If this is actually the case, then I may end up picking the game up. I dunno, I kinda like that there are penalties for killing people. I have nothing against open world PvP, but open world PvP without consequences, well, that's just anarchy.
No thats chaos. ^^ Anarchy is simply the absence of a coersive government . But I must say that I'm not really surprised that even though it was advertized as a FFA full loot gankfest, that they have done something to protect their business model.
P.S. As some have already pointed out, MO is not a PVP game, it is a game with PVP in it.
Intersting. You have my attention. If MO isnt a PvP game, a game where players cooperate with tools and resources without the hinderance of npc's or direction and oversight of quests, but where players truly make the context and content of the cooperative and combatrive game-play amongst themselves, how would you classify Mortal Online as an mmo?
a world first, and a game second. The social aspects also fall secondary to this. Hence the lack of easy-to-implement, obvious social enhancers such as long-distance communication, embedded mail system, and global chat spaces. All of these things are major social enhancers, but (usually) outside the fiction and reductive of a game OR world experience.
One reason btw why we went with this approach was that a focus on world tends to capture the "explorer" types as Bartle defines them, or in Bettelheim's terms, encourages open-ended play. Or to put it in other words, having a varied, evolving setting (even though it only evolves in that "middle layer" of NPCs/creatures/economy) encourages roleplay, encourages exploration, encourages alternate styles of achievement, and rewards it with changed circumstances rather than with a milestone.
The problem with "game" style design in a mud setting is that you run out of game. Games are finite. In a fiscal sense, you wanna keep folks around as long as possible, of course, to get their money, and the more "infinite" the game is, the better. Remember that most mudders only play for around 3-6 months, and even dinos tend to give up after 2 years or so.
One reason why there may be so many ["game-oriented" text muds] is that when you beat one, but have not exhausted the desire to play, you must find another, so that you have fresh milestones to conquer. Many muds try to compensate for this by adding levels, races, and other small milestones (beat the game as a thief! Beat it as an elf! We have 10,000 levels--at which point the milestones become insignificant or repetitive enough to be meaningless).
It is difficult for a player of any (using game in a broader sense now, as in game design, as opposed to "game"-style design, boy I hope that made sense) to make the transition between methods of approaching the game. For one thing, not many games have the flexibility to be played in truly different ways. One of the reasons why Sid Meier is a master game designer is that he has a knack for open-ended play that has milestones that can be freely ignored. Yet it is rare to see a Civ player who plays once for conquest and again for cooperation and again for mastery of a particular area and again for social stability etc etc etc... the game design supports it, the individual player does not. But the audience does.
A question for those more experienced in the MO flagging:
From what I understand ANYONE can loot corpses currently. Now I have read (and it was a thread with Osmunda in it) that currently anyone is allowed to loot any corpse. So if I kill a mob (or player), JoeBob can walk up and loot the stuff. I have no recourse except to let him have it.. or attack him and turn grey or red.
Is this currently the way the game works? Is this an acknowledged bug (anyone have a link where SV states that)? Is this functioning as designed? Any links to further explain?
P.S. As some have already pointed out, MO is not a PVP game, it is a game with PVP in it.
Intersting. You have my attention. If MO isnt a PvP game, a game where players cooperate with tools and resources without the hinderance of npc's or direction and oversight of quests, but where players truly make the context and content of the cooperative and combatrive game-play amongst themselves, how would you classify Mortal Online as an mmo?
It's a chaos simulator.
I really dont understand. Honestly. Chaos is a state of extreme disorder. How can there be an emphasis on Chaos when the mechanics of the game involve an active implementation of order, or attempt at order with a ruleset that delivers a consequence to overtly unprovoked aggression?
You are not being ostracized from society because there are lawless towns, and you can communicate with anyone that you want to outside of guarded cities.
Without stat loss, even more people would be running around killing others senselessly. Is that what you want? I sure hope not, we don't need any more elitist clowns ruining the game. You can't just say you don't like it. Do you have an elternative suggestion? You have to think of the consequences of it not being a feature,
And lawless towns should be a target of "blue" clans who could ride in and take it over, thus depriving the murderers of their base. The criminal flagging is fine.. the statloss is (in my opinion) silly and anti-sandbox. The penalties for anti-social behavior should be socially based. Make the "lawless towns" less friendly. It's a tough neighborhood? Why not have items cost a LOT more there and have the NPCs pay a LOT less for stuff sold to them? Make other benefits to the normal towns such as centers of higher learning where you would go to learn certain skills.
