What needs to be, and what needs to not be.

[AdmiralStryker]

Hello folks!

I was AdmiralStryker on Firefall, and I'll be AdmiralStryker here. Good to meet all of you, some familiar faces here I think. Anywho, my thoughts on things that should stay in this game and what should never be here, aside from weapons/items/abilities as I understand a thread already exists for such.

First off, the world. I understand this game will be based off us terraforming and inhabiting a world that we are exploring. I like this part. However, what needs to be kept is that just as easily as we can take terrain from our opposition-they need to be able to take it back. We should be able to lose not just entire regions, but the entire planet if we mess up.

One thing that fell away from the previous Firefall was that we were AT WAR. Fighting for the survival of our species. Eventually, it got dumbed down to the point of us only losing points because the playerbase was so small. It shouldn't be like that.

Yes, I realize the precept of the game is different here. But (as far as I know) we will still have a constant antagonistic faction. That faction should be able to kick our faces in if we mess up, and should fight for every ounce of terrain we take from them, and fight to take back what is theirs.

No, I don't ask to be able to log in in the mornings and see everything taken over and have to take it ALL back, one-man-army style. That was an issue with enemy presence scaling incorrectly to the number of players. But at the same time, when 200 people are on, we shouldn't be able to single-handedly stop an incursion on a major city. We shouldn't be able to singe-handedly stop the enemy from taking an outpost. It should need a concerted, major effort.

I'd love to hear people's thoughts!

 

[Imaqtone]

I like idea however fighting PvP with jumpjets and such is a bad idea because it could get out of hand quickly

 

[Skyewauker]

My one hope is that Mr. Kern doesn't repeat his same mistakes like focusing on PvP. The vocal minority had the developer's ears on Firefall. It was horrible. This type of thing needs to never happen.

Other than that, make crafting meaningful. Make it the soul source of gear (components drop in the open world to enhance like SWG). Make it a TRUE sandbox.

 

[Bl4ckhunter]

for a small period we used to have massive invasions to copacabana, sunken harbour and thump dump back in cbt that were exactly what you described, except that they eventually took them down becouse players rushed to them and all sorts of problems happened like massive lag and the rendering hitting the max-unit on screen meaning that enemies and exra units didn't render at all and were invisible, probably that's not an issue with UE4 i hope thought.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

for a small period we used to have massive invasions to copacabana, sunken harbour and thump dump back in cbt that were exactly what you described, except that they eventually took them down becouse players rushed to them and all sorts of problems happened like massive lag and the rendering hitting the max-unit on screen meaning that enemies and exra units didn't render at all and were invisible, probably that's not an issue with UE4 i hope thought.

Enemies can be changed. They could have made it so that there were fewer, stronger enemies that were harder to kill both by larger health, mechanics, or mobility. Yes, people are going to flock to rewards. The reward in situations like these should be an ability to push the enemy back in response, a counterattack, stealing some of their tech.. Not just flat, fully prepared items or a ton of resources.

 

[Skyewauker]

Enemies can be changed. They could have made it so that there were fewer, stronger enemies that were harder to kill both by larger health, mechanics, or mobility. Yes, people are going to flock to rewards. The reward in situations like these should be an ability to push the enemy back in response, a counterattack, stealing some of their tech.. Not just flat, fully prepared items or a ton of resources.

No matter what you do, you cannot stop a zerg. The only shot you have of stopping it is instancing and no one wants that.

 

[Skyewauker]

Anyways.

My 3 MAJOR wants in a game and it will probably determine if I will play any MMO again is :

1. Neocron / SWG hybrid crafting system WITH DECAY - I loved the taking over outposts for crafting bonuses to make the item better in neocron. SWG's crafing pre anti decay kits was unreal. The best there has been, the best that there ever will be. No debate.

2. Housing / Vast World Exploration like SWG - Maaaaaaaaaaan I hated how small the world in Firefall actually was. "1/10" of the Earth ratio... yet you got to play in a small ass region. Hated it. Housing speaks for itself.

3. 3 Faction PvP system or the Neocron Route where you could side with many factions then each faction could war against each other.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

No matter what you do, you cannot stop a zerg. The only shot you have of stopping it is instancing and no one wants that.

