might take to Crowns Rock with the other stuff. Had he an
agent in Crowns Rock, he would have a report once per real-time week
that would give him some idea of what was worth buying or not, but alas,
his only agent was in Falcreek, too far from Crowns rock to be of any
use. Which reminds him, that agent needs to be let go if Paro isn’t
going to be shipping wine to Falcreek anymore.
Paro decides to
take a chance on two remarkably cheap skeins of linen cloth, and after
he makes his purchase and puts them on his cart, Paro visits the Caravan
Master to sever his ties with the agent in Falcreek. The Caravan House
will send a letter, they assure him.
This done, Paro navigates
the surface streets to his manse in the driver's seat, and once home,
loads each keg of precious reserve, one at a time, into his cart.
Sparing not a moment, he then drives the cart to the sea-docks, and
seeks passage on a cargo ship to Crowns Rock, westward, in the depths of
Blackwell Sound. Today this proves difficult, as only a few ships large
enough for his medium cart and horses are present in the slips. After a
rude refusal from one player captain, and a full ship at the next, some
haggling buys Paro passage, and his horses and cart are whisked into
the berth of the ship. Paro boards just before the scheduled embark
time, and away into the sea they go.
Thankfully, this trip is
short, and uneventful, and soon the ship is easing into a berth at the
Crowns Rock docks. Paro meets his cart and horses, now unloaded, at the
edge of the docks, and rides past the empty customs post to the open
southern gate of Crowns Rock. The Caravan House is just inside the gate
on the left, and Paro stables his horses, pays to have his cart put
away, and stores his linen and kegs in the Caravan Warehouse. Tomorrow
he will go to the businesses of a few acquainted with and offer them
first bids on his kegged reserve, but if that fails then he will
personally spend the day in the market, angling for the best price. For
now, though, a room at the Hoengate will suffice, and a few hours in the
common room might even earn him a few tips about what people around
here need these days, and who better than he to supply it?
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
https://www.revivalgame.com/forum#/discussion/501/weekly-blog-update-27-a-day-in-the-life-of-a-mercenary
Curb appeal matters, even in Crowns Rock!
Great Minds of Theleston
In this second installment of “A Day in the Life on Theleston” we’re
going to look at another type of player. The hired sword, the bravo that
makes his coin day-to-day, and doesn’t mind a little potential PvP if
it comes his way. Our subject, Kerk, doesn’t own a home, and isn’t sure
he wants to. He likes moving from town to town, and inn rooms are
cheaper than upkeep on a posh bit of property. Besides, he could always
camp out in a pinch, and this way of life means that he can always pick
up and split if things in a particular town get too unpleasant. Kerk
remembers the Cult of Dust takeover of Khan-Gorai with particular
apprehension. If he had actually owned a house there, or a
gods-be-damned business, he would still be paying that ridiculous gate
toll, only to have to slink in the alleyways to avoid the corrupt
guards. Just getting by had been impossible, let alone turning a profit.
He had spent his last coin on passage out.
Instead he lodges near the docks in Tide’s End these days, the troubles
of that desert continent in the north far behind him. The small room he
rents is all that he needs, and the bar in the Brine and Barnacle is a
hotbed of rumors and odd jobs. There is a Job Board on the same block,
just down at the quay itself. The arrangement works for Kerk. He can get
up, go right to the bar and look for something to do there, or go look
for postings. If there’s nothing up his alley at either of those places,
well then he can always go over to the Caravan House and hire on to
protect one of the caravans that are constantly running up the mountain
to Falcreek.
When Kerk arrives today, though, the only occupants of the bar are the
bartender, and a surly drunk. The bartender shuffles back and forth
behind the counter, but Kerk doesn’t need a drink, he needs a job. Kerk
speaks to the bartender, who offers him a modicum of coin to roust the
drunk from the bar, but recommends not killing the man, for everyone’s
sake. Kerk is looking for much more substantial work, but this is a
quick bit of coin. So, Kerk talks to the drunk, who immediately moves
into unarmed combat with him. Kerk knows two forms of unarmed combat,
but he won’t need the deadly one for this. He doesn’t need the karmic
hit for such a pittance, and pissing off the guards wouldn’t do. Kerk
punches the surly drunk until he falls unconscious, drags him out the
door, and collects his pay from the bartender. Now off to get a real
job.
Kerk then exits into the street and heads a block over to the job board.
Down on the docks there is much more activity, ships coming and going,
and a handful of other mugs like himself clustered around the Job Board,
looking for work. That’s a bad sign, with so many other people at the
Board, there’s a lot of competition. All of the really lucrative stuff
is probably already snapped up. Sure enough, if Kerk doesn’t want to
spend the day doing nickle and dime errands, he’s going to have to go
elsewhere. It’s too bad, really, he was hoping to sign on with a whaling
crew. The work was usually easy, often uneventful, and the pay was
great. Sure whalers are targets of piracy, from time to time, but that’s
why Kerk is around, right? He’s got a pretty great axe and shield
stance, and he has managed to come back from every whaling run he’s been
on, but alas today the whalers have already all gone out for the day
and they’ve no doubt hired his rivals in his absence.
There is one posting for a crew to sail to Anakhatha, but Kerk’s not
quite ready to go back there yet. So, to the Caravan house goes our
friend, where, at last, he accepts a job from a fellow player to
accompany a wagon of assorted goods bound for market in Falcreek. Kerk
has done this run before, even a few times, and while there are often
bandits in the forested regions he knows they don’t pose too much threat
to him. He could be in trouble if they run into any hostile players,
but maybe not. The last time he tested his skills against another player
Kerk had won handily. His axe is in good repair, and he’s well rested.
The client hires another guard for the run, a gangly youth sporting a
fancy bow. Kerk introduces himself and they swap names. Milo is the
archer, like Kerk, he’s looking for some gold in exchange for his skill
with the bow. He’s never walked the road up to Falcreek though, so he’s
going to depend on Kerk’s experience. Kerk follows them out of town and
onto the road to Falcreek.
For a short while the roads are well tended, and though Tide’s End
doesn’t run regular guard patrols outside the city, things are
uneventful and the party makes good speed. Soon enough though, Kerk and
his companions pass into the woods. If they’re going to be ambushed,
it’s almost certainly going to happen on this stretch of road. Kerk
readies his axe, and seeing this, the other Milo prepares his bow. Their
buddy the merchant is probably rocking a blessing of some sort, but
Kerk and Milo are there to stand between the booty on the cart and
anyone looking to take it by sleight or by force.
As predicted, behind the first large rock, a boulder that Kerk has come
to regard as ‘ambush rock,’ a group of three highwaymen in matching
tabards stands forth. Milo has already begun to shoot before they can
demand that the merchant stop or pay. They spout a few half-hearted
comments to the effect that they will be spared if - but Kerk is having
none of it and merely steps forward to attack with his axe and shield
style. Whether it be their lack of hesitation, a previous reliance on
intimidation on the part of the thugs, or just some awkward combination
of circumstance and fortune, Kerk and Milo manage to send two of the
brigands into Animae’s embrace. The third flees, and the caravan crew do
not give chase. Instead, they strip the dead of their valuables, and
drag the bodies to the side of the boulder. Kerk thinks maybe this will
dissuade the next bunch, but probably not.
When they arrive at the Caravan House in Falcreek, the client is so
pleased with Kerk and Milo’s defence of his goods that he not only pays
each a bit extra, but also lets the two of them split the gear looted
from their attackers between them. It’s a good haul. After he sells the
stuff he doesn’t need, Kerk has made enough to pay his lodging for a
week at least, with a little extra besides. He knows of a good inn near
the lake, and the last time he was in Falcreek he heard a rumour about a
discreet little invitation-only dice game in the back room of a
particular bar on the square. Maybe he could leverage that into a seat
at the table? There’s no better way to find out..
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Some of the best stories ever told begin with the desire to
profit. Han could have simply fled, but he lingered in Tatooine in the
hopes of taking on some passengers to pay the bills. Mal takes his
passengers aboard Serenity for the same reason. In short, the ability to
make a quick buck has been the source of some of our most treasured
stories. And if you think about it, that means a world that wants good
stories could benefit from a good economy. This game is no different,
but just like everything else we do for Revival, that means we’ll work
hand in hand with the players to make it happen.
