Forgive me, Woody

[Sergo]

But Silky Venom devtracker is now my home page. Add me to the list of people who are addicted to a game they haven't played yet.

Oloh's posts have induced me to throw my normal game-in-development reservations to the wind. The M:tG style combat will make Vanguard an order of magnitude better than second generation games. Now if they can just rip off A Tale in the Desert's community building projects (and make them mean something, unlike Horizons) we can dispense with third generation talk and go directly to fourth, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 dollars.

[Orlun]

Thats quite a statement and a good dream to have Sergo.

[Havelock]

But I really want to collect $200.

[Skarlath]

200$ is the Bael'Zharon.

The combat examples Oloh has divulged would have had the same effect on me, if I wasn't already at max-hype (but in an 'expectations fully managed' way, naturally). If Sigil's diplomacy and crafting systems are anywhere near as good then the game will destroy competition, Im sure.

I agree with you about the community building projects - so much potential there. Can't wait to find out more when the time comes for Sigil to thow us more sauce. :)

[Elrar (of Silky Venom)]

For those who've never played a tale in the desert, or Horizons, what is this community building project?

But, I agree, this hype is far too much to ignore, especially when the sauce keeps reaffirming it :)

[Karalin]

Hi,

I too really liked Oloh's write up on the Combat system, and I've spent a lot of time wondering how Bards are going to fit into it :)

Oh, must be my first post - hi everyone.

[Labyrrinth]

Hi Karalin!

Welcome to SV :) :)

[Elrar (of Silky Venom)]

Hi,

I too really liked Oloh's write up on the Combat system, and I've spent a lot of time wondering how Bards are going to fit into it :)

Oh, must be my first post - hi everyone.

Firstly, welcome!

And I too am a lover of bards :)

To help with confidence boosting however, Talisker, the person bestowed with the task of adventuring class development, played and loved being a bard back in EQ. He's expressed to me his love for the class, and his drive to do them justice in Vanguard.

We'll have to wait and see, but I think we're all in for something special ;)

[Karalin]

Firstly, welcome!

And I too am a lover of bards :)

To help with confidence boosting however, Talisker, the person bestowed with the task of adventuring class development, played and loved being a bard back in EQ. He's expressed to me his love for the class, and his drive to do them justice in Vanguard.

We'll have to wait and see, but I think we're all in for something special ;)

Please don't say any more, the waiting is bad enough as it is ;)

But as someone that played a Bard from Kunark through to PoP, I don't bother if Bards are underpowered, as long as we're fun :)

[Havelock]

Hi Karalin! :)

[Skarlath]

Hey Karalin! Welcome to Silky Venom - Your one stop shop for all things Vanguard! Are you a new member to the Vanguard community as a whole, or just to SV? If it's the former: Delight yourself with the magical workings of the wiki (http://wiki.silkyvenom.com/index.php/Main_Page)! If the latter, I hope you'll be sticking around to discuss all the juicy titbits we've been getting recently. :)


For those who've never played a tale in the desert, or Horizons, what is this community building project?


Well have never spent much time in ATitD and have never tried Horizons, but this is what I know.

In ATitD the game can be won. You win by completing the challenge of building all of the monuments. Construction in ATitD takes the form of a variety of disciplines (of which I am not too clued up about). Different players will specialise in certain areas of crafting as they progress, and the construction of the monuments requires all different areas of crafting. The construction of monuments (and many of the larger building projects) is a huge task. It requires many many many players to take part. People chip in, gathering, crafting sub-components, components and finally it culminates in the finished product.

Lots of people play ATitD, and yet crafting is all there is. If you press these players for information they will cry out that they play for the love of the community. Everyone working together, helping each other progress towards a common goal.

In Horizons, you can build houses, and I believe some other buildings too. These can be fairly large projects. Not only do they require resources, but they also require a fair amount of a player's time. I'm not quite sure what the player has to actively do specifically to 'advance' the building project, but I know that it goes faster if multiple people are working on it at one time.

And so when people want to build a community, you will see them all helping each other out. Often people contract drifters in to help work on their house. Some people don't want to have to put in the time, and so they earn money and pay others to do some of the work for them.

Alas, housing in Horizons apparently isn't all that useful.

Now an interesting part of Horizon's construction are community projects, separate to housing. I can't list a whole range of these, but from what I hear they are more like events. I believe I once heard of an event where a new island was found off the coast. For one reason or another, to defeat the new evil on this new island, the players had to build some sort of bridge out to the island. So you had the whole community helping out - crafters setting to work on the bridge and more combat orientated characters fighting off the really tough new bad guys who were determined to see the project come to a halt.

Horizon players often become misty-eyed when they talked about community projects, so their devs must have some something right!