Oh, I know. I'm just saying the rewards should be something that's not as generic, something specific to these defensive type things. Of course, we won't be repurposing the tech of a death squad that's killed ten people-it's probably a bit too worn out for that. But fresh gear salvaged from an invasion.. That sounds good. Or even just using analysis of their weapons and armor to upgrade ours to counter theirs. There are so many better things to give for an invasion than common resources, abilities, armor, and weapons.

 

[polarity]

I think when it comes to a dynamic system like a game director handling AI, there needs to be a balance between scripted responses to player actions, and plain chance.

The AI shouldn't always respond the same way to players, with the same amount of force, nut instead there should be some randomness to how well it plays, the same way that how well a group of players is down to who you get in it, and how well they can work together.

I think with something like that the two forces, AI and human, constantly pushing against each other, would create a much more realistically moving front-line.

Of course one of the biggest factors affecting the AI needs to be how many players are active, so that when most of them are asleep, the entire AI force isn't capturing absolutely everything. Maybe on some nights it could capture a lot of the map, but on most it should be a more equal push/push-back overnight.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

Anyways.

My 3 MAJOR wants in a game and it will probably determine if I will play any MMO again is :

1. Neocron / SWG hybrid crafting system WITH DECAY - I loved the taking over outposts for crafting bonuses to make the item better in neocron. SWG's crafing pre anti decay kits was unreal. The best there has been, the best that there ever will be. No debate.

2. Housing / Vast World Exploration like SWG - Maaaaaaaaaaan I hated how small the world in Firefall actually was. "1/10" of the Earth ratio... yet you got to play in a small ass region. Hated it. Housing speaks for itself.

3. 3 Faction PvP system or the Neocron Route where you could side with many factions then each faction could war against each other.

I haven't played Neocron/SWG enough to help you there. I'm personally not a fan of decay, but as long as it doesn't lead to permanent destruction I'm fine. The world does need to be larger, agreed.

Firefall was going to have faction PVP between Omnidyne, Kisuton, and Astrek. I'd like the factions to serve as themes for gear, but I do not want this game to be balanced for PVP. PVP balancing MUST remain separate. Events showing tech-races or whatever between the factions in the PVE world can be good, though.

 

[Skyewauker]

Oh, I know. I'm just saying the rewards should be something that's not as generic, something specific to these defensive type things. Of course, we won't be repurposing the tech of a death squad that's killed ten people-it's probably a bit too worn out for that. But fresh gear salvaged from an invasion.. That sounds good. Or even just using analysis of their weapons and armor to upgrade ours to counter theirs. There are so many better things to give for an invasion than common resources, abilities, armor, and weapons.

In Neocron, you cleared out an outpost... once you "hacked" and claimed the outpost or factory or uplink, it gave you bonuses for holding it. Like the Construction Factories. It gave you huge bonuses to crafting. It was pretty much mandatory if you wanted max slots in the game. Sure thats not a city, but Im not a huge fan of main city invasions.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

I think when it comes to a dynamic system like a game director handling AI, there needs to be a balance between scripted responses to player actions, and plain chance.

The AI shouldn't always respond the same way to players, with the same amount of force, nut instead there should be some randomness to how well it plays, the same way that how well a group of players is down to who you get in it, and how well they can work together.

I think with something like that the two forces, AI and human, constantly pushing against each other, would create a much more realistically moving front-line.

Of course one of the biggest factors affecting the AI needs to be how many players are active, so that when most of them are asleep, the entire AI force isn't capturing absolutely everything. Maybe on some nights it could capture a lot of the map, but on most it should be a more equal push/push-back overnight.

That was originally planned. Idk what happened. I'd like to see that. Enemies should have chances of being unrealistically dumb, as you said, but there should be that occasional juggernaut who can shell you over a mountain range, haha.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

In Neocron, you cleared out an outpost... once you "hacked" and claimed the outpost or factory or uplink, it gave you bonuses for holding it. Like the Construction Factories. It gave you huge bonuses to crafting. It was pretty much mandatory if you wanted max slots in the game. Sure thats not a city, but Im not a huge fan of main city invasions.

I would imagine cities would be heavily fortified areas, and would only be invaded if they were our last bastions in an area. That still sounds good, though. Maybe even we could purchase/make smaller harvesters situated at the outposts that could help us gather resources even when we're away fighting.

 

[Skyewauker]

I haven't played Neocron/SWG enough to help you there. I'm personally not a fan of decay, but as long as it doesn't lead to permanent destruction I'm fine. The world does need to be larger, agreed.

