What I think this game needs for longevitity.

[esudar]

ZOMBIES!!1

[joexxxz]

For example right now there is four seasons.
Right now there is rain, day, night.

Once i saw a player sleeping on the ground at winter times with no closes.
Mistake!!! He should of died, or got sick.

For example: i can store food (fish) in my bins for a million of years and it would not rot. Whats wrong with that? Lol

You dont need to add more content right now, but the first thing to do might help allot is to fix simple things like that.

Second there is rain, can the basket bins protect items from the rain, not really. Certain items in basket should decay faster after they get wet.
For example:
1 cloth : attribute:
moisture measure: 0 - dry, 10 - max wet
For example if you take your cloth and put it in the water for a period of longtime, when you get that cloth out, it should be easily torn appart.

Same here, if the moisture measure was allways high, then the decay is much faster.
Its just one example, food should also be decayed.
If this items were fixed right now, it would be more intresting to play.

Easiest way to give this game some direction... Item decay. Couple that with an area of the map that cannot be claimed and yields the highest quality materials and poof instant content.

As it stands there is no reason to leave the safety of your tribal territory. This is fine, but there needs to be a penalty for never venturing out. Perhaps if there was a placed that we all wanted to explore with the chance of gaining untold riches, we might have some interesting drama develop.


Many of you cry about griefing, but in reality the griefing is what will add the player driven content. This is a post appocalyptic survival scenario after all. There is no need for "dungeons". There is a need to encourage some conflict. Even if the combat it terrible.

Roxout please check my post, i have a few suggestions about that
http://www.xsyon.com/forum/showthrea...ll=1#post71296

[Vandali]

This thread has made me wanna return to UO. Those dungeon images bring back good memories, my provoker in the day loved the shadow wyrms beneath destard, high risk, high reward, something that is sadly lacking in this game at present.
Theres no risk, theres really no sense to the game(skilling system with leveling points, baffled) decay off making crafting useless, hopefully in six months they will have made this a challenging, but rewarding adventure, but currently that isn't the case.

[Delvie]

Basically it comes down to content - what the game needs is more content - there again we knew this going in. There is a huge list of promised features yet to be implemented, new land beyond the mist yet to be seen, not to mention a combat upgrade. Personally I love the game but I'm forcing myself to go slow - no point on getting everything to max 100 right now. The MMOs that I play release content on a regular basis - when the content dries up I move on, I expect most folks do the same.

I figure this week is the end of March, realistically I'm looking at a couple more weeks stabilizing systems, a push back of some of the mist, release of the rest of the animals, and hopefully sometime in May the release of Animal Taming and Cooking. I expect as the mist moves back there will be a mini land rush as some tribes up and move and we all spread out a bit more, don't expect a ton of mist to be pushed back - just enough to spread us out some.

This Fall I expect code will be implemented and changed and changed again as we work out how war and peace should really work. Don't kid yourself - this needs to be worked out in a way that a majority of the population can tolerate. Everything from seige times to what happens when a good aligned tribe member loots someone off their tribal lands. Realistically it's almost impossible to even start discussing the matter until gates, seige equipment, and the combat upgrade get worked out. Fall is probably too ambitious a time line as this will be a huge undertaking.

I don't expect Prelude to end until next year sometime. There are several more skills that need to be implemented and Religion. Hopefully when Prelude ends we'll have alternatives to junk piles and have worked out the warfare mechanics. Because at some point we have to figure out how to implement cities which is a whole different dynamic than a Tribal Town and will require political systems.

And then there are the other usability enhancements. Where do they squeeze in a decent chat system? What about fixes for the UI? What about moving the character delete button? A new location/compass system? One of my requirements for a game is WASD/Arrow key movements - Xsyon has that - great, but I didn't realize how much difference a good chat system can make until using this one. Changes to how Tribes are managed - allow us to create and keep tribes separate from totems so you don't have to completely reform when you want to move. etc. etc. etc.

So I'll be happy if every three months I can look back and see that progress has been made.

[mrcalhou]

Themepark. Dungeons are themepark content. Sure there can be dungeons in sandbox but to be a sandbox no dungeon can reward higher than other dungeons, they need to be lateral expansions. So they add a dungeon that gives you a +5 mace. A year later they add a new dungeon that rewards a +5 sword. Now you are all upset because the only difference between the +5 mace and the +5 sword is the graphic. So you want the new dungeon to offer a +10 sword. Now you don't want newbs starting fresh to have access to the +10 sword cause you spent 3 months trying to get the +5 mace, so you insist that players get the +5 mace before getting the +10 sword so it can be fair for the time you put into it and eventually you get WoW style raiding. hence themepark

Dungeons do not need to be homogenous across the board to the make the game a sandbox. Making the dungeons necessary for advancement would make the game a themepark. Allowing the players to choose if they should even bother doing it at all makes the game a sandbox.

Themepark. This game already does what you essentially want. I can be toolcraft 80 and some newb can load in and he can have a foragers bucket where I have yet discovered that recipe. That is pretty differentiated. However obviously you are not pleased with thus otherwise you would not have suggested this, so I can only assume you want some kind of ladder progression in tradeskills, enough to make everyone unique. As we all know, ladder progression is themepark, so you want a themepark skill progression.

Practically all of the progression I can think of is "ladder progression" depending on which way you look at it. I favor lateral progression which is what I meant by differentiated. Currently, crafting is lateral in the sense that you can choose any crafts you want to, but each craft only increases from 5-100 -- the current system is much closer to ladder progression. I'd want each craft to branch out laterally, as well as, vertically.

