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Embers of Caerus Announced as Name of Forsaken Studios Sandbox MMO
Rohn
Member UncommonPosts: 3,730
Comments
the page of the company: http://www.forsakenstudios.com/
and here an engine test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5--1rZR7VTo
It has a great look, even though this is very early for them.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Open PvP with full loot yet again. When will someone make a sandbox that isn't going to turn into a gankfest?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Tringy? WHY? That engine had a horrible sdk. I guess it was a slightly better option than the only mmog solutions Hero Engine (looks like the same technical graphics capabilities, and Big World Tech, slightly outdated on graphics. As for the mmog solutions, Hero Engine is far superior in scripting with HeroScript interface than Big World Tech with the python interface. Although Hero Engine is more tightly closed, Big World Tech has more server features and stability. Tested, and approved. And as for any indie title for mmog, they look to be cattering to EU more than USA. If they were even being serious about a US Regional development, they would have announced cultural gameplay WE want, instead of dead and recycled content pulled from other games.
I struggle not with life, money, emotions, and world, but against old mindsets and selves to be proven obsolete in a age and time of rapid changes. Go create fun, so you can have fun.
Ahhh yet another sandbox game that will end up being a niche game. Anytime I see FFA PvP with full loot it just ruins the concept from the start for me.
Also, the visuals look pretty generic to me. Not to say they are terrible or anything, but looked a bit dated almost.
LOL! Very true. Where the hell did these developers get the idea that open pvp with full loot is what we want in a sandbox? I bet my gaming future this game goes about as far as DFO and MO does. The number of people that REALLY want that sort of gameplay is an extremely small niche of the market. Sure, we all like to pretend we are Mr./Mrs. Badass until reality steps in after a month and we unsubscribe from said sandbox games.
Power to the Sheeple
Yeah it's actually pretty frustrating. I don't know why all these developers think they HAVE to have open PvP and full loot to make a sandbox game.
There are so many ways to still have that "open" sandbox feel in terms of PvP without just having no holds barred. Make restricted PvP areas like Eve. Make the penalties for "murder" very very harsh. Something. Don't just make it a free for all.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
these features alone dont make sandboxes into gankfests, its the lack of easily attainable social advantage. in games where pvpers and gankers can rely on the thrill of the kill as incentive enough, but there really not being any point for none gankers to organize into towns and communities, creates the unbalanced and mean sinkhole that most sandboxes get mired in.
i totally support open pvp, full loot and even perma death. its the pointless toil and indefensible doom of players being killed by scores of gankers with no option beyond becoming a ganker to fight back. that makes these games unfun.
if being in a town, or crafter affiliation gave you a boon or buff or somthing, or if there were clearly established ganker classess, the game could be built from the bottom up to suit both player styles. i like being a crafter/builder/social player in a open pvp games. just makes everything feel alittle more alive, if non ganker players had some huge advantage, like much faster leveling, or enhanced power in pvp only when attacked first, or somthing, this could go a ways to reconsile the playstyles and let both types have their cake and eat it.
Everytime I hear item loot, I roll my eyes. It's such a stupid mechanic that doesn't actually add 'fun' to the game. Embers of Caerus is simply one more game I will never consider playing.
I think the problem is that one "playstyle" is predicated on making the lives of all other playstyles a living hell. I mean, without crafters to go out and collect materials, who are gankers going to prey upon so that they can get their kicks?
In Darkfall players actually did what you say. They formed towns, banded together for protection etc, by using the guild cities. So you could basically join a guild and get a measure of protection...or at least be based further from the newbie areas where all the gankers congregated.
This still didn't solve the problem though. Because once you joined the guild, you may have been a bit safer from the run of the mill ganker, but you were exposed to the "politics" of the game. Your guild leader said something bad about a rival guild leaders mom? Well they would retaliate by camping your guild's hunting area and killing new players over and over again.