It Starts with Meaningful Trade Goods
Very few online games have really captured the value of large
scale commerce. In most MMOs, in fact, what should be commodities are
considered “trash loot” -- players literally feel like the items have no
value and should be sold. (You might know this sort of loot as vendor
trash or vendor loot) Admittedly this is a two-part problem. A player
has no reason to do anything else because the items have no other use.
This is further compounded by the way prices in most games are static.
Not only does a player have an item in their inventory they can’t use,
but that player also has no incentive to keep the item in the hopes of
greater profit elsewhere; it literally just takes up inventory space. In
this model most players would be better off directly receiving the gold
the trash loot was worth.
The thing is, the problem isn’t actually an issue with the idea of
items, but rather with the way they are specifically implemented in
most online games. In Revival, players will have multiple reasons to
hold on to every item they find, at least for a time. This is because
items in Revival, even the things you might think of as trash, will have
uses in some aspect of the game, such as crafting or magic. There is no
“trash” in Revival -- even Theleston’s literal trash will be useful to
someone.
When items are useful like this, it increases demand for those
items. Take iron ore, for example. Before people worked iron, its ore
was mostly seen as a red rock that wasn’t very useful, but as people
began to realize it could be turned into iron, demand grew and the value
of the rock -- in those places -- increased. This created regional
trade, import and exports, and that created markets.
Real Markets mean Trade
Just as in the real world, towns and other sites in Revival will
have differing demands, demands which will fluctuate based on what’s
happening in the world. If Crown’s Rock is girding for war, its desire
for iron, horses, armor and weapons will increase, while its desire for
luxury goods such as silk, will decrease. Prices for those goods in
those markets will change as a result and, for a clever player, that
means an opportunity to profit.
It’s the very basics of economics: A player looking to make money
through trade will want to buy a commodity where it is available most
cheaply and transport it to a place where it can be sold for the highest
possible price. This simple and core practice is what makes economic
play content, not just for traders and merchant players, but for players
focused on success through other means, as well.
Trade Means Content for All Players
The reason trade like this makes for good content is travel. In
many online games, travel from one large location to another can be
accomplished instantaneously, or nearly so, through something called
fast travel. The “how” is different from game to game, but there is
generally always a way to quickly and safely travel from one population
center to another. In other words, in most games, moving a trade good
from one market to another could be done without risk. This is not the
case in Revival.
In Revival, goods have to be physically moved across Theleston.
Specifically, if a player isn’t carrying the item in their inventory
directly, the item will have to be sent via caravan. The safety of a
caravan isn’t guaranteed, however, and this is where the opportunity for
adventure begins. Left unescorted, chances are a caravan will be
intercepted by bandits, monsters or less ethical players.
Revival isn’t a game where you’ll find a networked and linked
auction house in every city, forming an instantaneous network of trade.
Every town has a market where commodities are bought and sold, true, but
every market is unique and unconnected. You won’t be buying Tide’s End
coffee beans from the comfort of your home in Crown’s Rock; you will
travel the world like the rest of the merchants, NPCs included,
acquiring and transporting your goods from place to place. This
disconnect may seem inconvenient, but it’s also a source of incredibly
compelling content and fun.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
I just have so many bad thoughts about PvP focused MMOS now. I can't see them as being profitable to make and run. Who needs complex systems when the main objective to kill each other?
The audiance is just not there after a few months when the newness wears off. Hanging on by a thread of a few strong supporters is not going to pay the server cost to run it but here we go again MMO 999,999,999,999 is PvP focused.
I just have so many bad thoughts about PvP focused MMOS now. I can't see them as being profitable to make and run. Who needs complex systems when the main objective to kill each other?
The audiance is just not there after a few months when the newness wears off. Hanging on by a thread of a few strong supporters is not going to pay the server cost to run it but here we go again MMO 999,999,999,999 is PvP focused.
Actually the game is not pvp focused. Is PVP part of the game? Yes, does it matter as much as it matters in games like Camelot Unchained, ArcheAge and Crowfall? Not at all. Dying hurts in Revival, alot - because you have to fight your way back from the land of the dead - also known as Animae's Realm, the Goddess of Death in Revival who has her own plane of existence. Think your average PVPer is going to want to do that in case they lose a fight and die?
I'd say no.
Also cities are filled with guards and troublesome pvpers can be KOS to a city and be exiled from it. Name one other pvp centric mmo that does this. There are plenty of non pvp players on the forums, and there are alot of ways to avoid pvp including by getting blessings from the gods. And there are PKKers popping up on the forums who will actively be running anti griefer guilds. I'm one of them. *waves* I'm what you call a "white hat" pvper - basically a good guy pvper. I'll be on the server Ghoratul running a Bounty Hunter's guild who specializes in PKK (player killer killer/anti griefer) amongst other things (Monster Hunting, etc, etc). My guild Hunter's Dawn will also be politically involved to make sure our home city is super secure with guards - yes political involvement can help improve neighborhoods, including voting for more guard patrols in a city. We say we want virtual worlds again, well Revival is going to give us one. Don't like pvp? Get politically involved in the politics of the city you will be settling in and vote in harsher penalties, more guards,etc. Unlike the jail system in ArcheAge, Revival jail time equals what's called Temporal damage - the game literally ages your character. Age too much and you can die and you are too weak to fight your way back from Animae's Realm.
Read the blogs and do your research, you'd be surprised
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
I just have so many bad thoughts about PvP focused MMOS now. I can't see them as being profitable to make and run. Who needs complex systems when the main objective to kill each other?
The audiance is just not there after a few months when the newness wears off. Hanging on by a thread of a few strong supporters is not going to pay the server cost to run it but here we go again MMO 999,999,999,999 is PvP focused.
An excerpt from the forums, feel free to come on over and ask questions as the developers are quick to answer, especially from new folk.
Death hurts. In other MMOs, death is nothing but a minor
inconvenience. You die, you respawn, you rush back into the fray. In
Revival, you die, you go to hell! (Essentially). From there, you have to
struggle to return to the living world which will be an adventure all
its own. This right here is EXTREMELY important as it eliminates the
quick fix that many gankers seek. A ganker ganks and gets killed
themselves in the process, they don't just respawn and keep on killing
their fellow players. They gotta work to get back to life, get new gear
and head back out into the world again. Sure, it wont outright stop all
gankers (like impulse gankers) but it will eliminate the quick and
instant gratification other MMOs provide. Ganking and surviving the gank
are now a bit of a chore.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
First and foremost, it means that nothing that goes into Revival
can detract from the experience of being in Theleston, the world of
Revival. Don’t mistake us; Revival is a game and there will be some
systems that “feel gamey,” but given the choice between two potential
features, systems or mechanics, we will always prefer the one that makes
the game world feel more like a real place, however fantastic. This
isn’t a game where you’ll find “Level 12 Blade Lords.” Instead, it’s a
world where you’ll meet other people and they will possess skills they
worked to cultivate, be they combat skills, crafting skills or something
else. You’ll know a Blade Lord by the way he or she wields a sword, not
by the words hovering over their heads or the specific outfit being
worn. The real world doesn’t work that way and neither does Revival.
Static is a Four Letter Word
With the Rule of World as our guiding principle we establish a
tangible, credible, world, but that’s not enough. If the world is a
stage for grand adventures to play out upon, then the feeling of a world
depends just as critically on the adventures themselves. The most
striking issue with MMOs of today is the static nature of the content.
Even when MMOs offer “dynamic” content, they often actually mean that
they add a set of new quests for a while and then remove them later.
They tend to be more of the same - more grinding for more items to use
in your standard day to day slog. Often the content in these games,
newly added or not, all feels the same. This is simply not enough for
Revival.
Revival is a game where story develops out of the interaction
between player and game devs, not a world where we devs present a story
to the players. Presenting the classic “Railroad adventure” detracts not
only from the sense of there being a world, but it also takes away from
the sense that the players can make a difference in the world. Thus,
all of our content and the systems that support them are built to make
interactive and emergent content. Where other MMOs offer public quests,
we offer adventures that not only respond to the player’s actions in the
moment, but leave their nigh indelible mark upon the world.
History is Critical
A world of static quests and raids cannot change. It is our belief
that a world that cannot change has no true history. Yet, without a
sense of change over time and a record of the changes that have been
made, how can a player ever be truly said to have had an impact on the
world? For this reason, we prioritize content and game systems that
allow change to occur and persist as players contribute to the world.