Make alignment based items possible so that if a "murderous red" picked it up they would be hurt.. even killed by the power of the gods if it was a potent enough item...
There are no limits to the options available to incentivise social play and disencetivise anti-social behavior without resorting to some artificial stat-loss. I'm certainlyu not saying that life as a red shouldn't be hard. It should be damn hard. I just don't like the concept of stat-loss for PvPing. As I said above though... it's a personal preference and certainly subjective.
I can easily poke holes into your counter-point as well. Can you raid murderer towns? Yes. Good point. But, why would NPC's sell their wares at a higher price? If anything, they should be lower. It would be more realistic for a criminal to bully the NPC's into giving them access to their wares for significantly less or even free. So I agree on the selling items for less idea, but not on the buying items for more because it isn't realistic, since we're going that route as well. About the higher learning, are you trying to say murderers are like lumbering ogres? Some of the most imfamous murderers of all time are some of the most intelligent people in the history of the world. Why should MO's murderers be any different? Why can't they teach people skills as well? There is no alignment system currently in MO, so that won't work.. and the idea that murderers can't use 'good' weapons and armor is 'anit-sanboxy', again since we're going for realism here.
Limits must be put in place. If there are no limits, things turn into complete anarchy. If you don't like the stat loss, then think of something better that could take it's place. Otherwise, don't be a PK. This is not a new system, In Ultima Online you took stat/skill loss as well. Considering MO is going to have thievery as well as house destruction, the PK penalties could be even worse and it still wouldn't deter people from doing it. MO didn't have house destruction and PK'ing was still a problem.
You must keep the sheep happy. When a game is full of wolves and nothing else.. they end up quitting of boredom and the game dies. How many times have we seen this now?
A question for those more experienced in the MO flagging:
From what I understand ANYONE can loot corpses currently. Now I have read (and it was a thread with Osmunda in it) that currently anyone is allowed to loot any corpse. So if I kill a mob (or player), JoeBob can walk up and loot the stuff. I have no recourse except to let him have it.. or attack him and turn grey or red.
Is this currently the way the game works? Is this an acknowledged bug (anyone have a link where SV states that)? Is this functioning as designed? Any links to further explain?
It's not a bug, it is working as intended. You can loot anything, no matter who or what it was killed by. Now, if that player was blue(innocent), you can only open the bag without turning grey. If you loot from a blue player, you become grey.
As far as mobs go, they are pretty much all grey.. so you just need to be quick or keep yourself at a distance between anyone looking suspicious. Make sure you keep your murder count low, so if someone is being a d-bag, let 'em have it.
LOL fact is, if there is over a certain griefer to player ratio, a game dies as newbs can't get anywhere. So who didn't want to be a griefer at some point in life? This is a system to keep it in check.
P.S. As some have already pointed out, MO is not a PVP game, it is a game with PVP in it.
Intersting. You have my attention. If MO isnt a PvP game, a game where players cooperate with tools and resources without the hinderance of npc's or direction and oversight of quests, but where players truly make the context and content of the cooperative and combatrive game-play amongst themselves, how would you classify Mortal Online as an mmo?
a world first, and a game second. The social aspects also fall secondary to this. Hence the lack of easy-to-implement, obvious social enhancers such as long-distance communication, embedded mail system, and global chat spaces. All of these things are major social enhancers, but (usually) outside the fiction and reductive of a game OR world experience.
One reason btw why we went with this approach was that a focus on world tends to capture the "explorer" types as Bartle defines them, or in Bettelheim's terms, encourages open-ended play. Or to put it in other words, having a varied, evolving setting (even though it only evolves in that "middle layer" of NPCs/creatures/economy) encourages roleplay, encourages exploration, encourages alternate styles of achievement, and rewards it with changed circumstances rather than with a milestone.
The problem with "game" style design in a mud setting is that you run out of game. Games are finite. In a fiscal sense, you wanna keep folks around as long as possible, of course, to get their money, and the more "infinite" the game is, the better. Remember that most mudders only play for around 3-6 months, and even dinos tend to give up after 2 years or so.
One reason why there may be so many ["game-oriented" text muds] is that when you beat one, but have not exhausted the desire to play, you must find another, so that you have fresh milestones to conquer. Many muds try to compensate for this by adding levels, races, and other small milestones (beat the game as a thief! Beat it as an elf! We have 10,000 levels--at which point the milestones become insignificant or repetitive enough to be meaningless).