My feeling is that "ganker" should not be a valid playstyle that is supported. Open PvP fine, but it should be consensual 99% of the time. If a game wants to allow completely open PvP, then I think they really need to penalize "murder" VERY harshly to stop gankers. And if gankers cry about it, f$%k um, give them the same sympathy they show other players.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
well, its value is actually a pretty subjective measure. its not "stupid", its just so incredibly precise a type of of gameplay that it seems strange to NOT add options to turn pvp on or off, like in diablo 2.
simply playing a game to beat others is not stupid. its stupid dump money into developing a game that will drive away most of its playerbase. pvp and ganking is an amazing blast, if you like it.
not like this adds anything to the discussion, but those weird baobab-esque trees (the ones that were totally bare except for a weird crown of branches at the top) in the engine test creeped me out. that and they were ugly. on a slightly more constructive note: like many other commenters i'm not particularly interested in just another PvP FFA. for that i'm waiting for DF 2.0 to come out to see if aventurine can get their shite together.
proably full loot pvp with god awful FPS. no thanks.
They've yet to release much hard information about the game, including any controls on PvP and/or flagging.
Regarding flagging, they've said this: http://forums.forsakenstudios.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=36
Nothing definite there at all.
The vision statement gives an idea of what their goals are, but they state that not everything may be possible.
The vision: http://forums.forsakenstudios.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=53
This game is still probably several years away. It might be best to wait and see what systems they put in place before making assumptions.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Shrug.. yet another "Everyone else done it wrong, we will do it right" FFA PvP sandbox.. While the vision sounds like a dream coming true in theory, it is no different from what I've read on MO, DF and bunch of other indie mmos, and we saw how it worked out for them..
All the ranting aside, best of luck to the devs, I guess the market could use another non themepark mmo.
now that ive actually checked out the game a bit, im intrigued....
as intrigued as i was when mortal was in the same stage of development. while i do think that a game will be able to deliver traits like this (without failing to prevent endless bugs) i just cant be bothered to take any game seriously until its been released for at least 2 years.
i think sandbox is the wrong word for games like these. id sooner call them persistant world FPS, or somthing along those lines. these game write these beautiful and alluring descriptions, but dont seem to have any understanding that gameplay direction needs to be built in at every layer. it is always such a shame to see a product that people laboured over for so long just be upended and dumped out on the ground for the lowest common denominator of player to come by and take advantage of.
adding features like, troops of NPC guards patroling the country side, or prexisting roles like king or high priest that people can formally compete for.
in in real sandboxes, you dont just dump a bunch of kids in one, along with all the tools to build a vast array of weapons and just leave them to it.
Some information from the game's creative director regarding FFA full-loot PvP:
Re: Full loot/Open Pvp
"Quick Stats
Name: Embers of Caerus
Genre: Medieval Fantasy MMO
Style: Sandbox
PvP: Open with full loot
Camera Perspective: First Person"
http://forsakenstudios.com/prods.php
In short, yes there will be open pvp with full loot. But as I have sad many many times now to try to belay fears that the game will be over-run and become a gank-fest, we have several systems and plans in the works to ensure there are 'safe' areas, just not in the typical "this is a blue town, don't do anything or the guards will one shot you" fashion. It's quite a bit more deep than that. Also, there will be ways for players to create new 'safe' areas, but more on that later;)
On another note, welcome to our forums!
Rob Steele
Creative Director
Posts: 95
Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2011 4:29 am
http://forums.forsakenstudios.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=107#p1048
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
More from their creative director on the subject of PvP:
Re: Optional PVP status, toggled in character selection
Sadly such a system probably wouldn't work well... thankfully, it won't be needed. We have a lot of systems, mechanics and plans for preventing the wide spread ganking that is common in other open-pvp games.
Eve is a good example that it is possible to curb a lot of the random killing, and they did so with a pretty simple and straight forward security rating on their areas. We're going a few steps further than that and even putting controls of security into players hands.
