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/con ?
TianFeng
Member Posts: 134
In another thread 'Healthbar bye bye' I was attempting to discuss whether it would be possible and/or beneficial to remove the players direct ability to judge how close to death an enemy is by removing healthbars/gauges in return for a more visual degrading of the monster (wounds and such) until it is dead. This made me wonder whether this is not the only thing about an opponent we should directly know.
You are running along a path in the game world. You see something standing just off the path to the right about 100m ahead. What do you do? You click it and check out what colour it cons of course, your see whether it will aggro you or not! .... why do you have to be told this by a little colour that changes depending on how hard a fight it would be? Would it not be better to only see the creatures name (for purposes of identification for those who have never seen one before .. I think this at least is neccesary). Not knowing how tough a fight it would be would mean that you would approach it slowly, to get a better look. Is it wearing armour? Does it have large claws? Or does it actually have a really cute face? Shouldn't the player judge for themselves whether they can attack something or not? If they never try, they will never learn. It would prompt players to learn and remember. If the little bunny rabbit thing kicked your ass, you would avoid them in future.
What do you guys think? Are we told too much? Graphics are getting better and better, monsters can be modelled exactly how the devs want them to be. I know the coloured con system, or any other simplistic devices used in other games to inform the player of the monsters difficulty are there to symbolise the way that you would be able to judge the creature if you were actually there but these days we practically are, so do we still need them?
Wouldn't you love it if every adventurer, along with their complimentary backpack, had a journal and everlasting pencil of somesort. When you selected a species for the first time, its name would appear in the bestiary section of your journal, with a space for you to write a comment about it. That way if you saw it again you could flick open your journal and see what you said about it last time. It would encourage a player rating system, better roleplaying, and best of all people would want to swap secrets about vulnerabilities that they recorded after a victorious triumph. In a city library you might open a book and read about certain creatures, and take notes in your journal to help you and your friends.
Sorry about the bland poll choices, its just for show. What I really want are your comments and a good discussion.
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MMORPGs: Treadmills that make you fatter.
www.silkyvenom.com <-- a good site for Vanguard information
Comments
hehe I voted wrongly in my own poll, I meant to vote nay, but I voted Yay
whoops!
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MMORPGs: Treadmills that make you fatter.
www.silkyvenom.com <-- a good site for Vanguard information
if a system of a describe your own encounters is in any game i play i just hope there is a library that i can scribe (yes former uo player) the known knowledge of every monster into my own book... id hate to get killed by a troll by turning my back to the formely dead red skinny creature... i would like to know first hand to use fire etc etc
i just like to win
You can easily overdo realism in a gaming world.
Realism !~ Fun
It's quite easy to justify the context of /con, in that your avatar iswell aware of the nature of beasts in the world, and would know full well whether a Troll would be beyond his/her grasp.
Not every player is interested in the cataloging of information in a virtual world. Some prefer simply to play, or to explore, or to amass trophies, or to hoard wealth, or simply socialize and "go with the flow".
Theres an interesting discussion there when you say that the character itself should know wheter the troll will kick his butt. I remember playing Mutant long ago (roleplaying paper/dice) and was deep in a sub-plot of a sub-plot of my excellent game-masters mission and i was playing an exceptionally intelligent character then. So when i just couldnt figure out wtf was going on i had to ask gm to do a intelligence roll and then he explained it to me in simpler terms what the ingame characters expected me to do and how to act... And that all felt pretty good knowing that my character is not exactly Me, but an character thats lived his whole life in that world and is better than me at just about everything
. Problem is that i kinda messed up that intelligence roll and the gm explained how my character saw the situation, which was pretty off-base. So i screwed up pretty badly 
I feel that unless the game-designers and artsy ppl can make the mobs look their age, like you'll see immediately that this is a Hell-Beast-That-Devoures-Demigods or Fluffy-The-Bunny you will need atleast a few guidelines, like 3 grades of difficulty green-yellow-red. Cause theres no way in hell that game-designers will stop using the same meshes/textures for different level mobs, except renaming.