Firefall was going to have faction PVP between Omnidyne, Kisuton, and Astrek. I'd like the factions to serve as themes for gear, but I do not want this game to be balanced for PVP. PVP balancing MUST remain separate. Events showing tech-races or whatever between the factions in the PVE world can be good, though.

With a crafter dominated gearing / economy system, durability to 0 / destruction is pretty necessary. It keeps "weaponsmiths / armorsmiths" engaged in the game. There is always a need for them to keep producing. Without permanent decay, after X amount of crafts they are usually worthless. The best parts about true sandboxes is the fact that you can play how you want. You can be that crafter, entertainer, soldier, etc.

Yea I loved the original premise behind the factions in Firefall... then the focus switched to eSports and that went out the window. It was my main reason for quitting. The focus on "brontodon brawls" and the favoritism that was showed the superior PvP players was shit.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

With a crafter dominated gearing / economy system, durability to 0 / destruction is pretty necessary. It keeps "weaponsmiths / armorsmiths" engaged in the game. There is always a need for them to keep producing. Without permanent decay, after X amount of crafts they are usually worthless. The best parts about true sandboxes is the fact that you can play how you want. You can be that crafter, entertainer, soldier, etc.

Yea I loved the original premise behind the factions in Firefall... then the focus switched to eSports and that went out the window. It was my main reason for quitting. The focus on "brontodon brawls" and the favoritism that was showed the superior PvP players was shit.

The PVP was a failure.

I suppose you're right about crafting. Ideally, with time, crafters could make items that lasted longer, etc, through skill trees or something, idk.

 

[Skyewauker]

The PVP was a failure.

I suppose you're right about crafting. Ideally, with time, crafters could make items that lasted longer, etc, through skill trees or something, idk.

This scenario actually played out for me in SWG. My best Power Hammer (2 handed melee weapon) broke. Poof. Gone. I had a backup that wasn't near as good.

I rode out to the person's who made my original shop. I got there and looked on his merchants. He didn't have anymore "godly" ones. I was left in a panic. I left the store, opened the map, pulled up the player owned merchant shop lists. I noticed 1 close by and 2 really far away. I rode to the first 1, but it didn't have anything of note. On the way to the 2nd one which was quite some distance (probably 10 minute speeder ride) , I ran into a "peeko albatross". They were very rare spawns. I needed its feather for the RIS armor set (extremely rare armor to have at the time). I called some guildies up, killed it... ended up getting my RIS armor a few days later. After we killed it, I rode to the weaponsmith's shop that I had been heading to and found 2 hammers that were a lot better than the one that had broken. Bought em both.

Things like this wouldn't really happen without the durability and the perma breaking. Not only did it help the crafters out, but it gets people out in the world doing things.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

This scenario actually played out for me in SWG. My best Power Hammer (2 handed melee weapon) broke. Poof. Gone. I had a backup that wasn't near as good.

I rode out to the person's who made my original shop. I got there and looked on his merchants. He didn't have anymore "godly" ones. I was left in a panic. I left the store, opened the map, pulled up the player owned merchant shop lists. I noticed 1 close by and 2 really far away. I rode to the first 1, but it didn't have anything of note. On the way to the 2nd one which was quite some distance (probably 10 minute speeder ride) , I ran into a "peeko albatross". They were very rare spawns. I needed its feather for the RIS armor set (extremely rare armor to have at the time). I called some guildies up, killed it... ended up getting my RIS armor a few days later. After we killed it, I rode to the weaponsmith's shop that I had been heading to and found 2 hammers that were a lot better than the one that had broken. Bought em both.

Things like this wouldn't really happen without the durability and the perma breaking. Not only did it help the crafters out, but it gets people out in the world doing things.

That sounds good. It'd just entail having shops be set up in each major city. It'd still have to be avoided having everyone just set up their shops in one city, but the shop limit per city would have to be large enough that everyone who wanted to put up a shop could do so without getting locked out.

 

[Skyewauker]

That sounds good. It'd just entail having shops be set up in each major city. It'd still have to be avoided having everyone just set up their shops in one city, but the shop limit per city would have to be large enough that everyone who wanted to put up a shop could do so without getting locked out.

Not really. The planets in SWG were vast enough that you had player cities and the crafters could actually spawn permanent merchants that held there goods. Guilds would even make malls where all the vendors were centralized. You would just go up and interact with them. Thats the beauty of a system like that.