Horizons has a 14 day free trial on at the moment. I might give it a go whilst I wait for that magical yet elusive email - for quite a while I have wanted to try out the crafting system which many deem 'the best yet'.


But, I agree, this hype is far too much to ignore, especially when the sauce keeps reaffirming it :)

Did you hear the recent announcement from Sigil? They have had to lay off most of their community relations staff as expectations have just become impossible to manage in light of the fantastic dribbles of sauce we have been getting. ;)

[Elrar (of Silky Venom)]

Hey Karalin! Welcome to Silky Venom - Your one stop shop for all things Vanguard!...
...Did you hear the recent announcement from Sigil? They have had to lay off most of their community relations staff as expectations have just become impossible to manage in light of the fantastic dribbles of sauce we have been getting. ;)

Thanks for explaining :) It does sound very interesting, and I may try that trial as I'm bored as well, and UT2k4 while entertaining, doesnt give me the same satisfaction or involvement an MMO can, regardless of how bad said MMO is :p

and as the CR team leaving thatd be terrible!

You cant get rid of Cindy and Glip :D theyll just ride the saucy river until it dries up...for now :p

[Skarlath]

For those interested, the Horizons site has a small amount to say on its construction:

Personal Property (http://www.istaria.com/page.php?pg=abouthorizons&mid=community&nav=community&sec=1),Community Buildings (http://www.istaria.com/page.php?pg=abouthorizons&mid=communitybuilding&nav=community&sec=1), Artifacts (http://www.istaria.com/page.php?pg=abouthorizons&mid=artifacts&nav=community&sec=1) and Emprire Structures (http://www.istaria.com/page.php?pg=abouthorizons&mid=empirestructures&nav=community&sec=1).

In the empire structures section they actually mention the island bridge example that I had heard about.


I might download the client tomorrow, I have just been playing Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory to get my gaming fix. If you want we could have a go at it together (along with any other Silky Venomers who'd like to try it out). Often with games that are a little bit old is there isn't anyone to enjoy it with, so playing it together might be a good solution. :)


And I don't think it would even be possible to get rid of Glip and Cindy - they are just intrinsically 'Sigil' and are just way too cool. :D

[Orlun]

If I wasn't going to be gone the next week, I'd take you up on that. I played Horizions from release day for a month. It would be cool to see how they've changed it. If you do play, take note of the way the races start together. Yech!

[Elrar (of Silky Venom)]

well I'm downloading it now, cause I'm bored :p

Though I can wait till tomorrow to play, plenty of other things to do :)

[Skarlath]

Hehe, what time zone are you in?

[Elrar (of Silky Venom)]

Eastern

[Sergo]

Thats quite a statement and a good dream to have Sergo.

My expectations are recklessly unmanaged.

Horizons and Tale both had enormous community building projects which Skarlath described pretty well. Tale did it better on a couple of fronts. Both games involved scores of players in each massive construction.

In Horizons, there didn't feel like there was much payoff for the projects. Most single player buildings were nonfunctional back when I played, and the really mohunkin' huge projects often didn't feel to me like they were even worth doing. Some of them seemed to have no point (the island beyond the bridge was no big deal), and other times, devs weren't even ready with the content that the "wonder" (think Civ) was supposed to unlock. Players would finish something then have to wait a day or two for devs to flip a switch or do a patch or something. Killer for immersion and made the projects less exciting. Didn't feel like you were really changing the world.

Tale projects always unlocked some new technology or abilities that many people could take advantage of. I still remember successfully creating a very rare gem cut to donate to a serverwide project. It was a tradeskill that required player skill as well as time invested going through rough gems at the cutting table, and I was very proud of it.

In both games, though, projects were major community events. Leaders emerged who excelled in organizing people. Others became renowned for their contributions in a particular trade. And many many people did at least a little bit. Excitement built around the project. You made new friends and earned respect.

Vanguard doesn't NEED these kind of massive-scale projects to be a good game. But if they can nail it, they will blow people away.

[Orlun]

Epic Crafting comes to mind. Structures so big and recipes so complicated that they most likely need to be broken down into seperate steps, each taking teams of crafters.

/drool

[Elrar (of Silky Venom)]

Ok well, Horizons downloaded, installed, patched, and I play, I'm runnin around with my lil baby dragon, and It crashes, the game refuses to function, and it aint me :p

so I guess there goes the Horizons idea!

and btw Sergo, that sounds really awesome, I hate crafting, but thats really cool :)

[Therian]

I'm really looking forward to seeing the first successfully built player city to reach the top tech level. Player cities just sound so incredibly cool to me.

[Sergo]

there goes the Horizons idea!

Making dragons in the character generator is cool enough to justify downloading the free trial. They look really good.

[Skarlath]

so I guess there goes the Horizons idea!


Aww!