It could be possible that they make a universal bad-ass system like Black&White uses with their good/evil levels for the pets. But doing it for alot of mobs could be troublesome, and you'll always get whiners that run into the Fanged-Bunny-Of-Death-Incarnate thinking its a Fluffy-Bunny cause they dont have the detail level tuned up
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Stealin n Lubing since 1976 
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Apparently we have similar thoughts along the lines of possible game design
. I have a VERY long list of concepts that I think need to be included in a quality MMORPG - this touches on a couple of them. In general, I would like the simplistic /con to go away.
I agree that some more "full-featured" knowledge system should be encouraged. My basic view is that everything in the game world should be modeled in a knowledge tree like system. This knowledge can then be disemminated by the use of Libraries (I began with UO long ago - but they never really implemented the idea). Not just creatures - but everything in game. This knowledge can also be spread by NPC and PC contact.
For example: Let us suppose your character is a freshly made character. When you first enter the game, you can pull up your "book of memory" and you can read (if you are so inclined) what your character already knows of the world and the objects around. Most of this will be fairly mundane (you know a chair is for sitting for example). Depending on how you created your character (stats, int, wisdom, education, etc.) you will know more or less than another - about perhaps different things. Now as you go through the world, you can right mouse click on any object (inanimate or NPC for example) and your "book of memory" will flash on screen the relevant "knowledge" about that object. For example: Suppose you are walking down the country lane and spy a creature - which you right click. It looks like a cute bunny rabbit. Your "book of memory" pops up that you think it is a bunny rabbit and will then detail for you most of the relevant information in some context sensitive way - such as it is easy to kill, good to eat, blah, blah. Further, if you know NOTHING about this creature the book will tell you that. If you want to know something about the creature, you have options - you can go to a library or speak perhaps to another PC or even a relevant NPC - OR you COULD take the plunge and give the cute little fellow a whirl with your bow or sword. This battle would have the chance (depending on a number of factors) of adding to your "book of memory" so that next time you might know something about this cute little fellow (well actually about those like him since you likely just dispatched this one).
Now speak about options. For those far too lazy and/or unimaginative to employ a system such as this (easy as a context sensitive system is), one can simply employ the minimum setting of the "book of knowledge" which is simply options like "I know nothing" or "I have killed one before - no problemo" or "I died the last two times I tried this one".
If all else in life fails you, buy a vowel.
If all else in life fails you, buy a vowel.
Hmm, so you are talking more about some sort of auto-journal, which has pre-programmed knowledge that can be picked up along the way. I like the sound of it, and the fact you could have a huge range of different pieces of information and knowledge. Perhaps as your book is filled, your 'wisdom' statistic, as it were, increases. It would have to be very well laid out as an auto-journal, we can see from morrowind that auto-journals can quickly become messy and full of useless knowledge. Knowledge you need just disappears amid the other rubbish recorded. You want to know that farm Jones has lost his son, last seen on the shore line - but your journal is packed with all sorts of descriptions and junk, that you just forget about this little sub-quest.
I considered an auto-journal whilst I was typing my original post. However taking the usual problems with auto-journals into account, I think I would still stick with my player written bestiary. Some auto-entries could still be used, such as vistiting a new town or city could prompt a few short descriptions, and perhaps list the merchants in that settlement that you have located. The reason why I would like the player to type in their own bestiary comments, is that it then gives those who use it, an edge. Im quite a fan of allowing players to recieve a beneficial function, but not just giving it to them, as those who choose not to use the system can go without. Those who do, and use it effectively, visit libraries etc. will be rewarded with a greater worldly knowledge. It will also encourage players to interact and swap details, which is good. Some auto-functions could be included in the bestiary, such as a tally of deaths to each monster.
Other information added auto-matically to the journal, could be quest information, as they progress through the quest they get small descriptions of each step appearing on their page.
I do like the idea of the alert system, in which you click on a monster, and the book will glow to remind you to see what you have already on the critter. It could also glow when its content has been automatically updated.
Your system allows the lazy to still get some benefits. I would like to see that those who are lazy will simply lose out. They won't lose anything that completely prevents them from playing, but they will lose a valuable tool which would help them to play and fight a lot better.
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MMORPGs: Treadmills that make you fatter.
www.silkyvenom.com <-- a good site for Vanguard information