Even our “static” content reacts to player action, moving through the
world or going dormant or away depending on evolution of the world and
the actions players have taken in it.
For example: If players can lay siege to a town and destroy that
town, it’s not enough to display a “you win!” UI element and then put
the town back to its original state. The players must now live in a
world where that town does not exist and deal with the consequences of
the decision to let that town fall. New players can now come into the
world and if they want to, see the ruins of that town for themselves.
More importantly, these new players will enter a world in which there
exists the legend of why that town was destroyed and how.
More simply put: If a feature will allow players to build the
history of the world they populate, that feature will be selected over
one that does not.
Combat isn’t the Be All End All
It’s important, in fact, that skill play a part in every aspect of
the game because, unlike most of the current crop of MMO releases out
there, Revival isn’t a combat game with a few other RPG trappings. Even
with our focused effort to bring truly intelligent, tactical combat that
requires personal skill, it can’t take a lead role over the other
aspects of Revival’s systems: Revival is a world, not a combat grinding
treadmill. For every system added to the game we ask ourselves, “Does
this add something fun to do?” and “Can players gain success by
mastering the skills this system calls for?” If the answer is no to
either question, the system isn’t added, but if the answer is yes, well
then the system makes it into future consideration.
As a result, Revival is a world where you can gain notoriety,
build the world’s history and leave a literally indelible mark on the
world… all without ever swinging a sword.
Role Play, not Roll Play
Once we’ve decided to add a system to the game, the next step is
to determine how best to present it to the citizens of Theleston, the
players. We have two major concerns: Developing a player skill related
to the system and ensuring that the system is still something that fits
the Rule of World that we mentioned earlier.
This includes concerns like how does one cast spells: We both have
to make sure that spell casting is something that can be quickly
learned but only mastered with effort and we also have to ensure that
casting spells feels like we all imagine casting spells would.
That’s because we want players to be the citizens of the world,
not just play them. This is why we often hide the numbers and the like
being used in the background: We want players to be concerned with their
role play, not their roll play.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
It’s been a pretty busy week for us here at team Revival. Last week
included a holiday, which can often throw a wrench in the works, but
this week we just picked up where we left off, which is good, because
we’re grinding as hard as we can to complete an important quest of our
own: Bringing our founders the first release of the offline client.
Block Out - That’s a really big pad
Great Minds of Theleston
“Quest” is definitely a loaded term in the MMO world, these days. It
carries with it all sorts of connotations about what you’ll be doing,
how you’ll be doing it and who you will be doing it for. For most, a
“quest” isn’t much more than a glorified to-do list wrapped in thin
fictional premise. Worse, I think, the things you can do are incredibly
limited: You can kill a thing, collect a thing, deliver a thing, use a
thing, escort a person, talk to a person or go to some area. It’s pretty
sad, really. As an industry we preach that MMOs are worlds of infinite
play and possibility, but in reality you’re lucky if a game’s quest
system can let you do even seven things.
So, for Revival, one of
the first things we wanted to do was say “fuck all that.” Honestly, some
will probably say we went overboard, but we’ve gone so far as to say
“there are no quests in Revival.”
So, that’s it. End of blog. Hope you enjoyed it.
OK, so it’s not really the end of the blog, but it really is an important point we’re making: You don’t take quests in Revival, you go on adventures.
Or to put it another way: You don’t have quests, the world does.
Theleston
is a world where its people have their own needs, their own desires and
most importantly, their own agendas. Most of the things that need doing
are going to come from these elements. A government might offer
bounties to those willing to capture or kill bandits plaguing a trade
route. A guild that needs a particular artifact might announce an
expedition and then offer contracts for soldiers, scholars and arcanists
to join on for a share of what is found. A crew of a ship might have
openings for a short term raid into Anakhathan waters. Or, there may not
even be an “official” capacity involved at all; it might be that you’ve
been hearing rumors about the ruins unearthed in a nearby mine and have
been thinking there might be something worth looking for there…
In
a way, it’s not much different than the fictional representation of
quests in any other game. The difference is that it’s not fiction in
Revival; these really are things that need to be done and when they are
done, the world changes as a result. No more bandits means more trade.
That guild can now use that artifact to summon Cthugha’s cleansing
flame. That raid sparks a war with the Gorai tribes, or maybe prevents
one. It also means those “quests” are over and they’re not coming back.
For
us, this is key; it’s what makes the evolving nature of our world
possible. Revival would not be the MEOW we call it, if questing didn’t
work this way, because without the ephemeral nature of these events and
agendas, the world would be essentially static, just like every theme
park MMO you’ve ever played.
To be fair though, I can see why a
lot of other developers don’t do it: It requires quite a bit of work to
produce, of course, especially when you consider that we have to build
the VirtualDM and train the storytellers so that they are both capable
of knowing the size of the playerbase and ensuring there are adventures
enough for everyone. But, perhaps more importantly, it creates a
problem that conventional MMOs have solved long ago: It makes it quite
difficult for a player to know what to do “next” as they play the game.
The first is the type most like the typical MMO quest, what we call the contract.
Like conventional quests, you agree to take on a contract ahead of time
and you have a fixed set of things that must be done to complete the
contract. Upon completion of the contract you’ll be paid or rewarded as
agreed. Contracts can be found in basically every city of the world.
Contracts can even be issued by player guilds in their guild halls and
by players via mail or the job board. The primary source of contracts
are guilds, which offer contracts for everything from simple resource
gathering, to crafting and even combat related actions. A character
looking for contracts will want to visit the government house of their
city or various guilds related to what they do in order to find work. Of
course, if working for a guild doesn’t strike your fancy, you can
always acquire contracts from the job boards scattered throughout town
(typically one per neighborhood). These contracts tend to be “open” in
that anyone can take them, but they are also “first come first served”
in that the first person to return to the contract issuer with proof
that they have completed the contract is the one to get paid. The last
way one gets contracts is actually my favorite; as you build fame in the
world, contracts will come to you, much like a client visits Sherlock
Holmes at his flat on Baker street.
Past contracts though, things
get a little more strange when it comes to finding adventure. Rumors,
informants and literal intrigue are the source for our second category
of adventure, what we call opportunities. Opportunities are
contemporaneous; they become available for a brief period of time and,
if no one avails themselves of them, the moment passes and goes away and
the world deals with the repercussions. They also have nothing like a
contract to guide a player, so how do you find out about them and how do
you know what to do? You listen. To the conversations of NPCs and the
general “Word on the street” in the form of tavern conversations, the
words of the town criers in cities and the latest editions of newspapers
as they are released each week. In them you’ll see the roots of these
opportunities. An NPC might mention, for example, that ever since
returning from Anakhatha, his master has been plagued by night terrors
and now spends his nights walking the streets far from his empty home.
For a thief that might represent a fresh new target, his unguarded
house, but for a scholar that same comment might indicate that this
person has come across dark magic or an artifact of lost Khollaja and
even now struggles with its effects. In either case, moving forward
would require one of two things: entering the conversation to learn
more, or perhaps shadowing the NPC to learn the location of the house in
question. That would then lead you to decide your next step, and so on.
As I said, past contracts things become significantly more self-guided.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Comments
As an aside, as a person who has been gaming since the early 1970's (Trek on mainframes), I am quite pleased, as I am sure most gamers are, with the plethora of new games being developed from both established studios and the "independent" gaming developers. There is no 'downside' to this development, in my opinion, as the genre is, in some sense, returning to its starting base of selective 'niche' type games. I perceive this to be one such venture and am pleased that it appears to be rolling along smoothly. I, for one, am tired of every game attempting to be a "WoW killer"--instead these new games appear to accept that it is not necessary to function with ten million subscribers. In the early days 500,000 subscribers was considered a 'windfall'.
Now we--gamers--have a selection of virtual worlds with different mechanics and experiences available to us. This can only be a positive occurrence. I look forward to spending time on the Revival website and reading more player commentary on, what appears to me, to be a very intriguing and well thought out world.
Thanks again.