I guess Ill take it for a spin all the same, and hopefully my horizon adventure wont end the same way. :)

[Sergo]

I guess Ill take it for a spin all the same, and hopefully my horizon adventure wont end the same way. :)

I'll be interested to see what your impressions are.

[Skarlath]

Not wanting to change the course of the thread too much, I thought I would comment on how I feel about construction projects in terms of duration.

I think building a structure (let alone a town) should take a fair amount of time. Setting up tiny wood huts or Teepees (sp?) might take a short time, but constructing a european style house should take 3-7 days. A mansion should be a two week project, minimum.

A fair amount of time should be involved in resource gathering - housing should eat up a lot of resources. Another bunch of time in component crafting. However there should be a rather large element of 'labour' going into the final construction of the structure. The actual 'building', as it were.

It would be nice if there was some player skill in it - some mini-game-esque type idea. In theory something very similar to the rest of the crafting system. If you perform well then your building would have better stats - sturdier, needs less maintenance. That sort of thing. Additionally, if you perform well then the overall final construction time might be cut down a little. The player(s) should be expected to perform lots of sensible jobs around the building site, all in order. Friends helping out would speed things up a lot.

I just feel that housing should be a little more meaningful. People loved their houses in AC1 when they had to really try if they wanted to nab one. If players put effort into their houses, as well as taking part in their design and construction, then surely they will be far more attached to them. That sort of thing it good for player retention and all that.

The argument 'not everyone wants to have to craft for several hours on their building site to complete their house' doesn't really stand up. There is always someone who will help you out of you pass a few shinies their way. Or what about buying prebuilt housing? Im sure people would be happy to design and construct houses and then sell them on to rich adventurers. :)

[Sergo]

There is always someone who will help you out of you pass a few shinies their way.

That's a key part of the value of housing from a community perspective. In HZ, it was prohibitively time consuming to build your own house due to all the skillups needed. It's much faster to keep working YOUR trade for pay and then in turn pay other specialists to do the part of your house you can't do. I did all my own masonry and contracted out the carpentry and metalwork. I met quite a few people this way, and they in turn hired me or recommended me for other masonry jobs. Our guild pooled all our skills to constuct the first guild hall on the server, and that was a great feeling.

[Skarlath]

Vanguard is already taking measures to be a community game, it would be silly not to borrow ideas from Horizons.


No one crafting class will be able to make an entire ship, you will need help from other crafting classes, but Woodcrafter and Blacksmith both have trees that you can specialize for Ship components etc.


My current plan is that our carpenter will be the person who assembles the final ship, but look for every crafter trade to have a part in makings ships depending on size.

Sil


Here's a bit of sauce that might relate a little to housing, but just in regards to ships its interesting (but somewhat negative if I am interpreting it correctly).

Speaking entirely in terms of ships, this comment suggests that a ship will be created as a final 'crafted combine' of all the components. I was sort of hoping that ships (even small ones) would be constructed in a dry docks in a similar way to how I described house construction - somewhat labour intensive with players performing 'crafting' on a number of different jobs. Slowly, bit by bit building up the hull and such in front of them.

If ship building is just crafting the components into the final product, all in one go, then I fear that house building may be the same. Its a big leap to assume though, so I won't get myself too worried. :)

[Skarlath]

I downloaded the horizons 0.98mb client installer thing. I double clicky it and a box pops up:

Halt! We cannot allow thee to continueunt without warning - the publisher cannot be verified! Dust thou wish to continue?

Choice of 'Run' or 'Cancel'.

Cancel closes the box.

Run makes the mouse appear with an hourglass for 3 seconds, and makes the computer make "I'm doing it, I'm doing it!! Please don't kick me again!" noises. Then all is quiet and the installer does not launch.

Its a mini adventure.

Tried a restart. Tried running it without my firewall. Any ideas?

[Elrar (of Silky Venom)]

are you using IE or Firefox?

And make sure you've clicked install on the ActiveX controller prompts that will appear at the top of your IE browser window.

[Skarlath]

This isn't relating to the brower at all - I have already downloaded the installer. I just can't run it.

I had the bright idea (duh!) of checking whether it was even registering as a process. When I click 'run' it does start a process called HORIZONS_10 (The name of the file) but after a little while this just disappears. Grr.

[Elrar (of Silky Venom)]

No Horizons for J00 either :p

It wtf pwned both of us, not the best way to get new subscribers /laugh

[Skarlath]

No Horizons for J00 either :p

It wtf pwned both of us, not the best way to get new subscribers /laugh


Oo, I dunno. Im pretty hooked... maybe the full subscription will get us a service that works!!

[Sergo]

If ship building is just crafting the components into the final product, all in one go, then I fear that house building may be the same. Its a big leap to assume though, so I won't get myself too worried. :)

Yeah, there's lots of ways around that. You could leave a contstruction site up for days or weeks, and require a certain type of crafter to "wave the magic wand" as it were, once the site was full with all needed materials.

