Camelot Unchained

[old.Tohtori]

" that have been quite helpful in both validating my vision for CU and exciting the CSE team.".

Yes i'll nitpick again, but as a designer i live and breathe on -negative- feedback, not positive. I know that my choices are best in the world, but if no one says otherwise they'll probably end up being crap as they are unchallenged. That sounds awfully lot like listening only to the people who support their choices.

Otherwise there's a megaton of "call it something else so it's unique while it's completely same" in there

 

[Raven]

That is all he has ever done. Listened to himself and yes men. It is why everything he touches turns bad.

 

[Urgat]

Urgat,

Being a mod doesn't mean one cannot criticise. Being called a fanboy is personal?

In the context it was used in that post, yes, it was most certainly a personally directed comment, meant in a derogatory fashion. There is no other way to take it.

 

[rynnor]

In the context it was used in that post, yes, it was most certainly a personally directed comment, meant in a derogatory fashion. There is no other way to take it.

How have you survived on this forum being that sensitive and that whiney? I dont know you from adam so I'm querying how personally directed it was tbh.

Next Fanboy is a description - take it as you will.

fanboy

September 19, 2006 Urban Word of the Day
A passionate fan of various elements of geek culture (e.g. sci-fi, comics, Star Wars, video games, anime, hobbits, Magic: the Gathering, etc.), but who lets his passion override social graces.

You have also said

"So far, i agree with everything he has laid out in his articles about CU, and i have been iompressed with his willingness to admit to his failings in the past. I completely agree with his thoughts on game design, and i find his vision for this game compeling, and believe that if he does what he says he will do, and makes the game he is talking about making, the way he wants to make it... it will be a game i would enjoy."

"I think it sounds perfect."

To people who criticised the game.

"This is clearly not the game for you.

Move along, nothing to see here. "

Seems pretty Fanboy to me?

 

[Urgat]

IMO, your last post proves that You don't deserve to have the responsibility you have at the moment.

I have nothing further to say to you.

 

[rynnor]

IMO, your last post proves that You don't deserve to have the responsibility you have at the moment.

I have nothing further to say to you.

You seem to have an enormous chip on your shoulder about mods.

I dont know what your perception is but these forums are now self modding - I havent infracted anyone since the year Warhammer online was released.

The only task left to mods is basically to spot spammers who sign up and to approve quotes.

We have the same rights to discuss stuff as anyone else does including you.

 

[Overdriven]

Rynnor wants bum love from DAoC.

*Runs back to general*

 

[Cadelin]

Urgat,

Being a mod doesn't mean one cannot criticise. Being called a fanboy is personal?

When you let us ignore the mods, then they can criticise us.

 

[Ormorof]

but we do ignore the mods!

 

[Ctuchik]

When you let us ignore the mods, then they can criticise us.

Lol, was it such a sore spot to be called a fanboy?

 

[AngelHeal]

take it to a chat orsmt...

 

[Urgat]

New foundation principle.

http://citystateentertainment.com/2013/03/foundational-principle-10/

He talks about pride, including realm pride, guild pride, etc.

However... Secondary to the subject itself.. This update more than any other so far, confirms the target audience for this game.

He is pitching CU to veteran MMO players, and specifically DAOC vets, he even says as much.

I honestly don't think he wants to make a game to cater to the masses... I think he sees this as a niche game, aimed at a certain demographic.

The big question is... Are there enough of us left? Raven might be right, there may not be... I guess the kick starter will answer that question

 

[Raven]

I think the problem is the age range. Not many of us have the time to be logged in a lot like we did in DAOC's day. So they might well end up with a lot of subscribers...or at least a decent amount. But those subscribers might only log in a couple of times a week which will lead to servers that feel empty.

I think he should try and engage other people too, not be necessarily dumbing down but by making it more accessible and proving that a bit of difficulty is a good thing.

 

[Ctuchik]

I think the problem is the age range. Not many of us have the time to be logged in a lot like we did in DAOC's day.

Yeah, he's basically aiming this to the people that's in their 30's and 40's and even 50's now. Even if he does pass the kickstarter i just can't see it work all that well. Most DAoC vets just doesn't have the time to commit to a game like this any more.