It is difficult for a player of any (using game in a broader sense now, as in game design, as opposed to "game"-style design, boy I hope that made sense) to make the transition between methods of approaching the game. For one thing, not many games have the flexibility to be played in truly different ways. One of the reasons why Sid Meier is a master game designer is that he has a knack for open-ended play that has milestones that can be freely ignored. Yet it is rare to see a Civ player who plays once for conquest and again for cooperation and again for mastery of a particular area and again for social stability etc etc etc... the game design supports it, the individual player does not. But the audience does.
Is it a game or is it a world?
Whoa, so you can’t personally convey your own impression as to why its not a pvp environment? Yet you take thought from someone else about another game and apply it here and essentiall call this a sandboxy social world/environment.
Okay, as intended, it is a world, a social environment, that is influenced by players. Interesting you completely glossed over why it isnt a pvp game. Since it is a player-influenced game and environment in the grand scheme of things. One cant say its not a player influenced environment when the environment is, well, influenced by players; pvp.
Mortal Online being open-ended play, can roll 3 characters, has a varied, evolving setting outside and free of the influence of npc’s, that is not goverened by developers, yet still a development in-process, encourages roleplay at the discretion of the players, encourages exploration, encourages alternate styles of achievement without entitlements but rewards that have to be achieved based on ones interaction with the tools, resources, and elements within the confines of game-play, of which situational circumstances can have an impact (being players).
Essentially from what I gather is that there is dynamic player influential rather than linear content which transcends an endgame stopgap, involving continuous cooperative and competitive amusement; an open-ended end-game.
So as a non-finite game or world, “gamin” is not run out of. The more infinite, or open-ended as with the MO approach, the better sustainment I suppose.
So yea. MO is more than a game, but an experience that is influenced by players interacting with other players cooperatively and competitively in trades, resourcing, manufacturing and combat, etc. It isnt a “game-oriented" text mud that when you beat one, and have exhausted the desire to repetitively play the same one linearly over and over but with a different character, you must find another. MO is much more dynamic than that.
MO is a massively multiplayer, which is far more than one can say for most other supposed mmo’s, game which places the emphasis on the players and players freedom of choice. It’s a Sandbox based engine, unique/engaging environment, emphasizes organic growth through personal and social endeavors, and delivers player-centric content, dynamic features over linear content.
So thanks for allowing me to think for you. Yes, in short; MO can be thought of as a PvP game.
Sorry my eloquence fails to live up to your standards.
Mortal online derives much of it's inspiration from Ultima Online (pre-trammel). Therefore, I thought that an essay from the lead designer of UO during that time period might be appropo.
In short MO can be thought of as an economics game.
In short MO can be thought of as an exploration game.
In short MO can be thought of as achatroom with scenery.
The flagging and stat loss system gives you at least some control over how much PVP you experience if you don't want to experience it as a PVP game. Without consequences for non-consensual PVP, the PVP dominates the entire game (ala Darkfall)
I was enjoying the game up untill today when i decided to have some fun and go kill some players outside of town. I had no idea that if i eventually killed too many i would get a murderer status which pretty much made me an outcast from everything. It makes the character unplayable and you see i would have a problem with this if it was on about a 10 minute timer... but its not it is on a 24 hour timer for every kill over 5 you kill so if you kill 6 you are outcasted, nothing to do for a whopping 42 hours !!!!To make matters worse they steal your attribute points from you if you die/ kill more. Its not only like 2 or 3 either i lost 20 str that took me about 3 hours to get in minutes.... I understand it is completely my fault but the whole reason i bought this game was so that my friends and i could run around killing people and stealing their stuff. With an advertised wide open world with no guards and the ability to do what ever you want i assumed that it is the player who is risking his items rather than i who am risking my reputation. Even if there were cities for exiles established would make me happy but i honestly have nowhere to go and nothing to do except start a new character and lose about 48 hours of playtime ive had since launch.
Just me pissed and ranting idk what do you guys think ?
I like the idea that there are consequences to people like you behaving like that, folks that enjoy doing little more than griefing people. Granted, PK is a legitimate gameplay feature and I respect that, however you don't seem to want to do anything other than PK and you honestly make it seem like you want to grief players. That's just not cool, period.
That said, the outcast debuff you are suffering from seems to be unnecessarily long which is also not cool. Having harsh penalties for PKers that enjoy griefing makes sense and adds some legitimate realism to a sandboxy game like MO. However, it is ultimately a game and when penalties last that long for doing nothing that violates the ToS/EULA we have another problem.