[Skarlath]

When a house was under construction in Horizons, what exactly did the crafter have to do? They gather the components, then what?

[Sergo]

Okay, prepare yourself for a shock: EQ2 did it better.

While Horizons (or maybe SWG, never played it) broke ground in making crafting a fully developed sphere of the game, rather than an afterthought, Horizons didn't make the actual combine process very interesting.

To directly answer your question, when I worked on my house, I first gathered the raw stone by clicking on a number of visible nodes sticking out of the ground. The nodes had spawn points just like monsters, so you knew where to look for them. I filled up on raw stone and trucked it all to a crafting shed. The higher level the stone, the farther it was, naturally, from any shed. There it was a matter of a few clicks, selecting recipes and executing them. Raw stone to bricks, bricks into blocks, then blocks had to be carried to the job site. Once there, click "apply" and those blocks are counted toward completion of the project. No skill or thought invovled anywhere, except for streamlining your transportation method to get the most per trip.

Although EQ2 crafting is denigrated as "whack-a-mole", it was more involved than that. Your "whacks" would buff the durability of your product, or move it more quickly toward completion. And you didn't have to wait for a mole to pop up, either, you could use the abilities at any time.

Once again, though, Tale wins hands down. Many kinds of crafting were a different sort of minigame. Making charcoal was very much like EQ2 turned out to be. You had a couple buttons you could push to control this or that, and you had a couple values you needed to keep your eye on. Gemcutting, my favorite, was totally different. You have an unrealistically huge (so you can see it) hunk of gem with numerous flaws. You had to turn it over, and study it, then start grinding at it, one layer at a time. If you planned wrong, or failed to see how the imperfections lay deep inside the stone, you could ruin the entire piece, or have to settle for a lesser cut. And you might go through scores of stones before finding one suitable for a very rare cut.

[Skarlath]

I didn't enjoy the EQ2 system. ATitD system (especially your gemcrafting example) seems cool. Especially as it relates to the actual task rather than being an abstract minigame.

So you know, SWG was a 'gather the components and click combine' system. The reason why many were reasonably happy was because it all laid in the preparation. There were different types of each resources (different woods for example, each with a number of different traits). Different traits were best for different items and so the skill came from minimising cost and maximising the stats.

When making components in SWG, the component would have different stats once made. When crafting these into a final product, the final product would assume a variety of traits according to the traits of the components, according to the traits of the resources. So using all the right materials and such was actually quite good!

[Loampounder]

I loved SWG crafting for having the components actually matter, and I hated EQ2 crafting for making components too bland.

In SWG, components were generalized in type (like conductive metal or insulative polymer). Within each type (and there were many types) was a specific material with quality traits (1-99, higher being better). So you could find type A with qualities X or qualities Y, and most importantly these qualities had purpose (better qualities make strong, better, or more of it). When we looked for resources, we actually cared what we found, in terms of qualities. The market changed by who found what where. One week I found some high quality avian bones, so I would hunt birds in that area. Next week I may scout around and find some high quality oil on another planet, so I mined that. I loved having a reason to explore and it felt good to interact with what crafters needed.

In EQ2, a carrot was always a carrot, and only a specific recipe called for carrots. A carrot was one of five things from a scrub, so you could not tailor your hunt. Worse, crafting yielded one of four goods, divided by quality. These different things did not stack. So I had bags full of partial stacks of resources and goods just to craft. Gathering resources and cooking became more of inventory management than experimentation.

I would love to see a system with the complexity of SWG resources and the cooperation of ATitD crafting.

[Skarlath]

Well the Vanguard devs talked about a 'grade' system for resources, didnt they? 'Grade A wood', 'Grade E Iron Ore'. Not quite as intricate, but it still allows for many of the possibilities in SWG.

If SWG had made the actual harvesting process a bit more interesting (as opposed to the scouting, which was often enjoyable), and had involved some player skill or at least involvement in the crafting (even in a minigame system like EQ2) then it would have been an absolutely top-notch system.

That ... and I would have liked to have seen a husbandry system running along side the bioengineer tree. :)

[Loampounder]

I always read the "grade" levels as probably something like the tiers in EQ2. The tiers really simplified the game to a ridiculous level. Grades A-E? I hope not.

And the SWG resources changed on a weekly basis. I loved that.

[Skarlath]

I always read the "grade" levels as probably something like the tiers in EQ2. The tiers really simplified the game to a ridiculous level. Grades A-E? I hope not.

And the SWG resources changed on a weekly basis. I loved that.

I actually agree with you. It would be disappointing if there wasnt a large variation in traits of resources.

Hopefully grades might apply to various traits. Perhaps a 'Flexability' trait for various woods could be rated A-E, and so on?