A few questions and concenrs :)

[Toxicmoon]

This is the first game I’d say in the last five years that has interested me enough to start following it’s progress. As such I wanted to express some concerns and see if anyone has heard anything.

Exploration
What’s the longevity of exploration, discovering new worlds and resources? Let’s say this game is a giant hit! We have millions of users shortly after lunch. Will there be anything left to discover? Or even years later?

Territory
References were made about EVE during the web cast. When I heard that the only thing I could of was territory control. Is this going to be like EVE where from lunch a few select groups take over large areas of space proventing the rest of the population from going there thus limiting your gaming experience and content for the life of the game?

PVP
Punishment/deterrent or supported system?

I love PVP games, but only those that do not have punishments while participating. It’s not because I can’t handle it. It’s that any game with punishments such as item or currency loss or rank is a deterrent.

I enjoy small scale battles, 1vs1, and 2vs2 nothing large scale is really appealing to me. I mean sure on a 100 vs. 100 I could take out 10 people but they were currently busy fighting someone else so it held no wealth or accomplishment for me to kill them. This is why I enjoy small scale battles.

Having a punishment system in place changes the entire game. People band together in large groups, setting traps (1 person acting as bait so when you jump them their 10 buddies come out and kill you). Or even more annoying if it is a fair fight they run.

I play PVP to duel to the death! Not chase them around until they reach a zone line or have other means of escape like bringing me to a hidden camp that’s a trap.

After experiencing punishment style PVP and the lack their of, I’ve decided that there is no possible way to enjoy myself in a system setup as such. So that is one of my primary concerns.

On paper it sounds nice to be rewarded for PVP and/or punished, it does sound appealing. But the cold hard reality of it is you’re not going to find any, and if you do it’s never on even terms. The hunt takes far too long to be rewarding leaving the experience and the fun written off as a complete loss.

Thanks!
-Tox

[Tamgros]

Exploration: procedurally generated (basically means that it's randomly made with some parameters) so it is pretty much limitless. When you explore you won't always see planets either. It sounds like this could be a pretty robust system. So yeah, theoretically you could do it forever.

Territory: This is a Faction game so I doubt one fleet would be able to control everything. If a fleet gets powerful on one faction, the whole other faction can put their efforts against the faction. I kind of doubt this will feel much like eve.

PvP: There are PvE only areas, they haven't really talked about the system, but there will be one. We shall see.

The punishment won't be much though. You may lose some ofyour lower deck crew and have to replace them when you rez bck at a star base. You definitely won't be totally losing your captain or any of the Officers on your ship (that act like NPC pets).

EDIT: just to expand on the pvp after reading yoru post again. It sounds like the risk/reward for battling in the neutral zone/contested ares will be in the actual win/loss itself. Wining will help yuo gain a resource, and losing will have you lose it and other scenarios like that. The pvp battles will have some objectives to them besides killing the other side. ie. Running away would be considered a loss and people don't have a lot of incentive to retreat. This obviously makes for some pretty good battles.

We still don't know the particulars of the system, that's juts my impression.

[OokieSpookie]

This is the first game I’d say in the last five years that has interested me enough to start following it’s progress. As such I wanted to express some concerns and see if anyone has heard anything.

Exploration
What’s the longevity of exploration, discovering new worlds and resources? Let’s say this game is a giant hit! We have millions of users shortly after lunch. Will there be anything left to discover? Or even years later?

Territory
References were made about EVE during the web cast. When I heard that the only thing I could of was territory control. Is this going to be like EVE where from lunch a few select groups take over large areas of space proventing the rest of the population from going there thus limiting your gaming experience and content for the life of the game?

PVP
Punishment/deterrent or supported system?

I love PVP games, but only those that do not have punishments while participating. It’s not because I can’t handle it. It’s that any game with punishments such as item or currency loss or rank is a deterrent.

I enjoy small scale battles, 1vs1, and 2vs2 nothing large scale is really appealing to me. I mean sure on a 100 vs. 100 I could take out 10 people but they were currently busy fighting someone else so it held no wealth or accomplishment for me to kill them. This is why I enjoy small scale battles.

Having a punishment system in place changes the entire game. People band together in large groups, setting traps (1 person acting as bait so when you jump them their 10 buddies come out and kill you). Or even more annoying if it is a fair fight they run.

I play PVP to duel to the death! Not chase them around until they reach a zone line or have other means of escape like bringing me to a hidden camp that’s a trap.

After experiencing punishment style PVP and the lack their of, I’ve decided that there is no possible way to enjoy myself in a system setup as such. So that is one of my primary concerns.

On paper it sounds nice to be rewarded for PVP and/or punished, it does sound appealing. But the cold hard reality of it is you’re not going to find any, and if you do it’s never on even terms. The hunt takes far too long to be rewarding leaving the experience and the fun written off as a complete loss.

Thanks!
-Tox

For pvp there HAS to be a risk, there have to be stakes or it is worthless.
While I agree that fighting someone and having them run to a zone line is irritating, what is even MORE irritating are people that die and immediately come running back because they really have nothing to lose.
Oh I may lose some stats for an hour...oh how terrible....
PVP combat should be scary, you should feel that fear and rush that you CAN die.
Games these days have it easy, yet the PVP is a sad joke.
In Ultima Online if you killed me, you had the chance to loot everything on my corpse that I was carrying.
It made people fight smart, use tactics and run like hell if they were in a bad spot.
Developers have gone soft not only in pvp but also in penalties for normal dying.