I think the debuff is a little harsh too. Maybe an hour or 30 mins or something. Make it cumilitive, but with diminishing time added.
Say first 1 is 1 hour, second is 1hr45mins, and so on. Not neccessarily start it on the first kill, but maybe the 4th or something. Since it is that many kills, maybe 2 hours then diminish from there.
You are not being ostracized from society because there are lawless towns, and you can communicate with anyone that you want to outside of guarded cities.
Without stat loss, even more people would be running around killing others senselessly. Is that what you want? I sure hope not, we don't need any more elitist clowns ruining the game. You can't just say you don't like it. Do you have an elternative suggestion? You have to think of the consequences of it not being a feature,
And lawless towns should be a target of "blue" clans who could ride in and take it over, thus depriving the murderers of their base. The criminal flagging is fine.. the statloss is (in my opinion) silly and anti-sandbox. The penalties for anti-social behavior should be socially based. Make the "lawless towns" less friendly. It's a tough neighborhood? Why not have items cost a LOT more there and have the NPCs pay a LOT less for stuff sold to them? Make other benefits to the normal towns such as centers of higher learning where you would go to learn certain skills.
Make alignment based items possible so that if a "murderous red" picked it up they would be hurt.. even killed by the power of the gods if it was a potent enough item...
There are no limits to the options available to incentivise social play and disencetivise anti-social behavior without resorting to some artificial stat-loss. I'm certainlyu not saying that life as a red shouldn't be hard. It should be damn hard. I just don't like the concept of stat-loss for PvPing. As I said above though... it's a personal preference and certainly subjective.
I can easily poke holes into your counter-point as well. Can you raid murderer towns? Yes. Good point. But, why would NPC's sell their wares at a higher price? If anything, they should be lower. It would be more realistic for a criminal to bully the NPC's into giving them access to their wares for significantly less or even free. So I agree on the selling items for less idea, but not on the buying items for more because it isn't realistic, since we're going that route as well. About the higher learning, are you trying to say murderers are like lumbering ogres? Some of the most imfamous murderers of all time are some of the most intelligent people in the history of the world. Why should MO's murderers be any different? Why can't they teach people skills as well? There is no alignment system currently in MO, so that won't work.. and the idea that murderers can't use 'good' weapons and armor is 'anit-sanboxy', again since we're going for realism here.
Limits must be put in place. If there are no limits, things turn into complete anarchy. If you don't like the stat loss, then think of something better that could take it's place. Otherwise, don't be a PK. This is not a new system, In Ultima Online you took stat/skill loss as well. Considering MO is going to have thievery as well as house destruction, the PK penalties could be even worse and it still wouldn't deter people from doing it. MO didn't have house destruction and PK'ing was still a problem.
You must keep the sheep happy. When a game is full of wolves and nothing else.. they end up quitting of boredom and the game dies. How many times have we seen this now?
Well said.
A game full of PK and griefing without concequence is a dead game. Period!
We have seen it over and over and over again.
A company cannot survive on assholes alone. As those assholes will be gone, the moment there is no one left to PK / grief.
SV, just like any other company, want to make money in the end. That's all what counts. So they put this system in place to achieve the highest amount of happy players (equals subs = money!) who can enjoy themselves.
That's what I like about MO over Darkfall, in MO you're punished for being a wanker or atleast have to be a good player with some good buddies to avoid the consequences. Really the OP needs to just suck it up and wait out the timer then regain his stats and chalk it up to experience. The next time he decides to be an asshat he might ask first if there are any consequences for doing so, if you don't like that system then there's always the game that shall not be mentioned!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
I linked that mostly to illustrate that this has already been discussed ad nauseum. That thread alone is 60 pages (51 was apparently just the page it was showing me to get near the end of the thread. There were several other threads on the subject also, that is just the longest one.
I linked that mostly to illustrate that this has already been discussed ad nauseum. That thread alone is 60 pages (51 was apparently just the page it was showing me to get near the end of the thread. There were several other threads on the subject also, that is just the longest one.
Can't wait until the Shooter games adopt these mechanics...
Talk about clueless
I can't help but agree about this poster being clueless. In my opinion it doesn't discourage PvP at all.. In fact it should increase the fun of pvp. One of the first things I ever did in UO (once I had a character worth while) was hunt reds with a guild I joined. We would have epic battles and most of the time we would lose to the reds. Even with numbers like 8on4 we would still lose. Eventually I learned to play and became a perma-red, and had 2x the amount of fun I had hunting reds and being blue. Sure I had the risk of stat loss.. and that alone made me more aware and better at pvp. Not to mention it completely immersed me into the game. Consider this type of story/situation before you completely just blow this game off simply due to a game mechanic.