 

[Mabs]

I think the problem is the age range. Not many of us have the time to be logged in a lot like we did in DAOC's day. So they might well end up with a lot of subscribers...or at least a decent amount. But those subscribers might only log in a couple of times a week which will lead to servers that feel empty.

I think he should try and engage other people too, not be necessarily dumbing down but by making it more accessible and proving that a bit of difficulty is a good thing.

qft

 

[svartalf]

City State Entertainment

Foundational Principle #10 – Pride, pride, everywhere pride…
Posted on March 7, 2013 by Patrick Doring


…. Slaying all the bad guys, breaking their pride. Burn this, burn that, can you break their Pride?

First, thanks and credit to the Canada’s Five Man Electrical Band from whose work I have drawn upon for the title of this blog posting. Secondly, the concept of “Pride” is truly an important principle for Camelot Unchained and, IMO, should be as well for any game that features RvR as the cornerstone of its design. I have chosen to use the word “Pride” to encompass a wide range of individual prides such as racial pride, class pride, guild pride, realm pride, server pride, etc. all of which must be present in CU it is truly to succeed over time. As usual and without further ado, let us see how the concept of these prides applies to CU.

I’ll start by addressing the issue of realm pride as that is the first choice that players will make during CU’s character creation process. There are truly no “good guys” or “bad guys” in CU, at least in the traditional sense, as each realm’s actions are motivated by their instincts for self-preservation and survival. The influx of power through the Veil destroyed the world that existed before the piercing and these three realms and their leaders are pitted against each other, jockeying for survival in a very harsh and hostile environment. Of course, each realm views its motives and actions through its own filter as being pure, noble, and the best solution to the world’s problems. The Tuatha De Danann are simply trying to restore balance to the world and to begin to prepare for another apocalypse; the Vikings are looking for new lands to settle on and rebuild, and the Arthurians are looking to unite the world under Arthur’s banner and civilize and tame a hostile world. It is CSE’s job to ensure that each of these three realms, divided as they are currently, are different enough from each other so that they do not feel homogenized but at the same time, we must ensure that each realm is appealing to players. Amongst other tasks, we must create enough lore and backstory to give our players a good understanding of each realm, its inhabitants and why that realm believes it is the best hope for this troubled world. An important part of that lore and backstory will belong to the races that inhabit each realm and serve as its leading citizens.

Racial pride is an important part of realm pride and just as with the realms, we have to construct each race to be unique, interesting, and appealing to gamers. If prospective players do not connect with each realm’s races, they probably will not join that realm and if enough players feel that way, well, there will be a massive realm imbalance and that alone could doom the game to failure. Lore and backstory will help but it has to go even further than that with the individual races. As we did with the realms, we will not homogenize the races and, as we are following the rock, paper, scissor approach, every race must have their own advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses, etc. Mirrored races are not necessarily boring in and of themselves but it is harder for players to feel strongly about their choices if the race on the other side is really just the same as they are, albeit with a different skin texture. We cannot just try to make the races different from each other; we must make them different in more than just backstory if there is to be true racial and realm pride in CU.

In an RvR/RPS focused game such as CU, the belief that a player’s chosen class is either OP or highly competitive and never the “red-headed stepchild” is rather important to them. It is once again our job to make sure that each class archetype has enough differentiation from the other members of that archetype not only in their appearance but also in how they are intended to fill their niche within CU. In a perfect world, we would create three different tanks, each with their have their own advantages and disadvantages (so that no tank is perceived as the perfect choice) and that each implementation leaves the players wanting just a little bit more “oomph” for their preferred choice. It’s an old axiom among mediators that you’ve done your job well if both sides feel disappointed in a successful settlement to their dispute and I believe that that concept applies here as well. We want our players to love their chosen class (es) but we also want them to feel that they need something else to be complete (well, at least until the next patch). As per other posts, our classes will not be mirror images of the other. While we know that this will make balancing the game rather more difficult, it is a price that we are willing to pay in order to allow players to have more choices in the game. We will have done our jobs well if we see spirited arguments on the forums about our implementation of tanks and the result of which is that players from all three realms are strongly advocating all three variants are either OP or too weak to survive against the other two.