This house in Calder's Meadow can be bought for around $202.00
https://www.revivalgame.com/store/housing/700563
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
One of the things in Revival that really piques my interest from a player perspective is the political system. Our goal was pretty ambitious, we didn't just want to give players a way to change the laws of the countries we are part of or rise to the rank of king or queen; we also wanted to create an environment where the terrible dirty tricks and backstabbing that make for good political drama had a natural place. I think that to really pull it off in a comprehensive way requires NPC participation. It can’t be a player only mechanic, or you're going to feel like kingdoms where players rule are less or more fun than other kingdoms (depending on how you feel about politics).
While we want players to experience different political systems and different political environments, we want each of them to provide the full range of potential experience, from coming up as a grassroots candidate with the “right ideas” and taking your message all the way to the peak of political power, to the shady backroom deals, character assassinations and outright poisonings of an ancient hereditary lineage. We want it all and that means we need our NPCs to play the game, too.
So how do we do it?
We start by giving our NPCs opinions on the things happening around them. In the way that we might have political parties today, the people and organizations of a nation will fall into factions, each faction representing a political platform. Individually, NPCs inherit from their faction a basic sense of what they value and what they don’t that is then modified by the NPCs own experiences. For example, a faction might hold that all magic is wrong, and while an individual NPC in that faction might generally feel that way, that feeling would be tempered if, say, they were saved by healing magic or rescued from a bad situation by a mage. However, generally speaking an NPC will adhere to the tenants of its faction. Don't misunderstand, these “factions” aren't in-game organizations, they simply represent common collections of beliefs that different types of people might possess. An NPC’s faction isn't even visible to players. Instead it informs our tagging system, applying tags to the NPC based on those beliefs.
However, despite being invisible, an NPC’s faction plays a big part in the way political influence works. Take for example a city where representational democracy is more or less the way things work. A candidate running to represent a neighborhood in the city’s senate is most likely to gain the votes of NPCs with the same set of beliefs. This means that it is up to a player to make it known what he or she stands for politically and if that doesn't match what the NPCs would normally want, then it’s up to the player to change their minds.
How do you change an NPC’s mind? Mostly, the same way you would as a politician today. You get your message out. If your message isn't to their liking, you make a case for being someone they can trust and in doing so, maybe you get them to vote for trust over political beliefs. Of course, if their beliefs are too strong, you'll have to get dirty and destroy your opponent's credibility so that you're the obvious choice - the only choice left standing. To do that you'll have to find ways to associate your opponents with the things the folks voting for you don’t like.
How best to do that is up to you, but the go to method of the day is pamphleteering. Using the journaling skill and your political skill, you'll produce a pamphlet decrying the way your opponent, say, summons zombie babies from the graveyard every night. In doing so, this will apply tags to the pamphlet that NPCs will see, getting your message across. Then, NPCs that come across your pamphlets (as you or a hireling distributes them in the city) will see those tags and, if they are inclined to believe it, they'll adjust their views of you and your opponent accordingly.
But once you've won a political position, what then? What’s it all for? The answer is agendas. In our case Agenda is the word we use for a long term plan meant to be executed at the deity, organizational or national level. For example, a kingdom might want to invade a neighbor; this would be an agenda of many steps, including raising an army, arming that army and then conducting the actual war. Agendas can take many forms and they come in many sizes from passing a single law up to complex campaigns and multi-year projects, but all of them encapsulate a goal and series of steps necessary to complete that goal. Agendas can be constructed by players and offered up to a king or a senate as a plan the city, country or organization (e.g. a church or a guild) should execute. Such votes or decisions are made whenever current agendas are either failed or completed successfully and they represent the way large moves are made by the various nation-states of Theleston. Once an agenda is decided, the first step of the agenda will become the goal the organization or nation-state is working towards, changing the standing orders of guards, armies, political offices, etc. as it moves to complete this step of the plan.
The progress of each step of an agenda is monitored by the virtual DM and the related systems of the game. If the step is completed successfully, the organization or nation moves on to the next step and the content the world changes again in response, but should that step fail, so to will the agenda and that nation or organization will have to suffer the consequences of failing.
Which is something players will have to think about as they construct proposals for new agendas. The system isn't going to show you the outcomes of what you propose before they happen, so senators, council members and similar office holders are going to have to carefully consider the paths they send their nations down, because the consequences of some actions could be dire, should things fail to go your way.
Of course, success typically means furthering the influence you wield and the power of your organization or nation state. Maybe the path of greatest risk is the path to ultimate achievement. Just remember, the gods and other great powers of the cosmos have their own agendas that work their way across the world. Things will not always go as planned as the paths of each power’s agendas intersect.
Where agendas meet, chaos reigns.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
http://www.tentonhammer.com/interview/tentonhammer-visits-illfonic-studios
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I will be passing on Revival for a few reasons but, its good PvPers have more options.
Good luck Revival team!
In Revival, guilds and clans take the form of either Chartered Organizations or Secret Societies. In terms of functionality they are very similar, but with one key difference that plays into quite a few ways these organizations interact with the world: Chartered Organizations are public, legally registered associations that participate in politics. Secret Societies on the other hand are private associations, many of which prefer that knowledge of their existence is not readily available.
Two different types of organization means two different methods for constructing a clan or guild, as well. Chartered Organizations are commissioned at a city’s Charter House. To found one, a player will register a guild charter, specifying the type of charter organization and, where appropriate, its focus. For example, someone might found a martial order, focused on enforcing the law, becoming something like a neighborhood watch. Another player might found a craft guild, focused on smithing. This registration does several things. First, behind the scenes, it seeds your organization with a series of guild tags, which will open windows of opportunity for your guild in the form of NPCs and other organizations approaching you with propositions, rivalries and political maneuvering, all of which in turn will earn your guild new tags, opening up new content and opportunities. One of the other things it does is give your organization a seat at the political table in that city. Different cities have different political systems, but in Crown’s Rock, for example, a charter organization votes like a neighborhood.
There are restrictions on who can form a charter organization in a city (only a citizen), however. For example, the chartered organization must have an address in the city that is considered its headquarters. But, one of the benefits of forming a charter organization is that they can own property, allowing you to transfer ownership of a property to the guild you are a part of so that the guild’s communal resources can be used for paying the taxes on the property.
The counterpart to charter organizations is secret societies. Secret societies don’t have to be “Secret” in the sense that no one knows they exist (more on that a moment), but it does mean that the internal details of the group are private and not subject to government regulation. Where Charter Organizations are registered with the government, secrets societies are instead formed when the founding members agree to a pact and swear an oath of common fealty to the newly formed group. Like charter organizations, secret societies decide their organizational style and focus when they form their pact. This seeds them with guild tags as well, though the tags in question are markedly different and thus open very different content opportunities. This is because, more often than not, secret societies interact with the criminal underworld or the arcane more than the government and the public. Where a registered scholarly society might engage in archeological expeditions to publicly release their findings in new publications, a like-minded secret society is more likely to hoard what they’ve learned to put it use for themselves.
However, this doesn’t mean that secret societies are “evil” - like people, both charter organizations and secret societies maintain their own karma values, based on the actions that their members take on behalf of the organization. Imagine, for example, a secret society of protectors, a group of vigilantes that patrol Crowns Rock at night, intent on making sure justice is done. A, if you will, League of Justice.
Of course, some secret societies probably are evil, but so to are some public charter organizations, I’d wager. That’s actually up to the members of both types of organizations, to be fair. In fact, how your guild is viewed depends on its renown. Renown is scale that runs from “infamous” on one side to “famous” on the other, with shades of negative and positive obscurity in between. Your guild will gain and lose renown in its home city based on how the guild behaves there. Every action a player takes as a member of a guild will carry with it a cost in the form of renown. Renown is used alongside guild tags to help steer content to your guild, both in the form of actual events as I mentioned earlier, and in the form of setting the stage for political action. If a guild is infamous, it will have a much harder time convincing NPCs and other guilds in the city to vote with them, for example.
This might imply that a guild needs to be famous to be effective in its city, but that’s not necessarily the case. Even public chartered organizations with a focus on helping the city may find themselves with a need to do something terrible to further their ends, so how do they avoid the damage to their reputation in the process? As with everything else in Revival, there’s more than one way, but we expect that for most such moments, what will happen is covert activity.