Think whatever you want. To me, it's like players joining a PvP server and then crying that their town is under attack and they can't turn in any quests. Solution? Instanced battlegrounds. If you want open world PvP, then you should have the means to police it through player reputation. Game mechanics that are put in to superficially stem PvP are only band-aids to the real problem; Players do not want to team up with other players to stop the ganking/griefing. If you want gankers and griefers to suffer a penalty, then punish them yourselves. Show them it's not alright to play that way by making it hard for them to do it.
I understand the mechanics, and they are really not that bad. If it works for the majority of players, then it was a good decision. I just feel that the more mechanics that are put in place to deter players from interacting with each other (whether its ganking or policing) the less depth and community a game has. To me, MMORPGs are about banding together with other players for whatever reason. If game mechanics are put in place as a sort of government, then players have no need or even desire to work together much of the time, in my opinion.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Can't wait until the Shooter games adopt these mechanics...
Talk about clueless
I can't help but agree about this poster being clueless. In my opinion it doesn't discourage PvP at all.. In fact it should increase the fun of pvp. One of the first things I ever did in UO (once I had a character worth while) was hunt reds with a guild I joined. We would have epic battles and most of the time we would lose to the reds. Even with numbers like 8on4 we would still lose. Eventually I learned to play and became a perma-red, and had 2x the amount of fun I had hunting reds and being blue. Sure I had the risk of stat loss.. and that alone made me more aware and better at pvp. Not to mention it completely immersed me into the game. Consider this type of story/situation before you completely just blow this game off simply due to a game mechanic.
Think whatever you want. To me, it's like players joining a PvP server and then crying that their town is under attack and they can't turn in any quests. Solution? Instanced battlegrounds. If you want open world PvP, then you should have the means to police it through player reputation. Game mechanics that are put in to superficially stem PvP are only band-aids to the real problem; Players do not want to team up with other players to stop the ganking/griefing. If you want gankers and griefers to suffer a penalty, then punish them yourselves. Show them it's not alright to play that way by making it hard for them to do it.
I understand the mechanics, and they are really not that bad. If it works for the majority of players, then it was a good decision. I just feel that the more mechanics that are put in place to deter players from interacting with each other (whether its ganking or policing) the less depth and community a game has. To me, MMORPGs are about banding together with other players for whatever reason. If game mechanics are put in place as a sort of government, then players have no need or even desire to work together much of the time, in my opinion. Good luck finding reds to hunt when there are only 1 or 2 around because of harsh superficial penalties.
There are already entire guilds running about. So your last point is null and void. Instanced PvP? You apparently don't have any idea how a game like this works. Ask yourself this, what did instanced PvP do to Warhammer Online and it's open-world design? If you answered, Instanced PvP completely destroyed the design plans because it left the PvP lakes empty of players.. than you would be correct.
In a world that is about so much more than PvP, this mechanic would be suicide for Starvault. This sort of thing would make the world dead. If there were no stat loss, murderers would have nothing to lose. They would still have cities, homes, and items to lose just like the rest of us. So, there has to be some penalty for living a live of being a D-bag. It would turn into more of a faction warfare otherwise. You'd either side with murderers or innocents. This is not what SV wants, it's not what a lot of the players want. If you want greifing with no consequences, go play Darkfall.
Can't wait until the Shooter games adopt these mechanics...
Talk about clueless
I can't help but agree about this poster being clueless. In my opinion it doesn't discourage PvP at all.. In fact it should increase the fun of pvp. One of the first things I ever did in UO (once I had a character worth while) was hunt reds with a guild I joined. We would have epic battles and most of the time we would lose to the reds. Even with numbers like 8on4 we would still lose. Eventually I learned to play and became a perma-red, and had 2x the amount of fun I had hunting reds and being blue. Sure I had the risk of stat loss.. and that alone made me more aware and better at pvp. Not to mention it completely immersed me into the game. Consider this type of story/situation before you completely just blow this game off simply due to a game mechanic.