So you might have weapon crafters that choose to specialize in a particular weapon and then of these some might focus on heavy axes while some focus on light axes, then one of the ones focusing on heavy axes might decide that they would rather focus on damage per hit, while two might focus on swing speed and then one of the ones focusing on swing speed would want to focus on crafting an effect that has a % chance of occuring on hit while the other one focuses on an effect that gradually stacks (each one of these attributes would need some form of counter attribute to help keep some balance and prevent any one particular thing from being so OP that no one would use anything else). At the end of the day this is still "ladder progression" but at least it'll give you more rungs to pick from.

Never played Darkfall so here I can only assume you are correct in your analysis. However the limitedness of this game is not because of what players can and cannot do, but based on many 'features' have not been turned on yet. However, since I can create a homestead, dig a hole, abandon tribe and every other player in the game can stumble upon my hole I would say players have a big impact in the world.

There is that, though personally I find having to place a homestead to be an arbitrary limitation. What I mean by having an impact on the game world is territory conquest -- having to be able to hold and take areas, not just place a safe zone and call it a day. But you are right with this. People do have more of an effect on this game's world than in other games.

An MMO economy revolves around supply and demand. Right now since very few things are in-game there is very little demand for anything.

Yeah, and stuff doesn't break or wear out. There's little need to replace something unless what you have is taken by someone else, but then they don't need to replace it. Currently removing items entirely from the game isn't working. There's no demand because there's way too much supply.

Sub-skills and sub-sub-skills are all ladder progression and ladder progression is themepark. If you want to come into the game world cooking and do nothing but that, you do not need to master foraging and fishing to do so, you can just cook To have what you have requires a list of things that need to be accomplished and that is themepark. Where you need to do A and then B before you can do C. A Sandbox is if you want to do just C, then do just C.

I never said that you'd have to forage before you can cook. Cooking would be the skill. Cooking fish would be the sub-skill, frying trout would be the sub-sub skill

I read this as, since there isn't ladder progression aka themepark, the game encourages macroing. Which is untrue. Regardless if the game is sandbox or themepark, people will find a way to gain an advantage if one is available. What you are trying to do is say that since one thing exists, a themepark model is better to prevent this problem, when in fact it does not as it also currently exists in many MMO themeparks. This portion does not create a solution to the 'problem' you just spin it to make it sound like your idea will resolve the issue, which from evidence of many themepark mmos, it does not.

You read this wrong. The game encourages macroing because all you have to do is click the mouse and then wait. There's not other interaction necessary. It has nothing to do with the style of progressing. Just the way the player performs the progressions.

This is the irony of the whole post. You say "characters are too limited in how much players actually impact the game world.", "They need to add things to the game to make it less stagnate", and "An MMO economy revolves solely around consumables." but then go on saying they need to add resources quickly? Well which is it? If a player chops down a tree near your homestead then obviously you want that tree to grow back quickly so you can use that resource, which I assume is what you mean in this portion of the topic. A lot like frequent respawns in themepark mmos. Yet because this player chopped down a tree you need it is apparent that players do have a big impact on the game world. Because now that you have to wait weeks for that tree to respawn the game world is much less stagnate. Now you have to trade with that same player who cut down your tree to get the resources you need creates a demand for something in which he can supply, you ask for quick resources as they provide in theme park mmos.

Back to what I said. You are looking for the things that are provided in a themepark mmo, when this is a sandbox.

You assumed wrongly. What I said was that they need to add regional resources. That is a resource that appears in a specific region or regions. It has NOTHING to do with respawn rates. I just reread what I wrote, and I cannot fathom how you managed to come to the conclusion you did regarding what I said about resources.

They need to add regional resources to encourage people to trade and leave their homestead. Practically everything is made from junk right now and you can find junk everywhere throughout the map. One place in the game world is pretty much like any other place and once you plop your safe zone over a junk pile you're pretty much set for a while.

[Sorakin]

Basically it comes down to content - what the game needs is more content - there again we knew this going in. There is a huge list of promised features yet to be implemented...

^ This. the arguments about sandbox, themepark blah blah blah are stupid. What you label a game makes no difference if it doesn't even have the content. We are missing content, so people want more. What kind of content they add is up to the devs. Would uber-zombies spawning in the mists and attacking tribes be theme-park or sandbox?!?!?! Who cares... it's content and I approve either way.

The OP is right about one thing, we need more content.

Everyone here must hate going to themeparks, did you all fall out of the teacups when you were a kid?

[StarvingSteve]

Xsyon needs FEATURES, not content.

[Killarai]

Xsyon needs FEATURES, not content.

Semantics.

[joexxxz]

Xsyon needs FEATURES, not content.

Lol a feature cannot be without content, am i right???

To add a feature you need content.

[scambammer]

Everyone here must hate going to themeparks, did you all fall out of the teacups when you were a kid?

Ever notice that a real life sandbox actually has very little appeal to a large amount of children? Every sandbox I have ever seen in reality is either empty or has a child or 2 quietly off in their own little worlds with shovels and miniature die cast cars in hand...all the other kids are on the swings and the slides and the monkey bars or playing tag or screaming very LOUDLY!

One thing that all kids who spend more hours in the sand then on the slide have in common is....they don't want the tire swing in their sandbox.