A member of a chartered organization is marked as a member by default; other players can see that. On the other hand, secret societies don’t brand their members this way. However, members of either organization can elect to toggle that mark on their own. A charter organization member could “strike his colors” and go covert to deal with members of a rival guild without being caught doing so. On the other hand, a secret society might want to strike fear in their enemies, only hoisting their colors as they execute an ambush so that all will know the extent of their power and influence. Hoisting or striking your colors can affect the renown that is awarded to you as a result of your actions, making possible things like covert warfare, but there’s always a risk: A player in a guild that dies will leave a guild badge on his or her body, revealing for all where their loyalties truly lay.
Whether your guild or clan forms as a charter organization or a secret society, a whole suite of benefits are available to you. Both types of guild provide a guild-only bulletin board for internal discussion and both use the game’s political system to organize internal politics, allowing guilds to be democracies or dictatorships organized into arbitrary divisions and “sub-guilds” with ranks and rights that can be assigned individually. Likewise, guilds can own property, including bank vault space that can be configured by the guild’s leadership to be accessible, or not, based on rank and rights. A whole structure is in place to make it easier for you to work together, to common purpose.
Perhaps the most important aspect of that, is the idea of Guild Agendas. Guild agendas are much like the agendas that rise out of city politics, but they are approved by the guild’s leadership and generally pertain to the guild’s long term goals. In a way, think of guild agendas as something like guild quests, but these are accepted by the guild leadership, and often created by members of the guild themselves. Some agendas, such as contracts from governments or other guilds, will come from external sources, but generally speaking, guild agendas are a way for all members of your guild to see what the guild’s present focus is and to track the guild’s progress towards their current goals.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
1) Association: your standard "group of friends united by common banner" sort of thing.
2) Craft Guild (further specialized by trade, if desired): A group dedicated to production of goods or provision of services others may purchase.
3) Trade Guild: A guild dedicated to "trade," to the acquisition, transport and sale of goods to and from exotic locations. (e.g. caravaners, freight captains, etc.)
4) Merchant Guild: A group dedicated to commerce more generally
5) Company (further specified by trade): A merchant guild organized under single name for the purpose of conducting business focused on a specific pursuit.
6) Naval Order: A mercenary guild or honor guard dedicated to combat on the sea.
7) Soldiers Guild: A mercenary guild, or honor guard dedicated to combat on land.
8) Martial Order: A mercenary guild or honor guard dedicated to combat of all types.
9) Ship's Crew: A chartered association of crew members on the same ship, dedicated to the interests of the ship as a whole.
10) Scholarly Society (further specialised by topic, if desired): A group of teachers, researchers and investigators dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge.
11) Arcane Order (further specialised by type of arcana, if desired): A group dedicated to exploring the arcane arts and mysteries. Magic seekers.
12) Religious Order (further specialized by god, or type of god, if desired): A group dedicated to the will of a deity or deities. A cult, a brotherhood of monks, etc.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Seriously though, this week is awesome for me because we’ve decided I will talk about the tagging system today, the most important system in the entire game of Revival.
Interestingly enough, the tagging system is also one of the most simple systems in the game. It’s a “moment of beauty” for a designer when a elegant solution to a problem is found and tags was one of those moments for us. You see, at their heart a tag really isn’t much more than a word, with a macro attached to it, but that simple thing makes possible elements of role playing that many still believe are impossible in an MMO - things like having a legitimately personal story, or making it possible for everyone to experience content others won’t ever experience or see in the same way. Tags really are the source of Revival’s magic.
So how does it work?
Information Tags are a way to mark players with attributes. For example, if a player does something "heroic" the heroic tag can be applied to the player and whether the player possesses that tag or not can be queried later in several ways. Each player can only store a certain number of tags and they are stored in a queue; when a new tag is added to a player who already has the maximum number of tags in his queue, the oldest tag (the tag at the front of the queue) is removed to make room for the new tag.
Just as I mentioned, the data for a tag is mostly just the tag's name (a word), which can be used as a prerequisite or trigger criteria for blueprinted in-game scripting, game effect packages, dialog, adventuring events and spell effects. However, information tags can also contain any number of Game Effect Packages each with its own set of triggering conditions. Game Effect Packages are the macros I mentioned earlier - they are essentially a list of game-alterations that occur when the package is triggered. (e.g. “Remove tag X, then apply spell effect Y target Z, then add tag A, but only to the people nearby who also already have tag B”)
For example, a player may possess the “heroic” tag and a game effect package in that tag could have a condition that triggers when nearby NPCs with the “fan” tag that when triggered, causes an NPC farmer to throw confetti at the player and cheer about the player when the player first enters the NPC's awareness. (Proximity to NPC with the “fan” tag being the package’s trigger condition)
Tags can be applied or removed in many ways, including equipping an item with a tag attached to it, reading book pages with tags attached to them, blueprint scripting actions authored by the content team, game effects executing in a game effects package, adventure event rewards, and through direct storyteller action. Additionally the storytelling team can arbitrarily apply a tag to a player using their tools. When a tag that the player already possesses is added again, the old instance of the tag is removed from its place in the queue and the new instance is added at the end of the queue, thereby “freshening” the tag so it takes longer to drop out of the player’s queue.
This functions this way so that we are able to author numerous tags, but only store a certain amount on the player to avoid data bloat, but it also means that what content is available to a character naturally changes over time, which is key to ensuring that all characters have differing experiences in the world. Tags will be used for more transitory things like tracking temporary states or qualities (e.g., "Did a good deed" [good] or "has seen a ghost" [spirit-touched]) that we would expect to fade over time. As they function this way, tags can be used to do things like open windows of availability for quests or trigger events based on past actions.
For example, a player might actively kill the NPC they were tasked to defend in an event, earning them a betrayer tag. Possession of the betrayer tag will fade after the player has done other things to earn other tags, but while the player has this tag, they will be able to talk to NPCs who would otherwise shun them as “too good” or be treated poorly by those NPCs that value valor and loyalty over survival. Alternately, if the player saves the NPC, he will earn a goodguy tag. Possessing the goodguy tag triggers good NPCs to lavish some praise and maybe even apply a "hero" buff, when the player comes within range(possession of the goodguy tag makes the player a valid target for the hero buff, which the NPC casts via a game effect attached to the “hero worshipper” tag the NPC possesses, playing a cheer animation and issuing some chatter to praise the player at the same time via the gossip system. Mind you, this is a hypothetical example, one far simpler than most of the tag arrangements in the actual game, but hopefully it helps to highlight the sorts of ways tags can trigger emergent, and thus “one off,” behavior in the game.
Another important aspect of the system is that tags are never shown to players. In fact, the tags never “leave” the server - your game client will contain absolutely no reference to the tags at all and you’ll never see them in a packet sent to or from your client. They are a storytelling tool and deliberately not exposed to the player to see directly, instead players will have to use the divination skill and its related abilities to “read” objects and people to get a sense of the tags attached to them.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
This week in A Day in the Life, we focus on an occupation that has the potential to be very powerful, even while maintaining a low profile: The Caravaneer. Players who choose this profession must invest large amounts of wealth in starting up their endeavors, but stand to reap great rewards, as well as wield a subtle, but pervasive sort of power with their influence over local and regional markets. Let’s take a more personal look at how that is done, then, shall we?
Our subject is Paro, a reasonably wealthy citizen of Valir. His business is run out of the Caravan House, but he lives in Valir’s interpretation of a style 4 home, a manse in the parlance of the land agents. It is here that he begins his day, in his courtyard of red brick, under the bright Valiri sun. He is concerned with the fate of his last shipment, as he has not yet received a notification that it has arrived. He scans the sky nervously, but no messenger-bird is in sight.
The caravan left far too long ago, and now Paro is cursing his decision not to go himself, but the road to Falcreek is long and the ride a tedious one. Still, perhaps he could have better navigated the perils of the trip, had it been him at the helm and not a hireling. Paro curses, scanning the sky again, nothing. There goes a cartload of fine melomel from his own meadery, easily a few hundred coins in product alone, let alone two dray animals and a cart.
This is the third time in as many months, and the losses are starting to mount. Paro’s Valir manse isn’t cheap to maintain, and if he loses any more shipments, he won’t be able to make his taxes, and will be forced to sell off significant parts of his business. That will not do. Besides that, Paro has lost four dray horses and two carts on top of these in that time. He sighs heavily.