Think whatever you want. To me, it's like players joining a PvP server and then crying that their town is under attack and they can't turn in any quests. Solution? Instanced battlegrounds. If you want open world PvP, then you should have the means to police it through player reputation. Game mechanics that are put in to superficially stem PvP are only band-aids to the real problem; Players do not want to team up with other players to stop the ganking/griefing. If you want gankers and griefers to suffer a penalty, then punish them yourselves. Show them it's not alright to play that way by making it hard for them to do it.
I understand the mechanics, and they are really not that bad. If it works for the majority of players, then it was a good decision. I just feel that the more mechanics that are put in place to deter players from interacting with each other (whether its ganking or policing) the less depth and community a game has. To me, MMORPGs are about banding together with other players for whatever reason. If game mechanics are put in place as a sort of government, then players have no need or even desire to work together much of the time, in my opinion. Good luck finding reds to hunt when there are only 1 or 2 around because of harsh superficial penalties.
It has been proven time and again - player policing does not work. Though a wonderful pipe dream, it just doesn't work, at least for a game that isn't 100% PvP.
In a game world with meaningless flagging, ganking/griefing becomes far and away the dominant "player interaction". So much so, in fact, that it severely undermines every other type of desired player interaction. That's what AV failed to understand with Darkfall, and SV is trying to avoid in MO.
A lack of in-game laws doesn't not result in freedom - it results in anarchy, in chaos. In such an environment, only the murderer is allowed to engage in his style of play - everyone else's style of play will be subordinate or non-existent.
Comments
No thats chaos. ^^ Anarchy is simply the absence of a coersive government . But I must say that I'm not really surprised that even though it was advertized as a FFA full loot gankfest, that they have done something to protect their business model.
Is it a game or is it a world? http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gamevworld.shtml
a world first, and a game second. The social aspects also fall secondary to this. Hence the lack of easy-to-implement, obvious social enhancers such as long-distance communication, embedded mail system, and global chat spaces. All of these things are major social enhancers, but (usually) outside the fiction and reductive of a game OR world experience.
One reason btw why we went with this approach was that a focus on world tends to capture the "explorer" types as Bartle defines them, or in Bettelheim's terms, encourages open-ended play. Or to put it in other words, having a varied, evolving setting (even though it only evolves in that "middle layer" of NPCs/creatures/economy) encourages roleplay, encourages exploration, encourages alternate styles of achievement, and rewards it with changed circumstances rather than with a milestone.
The problem with "game" style design in a mud setting is that you run out of game. Games are finite. In a fiscal sense, you wanna keep folks around as long as possible, of course, to get their money, and the more "infinite" the game is, the better. Remember that most mudders only play for around 3-6 months, and even dinos tend to give up after 2 years or so.
One reason why there may be so many ["game-oriented" text muds] is that when you beat one, but have not exhausted the desire to play, you must find another, so that you have fresh milestones to conquer. Many muds try to compensate for this by adding levels, races, and other small milestones (beat the game as a thief! Beat it as an elf! We have 10,000 levels--at which point the milestones become insignificant or repetitive enough to be meaningless).
It is difficult for a player of any (using game in a broader sense now, as in game design, as opposed to "game"-style design, boy I hope that made sense) to make the transition between methods of approaching the game. For one thing, not many games have the flexibility to be played in truly different ways. One of the reasons why Sid Meier is a master game designer is that he has a knack for open-ended play that has milestones that can be freely ignored. Yet it is rare to see a Civ player who plays once for conquest and again for cooperation and again for mastery of a particular area and again for social stability etc etc etc... the game design supports it, the individual player does not. But the audience does.
A question for those more experienced in the MO flagging:
From what I understand ANYONE can loot corpses currently. Now I have read (and it was a thread with Osmunda in it) that currently anyone is allowed to loot any corpse. So if I kill a mob (or player), JoeBob can walk up and loot the stuff. I have no recourse except to let him have it.. or attack him and turn grey or red.
Is this currently the way the game works? Is this an acknowledged bug (anyone have a link where SV states that)? Is this functioning as designed? Any links to further explain?
http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/46130-wtf-can-you-do-about-loot-griefers.html
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
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I really dont understand. Honestly. Chaos is a state of extreme disorder. How can there be an emphasis on Chaos when the mechanics of the game involve an active implementation of order, or attempt at order with a ruleset that delivers a consequence to overtly unprovoked aggression?
How is it a chaos simulator?