Guild pride is another important member of the Pride family, the decades long rise of guilds in importance to both players, and designers of MMOs cannot easily be overstated. While we need to walk a bit of a tightrope here (so what else is new?) as we do not want any server to be dominated by one or several “super-guilds,” we also want our players to feel pride in their guild’s overall accomplishments. During the development of WAR, we did some very good things with the “Living Guild” concept; we have to surpass that here because the purist nature and implementation of RvR conflict in CU presents an opportunity to take guilds to the next level. Thus, at a minimum, guilds should be able to own and build guild houses, land and possessions in a size and manner that reflects their success in the game whether due to participation in RvR and/or as crafters. Guild members must be able to contribute to that success both actively (through donations, crafting) and passively (guild standing reflects the skill/successes of its members) and to be proud to be a member of their guild. Additionally, we need to put mechanisms in place so that guilds can easily work with each other, share information and cooperate in a way that adds to the enjoyment of RvR by its members and the overall success of its realm. If we can allow players to feel guild pride on the individual level as well as pride on a greater scale (cooperation), this will further enhance the feeling of the next and final pride, server pride.

Server pride is the last member of the family I will address in this post but in many ways, it is both the most important one and the hardest to accurately pinpoint. Why do players have pride in their server, as it is simply a piece of hardware on which all the action takes place. Yet, for those that played Dark Age of Camelot, the debate about which server(s) had the best community continues to this day. To me, server pride is the embodiment of everything we hope to achieve with CU, as it not only encompasses the individual prides but everything else in the game, including the game’s various communities. However, this is not something that CSE can simply will into existence through great programming, clever design, and/or gorgeous artwork. What will bring server pride about are the players themselves; and while our contribution is a rather important and necessary step, it is the players that will both create and boast about this pride. For this reason, among many others, I decided to push for an RvR-focused game because I know that CU’s backers and core demographic are looking for a game to bring back that feeling of server pride that they experienced before in other games. They do not need convincing of the importance of the prides, they already understand it and not simply by reading my poor attempts at writing but because they lived it in Dark Age of Camelot and other games as well. That is something that most MMORPGs have lost over the years and that we are going to try to bring back with CU but it can only happen if my belief in what our core demographic truly wants is confirmed by their support with our Kickstarter. If I am right, the Kickstarter will fund and our journey together will start; if I am wrong, well, it will not be the first time my pride will be hurt but that goes with the territory. I hope I see you all in the Veil and together we will build the Pride family, slowly, steadily and ultimately satisfactorily.

Mark

Up next: TDB


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Comments are closed.

 

[Cadelin]

Lol, was it such a sore spot to be called a fanboy?

I wasn't called a fanboy and while I enjoyed DaoC I am certainly unlikely to play any MMOs again. I am still interested in reading what is going on.

But you have illustrated my point well. If somebody fails to read the thread properly and then fails such as you have just done, I am free to mock you or if you are one of those people determined to make a fool of themselves I can just put you on ignore. I can't do this with a mod, so yes I will hold them to a higher standard.

 

[Ormorof]

you can ignore people without using the ignore feature

on topic i think the pride factor played a big part in why many of us have rose tinted goggles on for DAoC, it was one of those games where you rushed to defend a keep if you heard it was attacked to keep out "stinky albs" etc

never noticed anything like that in any other game mostly because the "rewards" reset constantly! whats the point of taking a keep if its going to reset in three days

 

[- English -]

you can ignore people without using the ignore feature

on topic i think the pride factor played a big part in why many of us have rose tinted goggles on for DAoC, it was one of those games where you rushed to defend a keep if you heard it was attacked to keep out "stinky albs" etc

never noticed anything like that in any other game mostly because the "rewards" reset constantly! whats the point of taking a keep if its going to reset in three days

Indeed, I remember many times our group suiciding at gobos to go help defend excalibur.. at level 40 or something

 

[Xandax]

I think the problem is the age range. Not many of us have the time to be logged in a lot like we did in DAOC's day. So they might well end up with a lot of subscribers...or at least a decent amount. But those subscribers might only log in a couple of times a week which will lead to servers that feel empty.

I think he should try and engage other people too, not be necessarily dumbing down but by making it more accessible and proving that a bit of difficulty is a good thing.