Paro decides that, for the foreseeable future, he’ll stick to sea-freight and selling via his agent in Tide’s End. Better yet, he’ll go himself to Crowns Rock and sell his wares there himself, as he used to in the old days. The Crowns rock mead market is always strong, and he has always had good luck selling his mead there. This was true of Falcreek for a time, and the profits there were even richer, but the road between Valir and Falcreek is a long and tedious trip, hence Paro’s eventual hire of an agent there, and use of hired caravan drivers. Still, despite the convenience of an agent to handle buy or sell orders remotely, and his not having to spend personal travel time to sell in Falcreek, Paro’s business is suffering from mounting losses at the hands of bandits.
Clearly some spot along the route to Falcreek has become the favorite of a bandit crew, and rather than go back to driving the long road himself, or hiring more guards per shipment, Paro decides to take his business elsewhere. He didn’t build his business from a mule and a pack to this manse and vineyard just to ship free mead to bandits, and the cost of proper guardsmen would undercut his mead profits a bit too much for Paro’s liking. His whole business is a balancing act of costs, time, and risk, and the caravan route to Falcreek from Valir is too slow, and too risky, for Paro’s taste.
Still, it could have been worse. Paro has been saving his last four kegs of Spiced Reserve for an opportune time to send a caravan to Skypass. the four kegs alone are worth quite a bit, but a full caravan would have brought a small fortune upon sale. Instead, Paro has a plan to sell them in Crowns Rock, to try to make up the loss of the lesser wine. With luck he will be able to recoup the cost of the horses and the cart, if not much more. Thus resolved, Paro heads out from his villa, and through his gate into the open avenue. He will need to fetch his last cart and horses from the city stables next-door to the Caravan House, as he has no stable of his own. Oh, to be so wealthy as to have his own stables! Then Paro could load a cart directly from his home, and ride out from there. Sure, he’d still need to go to the Caravan house to hire an NPC driver or guard, but if his friends were online, they could simply meet up at his manse. As he is not that well-heeled, Paro has to store his gear at the Caravan House, and he’ll have to go there to retrieve it.
Following the tiled street to the nearby canal, Paro looks along the stone-paved walk for a valet-boat. Finding one empty, Paro hires a ride to the larger market plaza dominated by Valir’s Caravan House. The boat slides away from the stone walk, and along the narrow waterway to the quay at the plaza’s edge.
After arriving at the stables, retrieving his cart, and hitching the horses, Paro takes a moment to consider how much space will be left in his cart after loading the four kegs. This, a medium cart, has room for six kegs fully loaded, so Paro looks over the market for something he might take to Crowns Rock with the other stuff. Had he an agent in Crowns Rock, he would have a report once per real-time week that would give him some idea of what was worth buying or not, but alas, his only agent was in Falcreek, too far from Crowns rock to be of any use. Which reminds him, that agent needs to be let go if Paro isn’t going to be shipping wine to Falcreek anymore.
Paro decides to take a chance on two remarkably cheap skeins of linen cloth, and after he makes his purchase and puts them on his cart, Paro visits the Caravan Master to sever his ties with the agent in Falcreek. The Caravan House will send a letter, they assure him.
This done, Paro navigates the surface streets to his manse in the driver's seat, and once home, loads each keg of precious reserve, one at a time, into his cart. Sparing not a moment, he then drives the cart to the sea-docks, and seeks passage on a cargo ship to Crowns Rock, westward, in the depths of Blackwell Sound. Today this proves difficult, as only a few ships large enough for his medium cart and horses are present in the slips. After a rude refusal from one player captain, and a full ship at the next, some haggling buys Paro passage, and his horses and cart are whisked into the berth of the ship. Paro boards just before the scheduled embark time, and away into the sea they go.
Thankfully, this trip is short, and uneventful, and soon the ship is easing into a berth at the Crowns Rock docks. Paro meets his cart and horses, now unloaded, at the edge of the docks, and rides past the empty customs post to the open southern gate of Crowns Rock. The Caravan House is just inside the gate on the left, and Paro stables his horses, pays to have his cart put away, and stores his linen and kegs in the Caravan Warehouse. Tomorrow he will go to the businesses of a few acquainted with and offer them first bids on his kegged reserve, but if that fails then he will personally spend the day in the market, angling for the best price. For now, though, a room at the Hoengate will suffice, and a few hours in the common room might even earn him a few tips about what people around here need these days, and who better than he to supply it?
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Otherwise, who knows what you ended up paying for.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Curb appeal matters, even in Crowns Rock!
Great Minds of Theleston
In this second installment of “A Day in the Life on Theleston” we’re going to look at another type of player. The hired sword, the bravo that makes his coin day-to-day, and doesn’t mind a little potential PvP if it comes his way. Our subject, Kerk, doesn’t own a home, and isn’t sure he wants to. He likes moving from town to town, and inn rooms are cheaper than upkeep on a posh bit of property. Besides, he could always camp out in a pinch, and this way of life means that he can always pick up and split if things in a particular town get too unpleasant. Kerk remembers the Cult of Dust takeover of Khan-Gorai with particular apprehension. If he had actually owned a house there, or a gods-be-damned business, he would still be paying that ridiculous gate toll, only to have to slink in the alleyways to avoid the corrupt guards. Just getting by had been impossible, let alone turning a profit. He had spent his last coin on passage out.
Instead he lodges near the docks in Tide’s End these days, the troubles of that desert continent in the north far behind him. The small room he rents is all that he needs, and the bar in the Brine and Barnacle is a hotbed of rumors and odd jobs. There is a Job Board on the same block, just down at the quay itself. The arrangement works for Kerk. He can get up, go right to the bar and look for something to do there, or go look for postings. If there’s nothing up his alley at either of those places, well then he can always go over to the Caravan House and hire on to protect one of the caravans that are constantly running up the mountain to Falcreek.
When Kerk arrives today, though, the only occupants of the bar are the bartender, and a surly drunk. The bartender shuffles back and forth behind the counter, but Kerk doesn’t need a drink, he needs a job. Kerk speaks to the bartender, who offers him a modicum of coin to roust the drunk from the bar, but recommends not killing the man, for everyone’s sake. Kerk is looking for much more substantial work, but this is a quick bit of coin. So, Kerk talks to the drunk, who immediately moves into unarmed combat with him. Kerk knows two forms of unarmed combat, but he won’t need the deadly one for this. He doesn’t need the karmic hit for such a pittance, and pissing off the guards wouldn’t do. Kerk punches the surly drunk until he falls unconscious, drags him out the door, and collects his pay from the bartender. Now off to get a real job.
Kerk then exits into the street and heads a block over to the job board. Down on the docks there is much more activity, ships coming and going, and a handful of other mugs like himself clustered around the Job Board, looking for work. That’s a bad sign, with so many other people at the Board, there’s a lot of competition. All of the really lucrative stuff is probably already snapped up. Sure enough, if Kerk doesn’t want to spend the day doing nickle and dime errands, he’s going to have to go elsewhere. It’s too bad, really, he was hoping to sign on with a whaling crew. The work was usually easy, often uneventful, and the pay was great. Sure whalers are targets of piracy, from time to time, but that’s why Kerk is around, right? He’s got a pretty great axe and shield stance, and he has managed to come back from every whaling run he’s been on, but alas today the whalers have already all gone out for the day and they’ve no doubt hired his rivals in his absence.
There is one posting for a crew to sail to Anakhatha, but Kerk’s not quite ready to go back there yet. So, to the Caravan house goes our friend, where, at last, he accepts a job from a fellow player to accompany a wagon of assorted goods bound for market in Falcreek. Kerk has done this run before, even a few times, and while there are often bandits in the forested regions he knows they don’t pose too much threat to him. He could be in trouble if they run into any hostile players, but maybe not. The last time he tested his skills against another player Kerk had won handily. His axe is in good repair, and he’s well rested. The client hires another guard for the run, a gangly youth sporting a fancy bow. Kerk introduces himself and they swap names. Milo is the archer, like Kerk, he’s looking for some gold in exchange for his skill with the bow. He’s never walked the road up to Falcreek though, so he’s going to depend on Kerk’s experience. Kerk follows them out of town and onto the road to Falcreek.