I can easily poke holes into your counter-point as well. Can you raid murderer towns? Yes. Good point. But, why would NPC's sell their wares at a higher price? If anything, they should be lower. It would be more realistic for a criminal to bully the NPC's into giving them access to their wares for significantly less or even free. So I agree on the selling items for less idea, but not on the buying items for more because it isn't realistic, since we're going that route as well. About the higher learning, are you trying to say murderers are like lumbering ogres? Some of the most imfamous murderers of all time are some of the most intelligent people in the history of the world. Why should MO's murderers be any different? Why can't they teach people skills as well? There is no alignment system currently in MO, so that won't work.. and the idea that murderers can't use 'good' weapons and armor is 'anit-sanboxy', again since we're going for realism here.
Limits must be put in place. If there are no limits, things turn into complete anarchy. If you don't like the stat loss, then think of something better that could take it's place. Otherwise, don't be a PK. This is not a new system, In Ultima Online you took stat/skill loss as well. Considering MO is going to have thievery as well as house destruction, the PK penalties could be even worse and it still wouldn't deter people from doing it. MO didn't have house destruction and PK'ing was still a problem.
You must keep the sheep happy. When a game is full of wolves and nothing else.. they end up quitting of boredom and the game dies. How many times have we seen this now?
It's not a bug, it is working as intended. You can loot anything, no matter who or what it was killed by. Now, if that player was blue(innocent), you can only open the bag without turning grey. If you loot from a blue player, you become grey.
As far as mobs go, they are pretty much all grey.. so you just need to be quick or keep yourself at a distance between anyone looking suspicious. Make sure you keep your murder count low, so if someone is being a d-bag, let 'em have it.
LOL fact is, if there is over a certain griefer to player ratio, a game dies as newbs can't get anywhere. So who didn't want to be a griefer at some point in life? This is a system to keep it in check.
Is it a game or is it a world?
Whoa, so you can’t personally convey your own impression as to why its not a pvp environment? Yet you take thought from someone else about another game and apply it here and essentiall call this a sandboxy social world/environment.
Okay, as intended, it is a world, a social environment, that is influenced by players. Interesting you completely glossed over why it isnt a pvp game. Since it is a player-influenced game and environment in the grand scheme of things. One cant say its not a player influenced environment when the environment is, well, influenced by players; pvp.
Mortal Online being open-ended play, can roll 3 characters, has a varied, evolving setting outside and free of the influence of npc’s, that is not goverened by developers, yet still a development in-process, encourages roleplay at the discretion of the players, encourages exploration, encourages alternate styles of achievement without entitlements but rewards that have to be achieved based on ones interaction with the tools, resources, and elements within the confines of game-play, of which situational circumstances can have an impact (being players).
Essentially from what I gather is that there is dynamic player influential rather than linear content which transcends an endgame stopgap, involving continuous cooperative and competitive amusement; an open-ended end-game.
So as a non-finite game or world, “gamin” is not run out of. The more infinite, or open-ended as with the MO approach, the better sustainment I suppose.
So yea. MO is more than a game, but an experience that is influenced by players interacting with other players cooperatively and competitively in trades, resourcing, manufacturing and combat, etc. It isnt a “game-oriented" text mud that when you beat one, and have exhausted the desire to repetitively play the same one linearly over and over but with a different character, you must find another. MO is much more dynamic than that.
MO is a massively multiplayer, which is far more than one can say for most other supposed mmo’s, game which places the emphasis on the players and players freedom of choice. It’s a Sandbox based engine, unique/engaging environment, emphasizes organic growth through personal and social endeavors, and delivers player-centric content, dynamic features over linear content.
So thanks for allowing me to think for you. Yes, in short; MO can be thought of as a PvP game.
PvP orientated maybe but you should be able to log in without being killed every minute by griefers.
Sorry my eloquence fails to live up to your standards.
Mortal online derives much of it's inspiration from Ultima Online (pre-trammel). Therefore, I thought that an essay from the lead designer of UO during that time period might be appropo.
In short MO can be thought of as an economics game.
In short MO can be thought of as an exploration game.
In short MO can be thought of as achatroom with scenery.
The flagging and stat loss system gives you at least some control over how much PVP you experience if you don't want to experience it as a PVP game. Without consequences for non-consensual PVP, the PVP dominates the entire game (ala Darkfall)
I think the debuff is a little harsh too. Maybe an hour or 30 mins or something. Make it cumilitive, but with diminishing time added.
Say first 1 is 1 hour, second is 1hr45mins, and so on. Not neccessarily start it on the first kill, but maybe the 4th or something. Since it is that many kills, maybe 2 hours then diminish from there.