Basically our outlook on this is that the bad reputation for open-pvp games comes not from the fact that it is open pvp, but from poor implementations, designs or short-sighted visions regarding how to prevent the pvp from becoming overwhelming, particularly to those players who aren't in the sandbox world for pvp. Trust me when I say we fully understand the desire of many players revolves around non-pvp aspects and we are actually focusing more on those aspects than pvp itself. Many members of our team actually hail from guilds and communities of players that focused largely on things that were not pvp related, and they would probably mutiny if for one second they thought we were making a free-for-all where the average "carebear" couldn't have fun in the world.
I sit here and read all the comments on various sites about the open-pvp status of the game, all of the concerns, the complaints, and even the people who become borderline irate over the fact that yet another game developer is making an open pvp sand box, and I just shake my head. I don't blame them, or even fault them for those views, but I do believe they are biased based on the track record of such games and not giving us a fair chance by just dismissing the game. I can't expect much as we haven't released much in the way of design details, and really can't at this point in development. In time however, we will start to release more info regarding this and many others systems.
In the mean time, I hope it is sufficient, for most of you, to hear it from me as Creative Director: Embers of Caerus will not be a gank-fest, free-for-all with nothing but meaningless and mindless slaughter.
http://forums.forsakenstudios.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&p=1062#p1062
Granted, creating a perfectly balanced system that appeals to both the harcore PvPer and the PvEer/casual player, that also is not abusable, is much easier said that done. So far, they've given no specifics, but at least they do acknowledge they are well aware of the issue, and are designing the game from its foundation to have a wider focus than just PvP.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
It is frustrating. The ultimate problem is that the company values the revenue from that 10% of the population that causes all the problems too much to actually do something about it. The companies need to ban problem players permanently. This doesn't apply to one character, or even one account. This should apply to anyone from that household.
But the companies want to protect that revenue so much that they are lenient. They choose not to punish that minority of their customers and risk the loss of the 40-50% of the population base that are negatively impacted by the loose behavior of the problem player. This attitude just makes no sense from a business or a fair-play perspective.
Are the companies afraid of negative publicity when a banned player posts the inevietable 'I wuz banned' post on forums such as these? Why can't the company engage in a bit of pro-active PR themselves? Explain why someone was banned, when this action took effect, etc. Explain that they took this action to protect its player base, and to make the game more fun for more people.
Companies do have the power to refuse service to people. MMO companies need to start using this power with a little less restraint than they have shown in the past.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I don't think they should ban players for ganking. I mean, that's basically banning players for playing the game. The problem isn't that players are ganking in the game. The problem is that the game is conducive to and richly rewards ganking.
To solve the problem, change the way the game works. Make it so ganking isn't profitable and can be very detrimental.
How does that phrase go...ah yes!
Don't hate the player, hate the game
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Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
When I purposed of ways to make sandbox more mainstream and not niche gankfests, the sandboxers called me a theme park noob and said I didn't know what a sandbox really is...
I don't know if there is an audience for non-niche gankless sandbox MMOs. You don't see them being created at all. The Sims Online closed down, Star Wars Galaxies became a theme park and is closing down ... the future doesn't look too bright for people who like this genre of sandbox... There are a lot of social sandbox MMORPGs and a few crafting sandobx MMORPGs, but none with social, crafting, AND gankless fighting all included (since pre-CU SWG).
I really wish developers would consider that this playstyle of open PVP -full loot is such a deterrent that it seems that It has nothing to do with how controlled the experience is and how harsh the penalties for gankers are, creative players will alwsys circumvent those penalties the best they can, and they're generally the type to come out ahead. Hope they enjoy the fact that at best they may have 100k uesers and decline into a 5k-25k subscriber base because of that design choice.
I noticed people saying they didnt like the full loot and pvp. Ironically ArchAge is going the more consentual route and people are bashing it for not going full loot.
Have we seen a sucessful sandbox game that doesn't have FFA-PVP?
At the height of Star Wars Galaxies, during pre-CU, subscriptions were at 300,000. That's pretty successful for a sandbox game.