For a short while the roads are well tended, and though Tide’s End doesn’t run regular guard patrols outside the city, things are uneventful and the party makes good speed. Soon enough though, Kerk and his companions pass into the woods. If they’re going to be ambushed, it’s almost certainly going to happen on this stretch of road. Kerk readies his axe, and seeing this, the other Milo prepares his bow. Their buddy the merchant is probably rocking a blessing of some sort, but Kerk and Milo are there to stand between the booty on the cart and anyone looking to take it by sleight or by force.
As predicted, behind the first large rock, a boulder that Kerk has come to regard as ‘ambush rock,’ a group of three highwaymen in matching tabards stands forth. Milo has already begun to shoot before they can demand that the merchant stop or pay. They spout a few half-hearted comments to the effect that they will be spared if - but Kerk is having none of it and merely steps forward to attack with his axe and shield style. Whether it be their lack of hesitation, a previous reliance on intimidation on the part of the thugs, or just some awkward combination of circumstance and fortune, Kerk and Milo manage to send two of the brigands into Animae’s embrace. The third flees, and the caravan crew do not give chase. Instead, they strip the dead of their valuables, and drag the bodies to the side of the boulder. Kerk thinks maybe this will dissuade the next bunch, but probably not.
When they arrive at the Caravan House in Falcreek, the client is so pleased with Kerk and Milo’s defence of his goods that he not only pays each a bit extra, but also lets the two of them split the gear looted from their attackers between them. It’s a good haul. After he sells the stuff he doesn’t need, Kerk has made enough to pay his lodging for a week at least, with a little extra besides. He knows of a good inn near the lake, and the last time he was in Falcreek he heard a rumour about a discreet little invitation-only dice game in the back room of a particular bar on the square. Maybe he could leverage that into a seat at the table? There’s no better way to find out..
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
https://www.revivalgame.com/features/real_economics
REAL ECONOMICS
Great Stories Often Start with Profit Motive
Some of the best stories ever told begin with the desire to profit. Han could have simply fled, but he lingered in Tatooine in the hopes of taking on some passengers to pay the bills. Mal takes his passengers aboard Serenity for the same reason. In short, the ability to make a quick buck has been the source of some of our most treasured stories. And if you think about it, that means a world that wants good stories could benefit from a good economy. This game is no different, but just like everything else we do for Revival, that means we’ll work hand in hand with the players to make it happen.
It Starts with Meaningful Trade Goods
Very few online games have really captured the value of large scale commerce. In most MMOs, in fact, what should be commodities are considered “trash loot” -- players literally feel like the items have no value and should be sold. (You might know this sort of loot as vendor trash or vendor loot) Admittedly this is a two-part problem. A player has no reason to do anything else because the items have no other use. This is further compounded by the way prices in most games are static. Not only does a player have an item in their inventory they can’t use, but that player also has no incentive to keep the item in the hopes of greater profit elsewhere; it literally just takes up inventory space. In this model most players would be better off directly receiving the gold the trash loot was worth.
The thing is, the problem isn’t actually an issue with the idea of items, but rather with the way they are specifically implemented in most online games. In Revival, players will have multiple reasons to hold on to every item they find, at least for a time. This is because items in Revival, even the things you might think of as trash, will have uses in some aspect of the game, such as crafting or magic. There is no “trash” in Revival -- even Theleston’s literal trash will be useful to someone.
When items are useful like this, it increases demand for those items. Take iron ore, for example. Before people worked iron, its ore was mostly seen as a red rock that wasn’t very useful, but as people began to realize it could be turned into iron, demand grew and the value of the rock -- in those places -- increased. This created regional trade, import and exports, and that created markets.
Real Markets mean Trade
Just as in the real world, towns and other sites in Revival will have differing demands, demands which will fluctuate based on what’s happening in the world. If Crown’s Rock is girding for war, its desire for iron, horses, armor and weapons will increase, while its desire for luxury goods such as silk, will decrease. Prices for those goods in those markets will change as a result and, for a clever player, that means an opportunity to profit.
It’s the very basics of economics: A player looking to make money through trade will want to buy a commodity where it is available most cheaply and transport it to a place where it can be sold for the highest possible price. This simple and core practice is what makes economic play content, not just for traders and merchant players, but for players focused on success through other means, as well.
Trade Means Content for All Players
The reason trade like this makes for good content is travel. In many online games, travel from one large location to another can be accomplished instantaneously, or nearly so, through something called fast travel. The “how” is different from game to game, but there is generally always a way to quickly and safely travel from one population center to another. In other words, in most games, moving a trade good from one market to another could be done without risk. This is not the case in Revival.
In Revival, goods have to be physically moved across Theleston. Specifically, if a player isn’t carrying the item in their inventory directly, the item will have to be sent via caravan. The safety of a caravan isn’t guaranteed, however, and this is where the opportunity for adventure begins. Left unescorted, chances are a caravan will be intercepted by bandits, monsters or less ethical players.
Revival isn’t a game where you’ll find a networked and linked auction house in every city, forming an instantaneous network of trade. Every town has a market where commodities are bought and sold, true, but every market is unique and unconnected. You won’t be buying Tide’s End coffee beans from the comfort of your home in Crown’s Rock; you will travel the world like the rest of the merchants, NPCs included, acquiring and transporting your goods from place to place. This disconnect may seem inconvenient, but it’s also a source of incredibly compelling content and fun.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
I just have so many bad thoughts about PvP focused MMOS now. I can't see them as being profitable to make and run. Who needs complex systems when the main objective to kill each other?
The audiance is just not there after a few months when the newness wears off. Hanging on by a thread of a few strong supporters is not going to pay the server cost to run it but here we go again MMO 999,999,999,999 is PvP focused.
If you are interested in making a MMO maybe visit my page to get a free open source engine.
I'd say no.
Also cities are filled with guards and troublesome pvpers can be KOS to a city and be exiled from it. Name one other pvp centric mmo that does this. There are plenty of non pvp players on the forums, and there are alot of ways to avoid pvp including by getting blessings from the gods. And there are PKKers popping up on the forums who will actively be running anti griefer guilds. I'm one of them. *waves* I'm what you call a "white hat" pvper - basically a good guy pvper. I'll be on the server Ghoratul running a Bounty Hunter's guild who specializes in PKK (player killer killer/anti griefer) amongst other things (Monster Hunting, etc, etc). My guild Hunter's Dawn will also be politically involved to make sure our home city is super secure with guards - yes political involvement can help improve neighborhoods, including voting for more guard patrols in a city. We say we want virtual worlds again, well Revival is going to give us one. Don't like pvp? Get politically involved in the politics of the city you will be settling in and vote in harsher penalties, more guards,etc. Unlike the jail system in ArcheAge, Revival jail time equals what's called Temporal damage - the game literally ages your character. Age too much and you can die and you are too weak to fight your way back from Animae's Realm.
Read the blogs and do your research, you'd be surprised
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
https://www.revivalgame.com/forum#/discussion/377/pvp-pve/p1
Death hurts. In other MMOs, death is nothing but a minor inconvenience. You die, you respawn, you rush back into the fray. In Revival, you die, you go to hell! (Essentially). From there, you have to struggle to return to the living world which will be an adventure all its own. This right here is EXTREMELY important as it eliminates the quick fix that many gankers seek. A ganker ganks and gets killed themselves in the process, they don't just respawn and keep on killing their fellow players. They gotta work to get back to life, get new gear and head back out into the world again. Sure, it wont outright stop all gankers (like impulse gankers) but it will eliminate the quick and instant gratification other MMOs provide. Ganking and surviving the gank are now a bit of a chore.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
*backs away slowly*
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Its certainly not for everyone.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
https://www.revivalgame.com/philosophy/game_design_theory
The Rule of World
First and foremost, it means that nothing that goes into Revival can detract from the experience of being in Theleston, the world of Revival. Don’t mistake us; Revival is a game and there will be some systems that “feel gamey,” but given the choice between two potential features, systems or mechanics, we will always prefer the one that makes the game world feel more like a real place, however fantastic. This isn’t a game where you’ll find “Level 12 Blade Lords.” Instead, it’s a world where you’ll meet other people and they will possess skills they worked to cultivate, be they combat skills, crafting skills or something else. You’ll know a Blade Lord by the way he or she wields a sword, not by the words hovering over their heads or the specific outfit being worn. The real world doesn’t work that way and neither does Revival.