What some people don't seem to understand is that if there are no consequences for griefing, no one could play the game in the end.
statloss is not a debuff. It's permanent (though you can train the skill back up)
P.S. If people really want to review the issue here is the 51 page thread with Dev commentary. http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/3191-red-stat-loss-read-vote.html
Ouch...
That does hurt!!!
How hard is it to get back those stats you lost?
***Edited***
If it takes similar time to what I was talking about above then that would seem ok, alteast to me...
Well said.
A game full of PK and griefing without concequence is a dead game. Period!
We have seen it over and over and over again.
A company cannot survive on assholes alone. As those assholes will be gone, the moment there is no one left to PK / grief.
SV, just like any other company, want to make money in the end. That's all what counts. So they put this system in place to achieve the highest amount of happy players (equals subs = money!) who can enjoy themselves.
@ slippyc Depends on the skills, but from developer comments, their target is about 6-8 hours to fully retrain.
Thanks for link!!!
Originally posted by andrew24p[/i]
"but the whole reason i bought this game was so that my friends and i could run around killing people and stealing their stuff. "
Heres your problem..............
This post is getting very long and I did not finish reading it all so excuse me if this has already been asked and answered:
1) Do you incur these penalties even if the fight is a fair fight i.e.: 1vs1, same lvl or just greif/ganking?
2) Where can I find the rules that define "Open World" games that some of you are citing as fact?
That's what I like about MO over Darkfall, in MO you're punished for being a wanker or atleast have to be a good player with some good buddies to avoid the consequences. Really the OP needs to just suck it up and wait out the timer then regain his stats and chalk it up to experience. The next time he decides to be an asshat he might ask first if there are any consequences for doing so, if you don't like that system then there's always the game that shall not be mentioned!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
REALLY?
I linked that mostly to illustrate that this has already been discussed ad nauseum. That thread alone is 60 pages (51 was apparently just the page it was showing me to get near the end of the thread. There were several other threads on the subject also, that is just the longest one.
If you seriously want to read though, here is a link to the single most important link on stat-loss and MO. http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/3150-pk-stat-loss-3.html#post63083 One of the developers (Mats persson) explains why they decided stat loss is needed.
I got nothing to say as i like the system they have choosen.
I wish some other companys with some other game would aswell have balls to try such system!
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Think whatever you want. To me, it's like players joining a PvP server and then crying that their town is under attack and they can't turn in any quests. Solution? Instanced battlegrounds. If you want open world PvP, then you should have the means to police it through player reputation. Game mechanics that are put in to superficially stem PvP are only band-aids to the real problem; Players do not want to team up with other players to stop the ganking/griefing. If you want gankers and griefers to suffer a penalty, then punish them yourselves. Show them it's not alright to play that way by making it hard for them to do it.
I understand the mechanics, and they are really not that bad. If it works for the majority of players, then it was a good decision. I just feel that the more mechanics that are put in place to deter players from interacting with each other (whether its ganking or policing) the less depth and community a game has. To me, MMORPGs are about banding together with other players for whatever reason. If game mechanics are put in place as a sort of government, then players have no need or even desire to work together much of the time, in my opinion.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
There are already entire guilds running about. So your last point is null and void. Instanced PvP? You apparently don't have any idea how a game like this works. Ask yourself this, what did instanced PvP do to Warhammer Online and it's open-world design? If you answered, Instanced PvP completely destroyed the design plans because it left the PvP lakes empty of players.. than you would be correct.
In a world that is about so much more than PvP, this mechanic would be suicide for Starvault. This sort of thing would make the world dead. If there were no stat loss, murderers would have nothing to lose. They would still have cities, homes, and items to lose just like the rest of us. So, there has to be some penalty for living a live of being a D-bag. It would turn into more of a faction warfare otherwise. You'd either side with murderers or innocents. This is not what SV wants, it's not what a lot of the players want. If you want greifing with no consequences, go play Darkfall.
It has been proven time and again - player policing does not work. Though a wonderful pipe dream, it just doesn't work, at least for a game that isn't 100% PvP.
In a game world with meaningless flagging, ganking/griefing becomes far and away the dominant "player interaction". So much so, in fact, that it severely undermines every other type of desired player interaction. That's what AV failed to understand with Darkfall, and SV is trying to avoid in MO.
A lack of in-game laws doesn't not result in freedom - it results in anarchy, in chaos. In such an environment, only the murderer is allowed to engage in his style of play - everyone else's style of play will be subordinate or non-existent.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.