[BurrCO]

For pvp there HAS to be a risk, there have to be stakes or it is worthless.
While I agree that fighting someone and having them run to a zone line is irritating, what is even MORE irritating are people that die and immediately come running back because they really have nothing to lose.
Oh I may lose some stats for an hour...oh how terrible....
PVP combat should be scary, you should feel that fear and rush that you CAN die.
Games these days have it easy, yet the PVP is a sad joke.
In Ultima Online if you killed me, you had the chance to loot everything on my corpse that I was carrying.
It made people fight smart, use tactics and run like hell if they were in a bad spot.
Developers have gone soft not only in pvp but also in penalties for normal dying.

But only hardcore PvPers want this and there will most likely be one server. How do you fix that?

[KashikoiBaka]

But only hardcore PvPers want this and there will most likely be one server. How do you fix that?

You let them go play Diablo3 on Hardcore. There are going to be contested areas in the game where there are nice benefits for the side that controls them and considering what goes into these ships you may just be locked out of the contested zones while the battle is occurring if you've died. Prevents dead zerg rushing.

[Toxicmoon]

For pvp there HAS to be a risk, there have to be stakes or it is worthless.
While I agree that fighting someone and having them run to a zone line is irritating, what is even MORE irritating are people that die and immediately come running back because they really have nothing to lose.
Oh I may lose some stats for an hour...oh how terrible....
PVP combat should be scary, you should feel that fear and rush that you CAN die.
Games these days have it easy, yet the PVP is a sad joke.
In Ultima Online if you killed me, you had the chance to loot everything on my corpse that I was carrying.
It made people fight smart, use tactics and run like hell if they were in a bad spot.
Developers have gone soft not only in pvp but also in penalties for normal dying.

Sounds like we both want some of the same things. To best show, I’ll break down your thoughts.

For pvp there HAS to be a risk, there have to be stakes or it is worthless.
This I can’t entirely see eye to eye with. Only because we can take X game with 7 million subscribers that has a no risk system in place already. It’s the most popular mmo, the only one of which has a PVP system in place that is supportive not a deterrent one. Thus I can go and do anything and come across PVP quite often in fact I don’t even have to look hard for it. The outcome of win/loss was always enough thrill for me, and apparently a great many others.

Take a look at EQ2 pvp as an example that’s pretty much barren and deserted. Why? Check their forums and view the list of complaints about users leaving game because they can’t find any PVP.

Eve another example, they implemented a system called “Faction Warfare”. This was implemented to bring out all the care bears (non PVP players) out in the wild to fight. With the complaints and the lack of PVP and excitement due to the deterrent system of loosing your ship and goods. This was a band aid placed to address all of the complaints and bored pvpers.


People can’t handle a deterrent they don’t participate. When they do its blob vs. blob. Why I don’t see any value or fun factor in that type of warfare, I can appreciate that others may. I just ask that I’m presented with PVP and can easily find it while out in the wild to keep me entertained on my feet and enticed to play.


While I agree that fighting someone and having them run to a zone line is irritating, what even MORE is irritating are people that die and immediately come running back because they really have nothing to lose.

I agree with you here, mechanics such as travel time to return to said area that the battle took place would be good choice to prevent this.

Oh I may lose some stats for an hour...oh how terrible....
Too you or me, it’s no big deal. But I’m even surprised that no matter how small or minuscule the loss is, add that, and then it becomes a long day event seeking it out. I don’t log in to wait or farm days on end hoping to one day see PVP again, I want some excitement!

PVP combat should be scary; you should feel that fear and rush that you CAN die.
Anything instanced I bet we can both agree on has nether. However even on a system with nothing to loss (to keep the rest of the populating from bunching up to in giant fleets to protect their epeen and losses) when you are killed in a system with no loss. There was a reason why you were at said location where the battle took place. Given a resource, quest or mission. Now you must complete for said item/thing the winner takes all.

Games these days have it easy, yet the PVP is a sad joke.
Games have changed over the last ten years that’s for sure. PVP I’ve only found one game that was rewarding the rest it was too difficult to find an even match, so I’d have to agree it was in fact sad.


In Ultima Online if you killed me, you had the chance to loot everything on my corpse that I was carrying.

Never played that one. I can see it now however. I kill someone take all their loot and they will never go venturing out of the safe zone again without a zerg behind them. Then said zerg kills me and takes all my stuff. That sort of game play has never been very rewarding at least to me. Perhaps if I packed up in to a giant group of people with minimal risk it would feel more rewarding as all other games like this does. However as I stated already I’ve tried that and it holds no wealth regardless of there was in-game finical gain from it or not.


It made people fight smart, use tactics and run like hell if they were in a bad spot.
Right, large blobs singling out a single person or small group with odds only stacked in the large groups favor. Or hiding for some times a week irl in game until they clear out so you can continue your gaming session. I’m not going to knock it and say that this isn’t important to some people. But I could do so many more things and have so many more rewarding experiences on something else.



Developers have gone soft not only in pvp but also in penalties for normal dying.
Mainly because of the culture of America. Hard working fast paced environments everything must be done now. The time limitations and restraints to a society like that is no longer is appreciated or understood because of said restraints. For the record I am American.

Regardless if our opinions or experience on how it should be done or why it should be done may differ in a lot of key areas. If all of us could agree on just one thing I think well be set. That one thing being is providing a system that supports, and encourages both small and large scale battles that are easy to find. It doesn’t matter to me if there is loss associated by these battles. Just so long as it doesn’t impact a single person enough to prevent them from partaking in PVP. The primary important thing to me is that while out in the wild I will encounter fights with a single person or 2vs.2 often and have a fair small battle. Where as someone more in to fleet fights could partake in large scale battles and enjoy those experiences regularly as well.