Static is a Four Letter Word
With the Rule of World as our guiding principle we establish a tangible, credible, world, but that’s not enough. If the world is a stage for grand adventures to play out upon, then the feeling of a world depends just as critically on the adventures themselves. The most striking issue with MMOs of today is the static nature of the content. Even when MMOs offer “dynamic” content, they often actually mean that they add a set of new quests for a while and then remove them later. They tend to be more of the same - more grinding for more items to use in your standard day to day slog. Often the content in these games, newly added or not, all feels the same. This is simply not enough for Revival.
Revival is a game where story develops out of the interaction between player and game devs, not a world where we devs present a story to the players. Presenting the classic “Railroad adventure” detracts not only from the sense of there being a world, but it also takes away from the sense that the players can make a difference in the world. Thus, all of our content and the systems that support them are built to make interactive and emergent content. Where other MMOs offer public quests, we offer adventures that not only respond to the player’s actions in the moment, but leave their nigh indelible mark upon the world.
History is Critical
A world of static quests and raids cannot change. It is our belief that a world that cannot change has no true history. Yet, without a sense of change over time and a record of the changes that have been made, how can a player ever be truly said to have had an impact on the world? For this reason, we prioritize content and game systems that allow change to occur and persist as players contribute to the world. Even our “static” content reacts to player action, moving through the world or going dormant or away depending on evolution of the world and the actions players have taken in it.
For example: If players can lay siege to a town and destroy that town, it’s not enough to display a “you win!” UI element and then put the town back to its original state. The players must now live in a world where that town does not exist and deal with the consequences of the decision to let that town fall. New players can now come into the world and if they want to, see the ruins of that town for themselves. More importantly, these new players will enter a world in which there exists the legend of why that town was destroyed and how.
More simply put: If a feature will allow players to build the history of the world they populate, that feature will be selected over one that does not.
Combat isn’t the Be All End All
It’s important, in fact, that skill play a part in every aspect of the game because, unlike most of the current crop of MMO releases out there, Revival isn’t a combat game with a few other RPG trappings. Even with our focused effort to bring truly intelligent, tactical combat that requires personal skill, it can’t take a lead role over the other aspects of Revival’s systems: Revival is a world, not a combat grinding treadmill. For every system added to the game we ask ourselves, “Does this add something fun to do?” and “Can players gain success by mastering the skills this system calls for?” If the answer is no to either question, the system isn’t added, but if the answer is yes, well then the system makes it into future consideration.
As a result, Revival is a world where you can gain notoriety, build the world’s history and leave a literally indelible mark on the world… all without ever swinging a sword.
Role Play, not Roll Play
Once we’ve decided to add a system to the game, the next step is to determine how best to present it to the citizens of Theleston, the players. We have two major concerns: Developing a player skill related to the system and ensuring that the system is still something that fits the Rule of World that we mentioned earlier.
This includes concerns like how does one cast spells: We both have to make sure that spell casting is something that can be quickly learned but only mastered with effort and we also have to ensure that casting spells feels like we all imagine casting spells would.
That’s because we want players to be the citizens of the world, not just play them. This is why we often hide the numbers and the like being used in the background: We want players to be concerned with their role play, not their roll play.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Weekly Blog Update #35 - The Greatest Adventure
https://www.revivalgame.com/blog/36-weekly-blog-update-35-the-greatest-adventure
Snipehunter: 4 months ago
Weekly Update
It’s been a pretty busy week for us here at team Revival. Last week included a holiday, which can often throw a wrench in the works, but this week we just picked up where we left off, which is good, because we’re grinding as hard as we can to complete an important quest of our own: Bringing our founders the first release of the offline client.Great Minds of Theleston
“Quest” is definitely a loaded term in the MMO world, these days. It carries with it all sorts of connotations about what you’ll be doing, how you’ll be doing it and who you will be doing it for. For most, a “quest” isn’t much more than a glorified to-do list wrapped in thin fictional premise. Worse, I think, the things you can do are incredibly limited: You can kill a thing, collect a thing, deliver a thing, use a thing, escort a person, talk to a person or go to some area. It’s pretty sad, really. As an industry we preach that MMOs are worlds of infinite play and possibility, but in reality you’re lucky if a game’s quest system can let you do even seven things.So, for Revival, one of the first things we wanted to do was say “fuck all that.” Honestly, some will probably say we went overboard, but we’ve gone so far as to say “there are no quests in Revival.”
So, that’s it. End of blog. Hope you enjoyed it.
OK, so it’s not really the end of the blog, but it really is an important point we’re making:
You don’t take quests in Revival, you go on adventures.
Or to put it another way:
You don’t have quests, the world does.
Theleston is a world where its people have their own needs, their own desires and most importantly, their own agendas. Most of the things that need doing are going to come from these elements. A government might offer bounties to those willing to capture or kill bandits plaguing a trade route. A guild that needs a particular artifact might announce an expedition and then offer contracts for soldiers, scholars and arcanists to join on for a share of what is found. A crew of a ship might have openings for a short term raid into Anakhathan waters. Or, there may not even be an “official” capacity involved at all; it might be that you’ve been hearing rumors about the ruins unearthed in a nearby mine and have been thinking there might be something worth looking for there…
In a way, it’s not much different than the fictional representation of quests in any other game. The difference is that it’s not fiction in Revival; these really are things that need to be done and when they are done, the world changes as a result. No more bandits means more trade. That guild can now use that artifact to summon Cthugha’s cleansing flame. That raid sparks a war with the Gorai tribes, or maybe prevents one. It also means those “quests” are over and they’re not coming back.
For us, this is key; it’s what makes the evolving nature of our world possible. Revival would not be the MEOW we call it, if questing didn’t work this way, because without the ephemeral nature of these events and agendas, the world would be essentially static, just like every theme park MMO you’ve ever played.
To be fair though, I can see why a lot of other developers don’t do it: It requires quite a bit of work to produce, of course, especially when you consider that we have to build the VirtualDM and train the storytellers so that they are both capable of knowing the size of the playerbase and ensuring there are adventures enough for everyone. But, perhaps more importantly, it creates a problem that conventional MMOs have solved long ago: It makes it quite difficult for a player to know what to do “next” as they play the game.
The first is the type most like the typical MMO quest, what we call the contract. Like conventional quests, you agree to take on a contract ahead of time and you have a fixed set of things that must be done to complete the contract. Upon completion of the contract you’ll be paid or rewarded as agreed. Contracts can be found in basically every city of the world. Contracts can even be issued by player guilds in their guild halls and by players via mail or the job board. The primary source of contracts are guilds, which offer contracts for everything from simple resource gathering, to crafting and even combat related actions. A character looking for contracts will want to visit the government house of their city or various guilds related to what they do in order to find work. Of course, if working for a guild doesn’t strike your fancy, you can always acquire contracts from the job boards scattered throughout town (typically one per neighborhood). These contracts tend to be “open” in that anyone can take them, but they are also “first come first served” in that the first person to return to the contract issuer with proof that they have completed the contract is the one to get paid. The last way one gets contracts is actually my favorite; as you build fame in the world, contracts will come to you, much like a client visits Sherlock Holmes at his flat on Baker street.
Past contracts though, things get a little more strange when it comes to finding adventure. Rumors, informants and literal intrigue are the source for our second category of adventure, what we call opportunities. Opportunities are contemporaneous; they become available for a brief period of time and, if no one avails themselves of them, the moment passes and goes away and the world deals with the repercussions. They also have nothing like a contract to guide a player, so how do you find out about them and how do you know what to do? You listen. To the conversations of NPCs and the general “Word on the street” in the form of tavern conversations, the words of the town criers in cities and the latest editions of newspapers as they are released each week. In them you’ll see the roots of these opportunities. An NPC might mention, for example, that ever since returning from Anakhatha, his master has been plagued by night terrors and now spends his nights walking the streets far from his empty home. For a thief that might represent a fresh new target, his unguarded house, but for a scholar that same comment might indicate that this person has come across dark magic or an artifact of lost Khollaja and even now struggles with its effects. In either case, moving forward would require one of two things: entering the conversation to learn more, or perhaps shadowing the NPC to learn the location of the house in question. That would then lead you to decide your next step, and so on. As I said, past contracts things become significantly more self-guided.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!