I very much agree.

The problem is that to those with too rose-tainted glasses; accessibility is often called dumbing down.
And indeed, where some development companies do dumb down games - no question - that dumbing down is not automatically due to the quality of life advantages or the accessibility the genre have done over the last many years.

I keep saying that challenges and difficulty is not just adding timesinks. There was nothing difficult or hardcore in DAoC not having an Auction house for example. WoW is not a easier MMO because it has an auction house.
Crafting in the very early days of DAoC, I remember standing around in Jordheim hitting that 'craft' key for the 'pling' and seeing the very massive trader spam selling Bronze Axes for a few coins. That wasn't 'hardcore' - it was just trivial.
It wasn't hardcore to stand around for half a day, while written up on a list, to get a group in Malmohus for levelling the last stint towards 50. (Yes, I played Midgard, and Midgard only)

Many times sinks in the 'old games' - if not all of them - was much more a product of developers and players not really knowing better. The genre was new ground and players were just awed by what was now possible. Now, players know more and better and developers are struggling to keep up. (Well most of them).

Difficulty in games should come from quest objectives such as randomized types of puzzles and more randomize exploration revealing points of interests.
It can come from better mob AI which is very possible - but which could make it very difficult for players. Simply turning up damage and hitpoints on a 'boss battle' does not make it more challenging. Removing the trinity as in GW2 does not make it more challenging, just a dps race, and the traditional tank n' spank just makes it 'learn rotation' type.

However - unfortunately - some (many?) seems to think that 'hardcore' and 'difficult' are the mindless time sinks, such as standing around spamming "LFG" or trade spam. Or that you can only carry a very limited amount and need to run back and forth to empty your pack. Or similar.

I'm still interested in what is said about this game, I just think MJ is aiming at an audience which is at a position in life, where they would like a challenge, but not just timesinks called challenges.

 

[eksdee]

All I'd like is another game I can look back on in another 10 years with some degree of fondness that goes beyond 'beating' other people - which is all the fun any MMO after DAoC gave me. I still remember dying my armour for the first time, discovering a new zone for the first time, seeing a dragon for the first time, going into RvR for the first time and seeing enemies for the first time. Hell, even some RvR fights stay in my mind from all that time ago. With that said, I think a lot of that comes from the time the game was made. As Xandax said - we wer wowed by the sheer scaled of things, of what was possible. Who knows how this will turn out, but for certain anything remotely similar to DAoC is likely to be 100x better than any of the WoW clones of recent years.

 

[Billargh]

All this talk of MJ is making me think of:

 

[Ctuchik]

All I'd like is another game I can look back on in another 10 years with some degree of fondness that goes beyond 'beating' other people - which is all the fun any MMO after DAoC gave me.

That's gonna be pretty hard though. We're older now and think to much.

I mean, if DAoC released today (even if it had modern graphics and shiz) it wouldn't have worked at all because you really had very VERY little to do in the game.

And at least for me, even back when DAoC released i certainly wouldn't have given two fucks about the game if it weren't for all the people i grouped up with or the guilds i were in.

Those groups at the camp spots and the guilds i were in were the only thing that made the game fun. And the RVR ofc, when it were being played the way it should be.

So i don't think you're looking for a GAME you can look back on fondly, you're looking for the stuff surrounding it.

 

[eksdee]

Yeah, for sure. I think that the way the game was facilitated that social interaction though. Certainly much more than a game like WoW where you can do 90% of the game's content solo.

 

[BloodOmen]

The blogs are my enemy, I read some of them and think "Oh, that sounds great" and read others and just think "Oh dear, you really have no idea do you?"

 

[rynnor]

Yeah, for sure. I think that the way the game was facilitated that social interaction though. Certainly much more than a game like WoW where you can do 90% of the game's content solo.

I agree - the slow levelling curve (originally at least) did mean people spent longer in the same zones which helps for grouping and there weren't enormous numbers of quests.

 

[- English -]

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iKxDjv-bWAE


dont know if its been posted or not.

 

[Overdriven]

Thought that video was a fake, then I saw it on the site. Am now actually listening to it.

 

[Himse]

Peter Griffin.

 

[Raven]

What a cock.