There is never a need to be locked out. You have "hubs" but not in the World of Warcraft way where everyone and their mom sits in Org or Stormwind... or their garrison. If you are a crafter, you can go out in the world, drop your house, decorate it as a shop, then put yoru vendors in there and load them up with goods.

 

[polarity]

That was originally planned. Idk what happened. I'd like to see that. Enemies should have chances of being unrealistically dumb, as you said, but there should be that occasional juggernaut who can shell you over a mountain range, haha.

I think the issue was the AI servers getting completely overloaded. That's one of the huge problems in advancing games, especially something as big as an MMO, doubly so for one that is also an FPS. Graphics have progressed a lot, and there is no end of talent when it comes to producing art assets for games, and open engines like Unreal mean there isn't as much of a need for in house graphics coder to work on the core engine.

Where the industry is lacking is coders. On my own Game Development degree course there were 50 students across 2 years, and only a couple of us could code anything more complicated than HTML.

I'd say there are plenty of other areas besides graphics that need the attention of some serious programmer talent, of the caliber of Carmack and Abrash, who did a lot of the optimisation needed to make 3D graphics possible before GPU accelleration.

Things like network code to better handle what data needs to go where, to save every player receiving data they don't need, because they can't see stuff, and the server getting overloaded sooner than it would need to*, or dynamic content handling, kind of like how the static procedurally generated content of the game world is done with algorithms, but instead using the same kind of techniques to create something that is dynamic and reactive

The only problem is, if a coder is that good, they're probably going to work somewhere that pays better than gaming, and has more sociable hours.

-

*Server load increasing exponentially due to the increase in outgoing data, as player numbers increase, is something that definitely needs to be tackled to allow for true MMOs, where hundreds of players can interact without compromises such as time-dilation (Eve Online) or culling the number of players that can be seen and interacted with (Planetside 2 & Guildwars 2).

eg.

2 players > each player needs to receive information about the location of 1 other player from the server, so the server has 2 locations coming in, and 2 going out.

10 players > each player needs to receive information about the location of 9 other players from the server, so the server has 10 locations coming in, and 90 going out (the locations of the 9 other players going to each of the 10 players).

100 players > each player needs to receive information about the location of 99 other players from the server, so the server has 100 locations coming in, and 9900 going out (the locations of the 99 other players going to each of the 100 players).

And if we just double that 100, then the amount of data packets going out goes from 9900 to 39800.

-

I think there are 2 major ways to fix this:

The first is to start heavily optimizing what gets sent out through the network, using a lot of the techniques that are already used in rendering graphics, to make sure that processing isn't been done on parts of the scene that the player can't see. The exact same kind of math can be used to determine which players have which other players in visible range and line of sight, so that the server doesn't send data unless it needs to, reducing the outgoing bandwidth. The kind of networking that MMOs do needs an APU to handle what goes where, instead of using the CPU, which isn't designed to do the required amount, of the kind of math involved.

The second way would require some major changes to how the entire infrastructure of the internet works, at the router level, but it would have massive benefits to other applications such as streaming.

Basically instead of sending the same data to hundreds or thousands of clients, the server would send the data just once, along with a list of the IPs of the clients to send it to. The first router it reaches would then cache that list, and then send the data packet and truncated copies of the IP list on to the next set of routers out, that would be forwarding the data to specific regions. This passing of an ever shortening list would go on until the data reaches the routers that connect to the client machines.

This would allow servers to send just a single stream of data, instead of many, along with requests to add or remove IPs from the list (which get passed down), or a complete wipe of the list, if the stream was ended or failed to. Even with thousands of IPs on the list, that plus a single data stream would be far less information than the router would have to handle if it was as thousands of streams.

The problem is it would need the development of an entirely new internet protocol, in addition to ones like TCP/UDP/ICMP/BGP, as well as dedicated router hardware that can cache IP lists.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

Not really. The planets in SWG were vast enough that you had player cities and the crafters could actually spawn permanent merchants that held there goods. Guilds would even make malls where all the vendors were centralized. You would just go up and interact with them. Thats the beauty of a system like that.

There is never a need to be locked out. You have "hubs" but not in the World of Warcraft way where everyone and their mom sits in Org or Stormwind... or their garrison. If you are a crafter, you can go out in the world, drop your house, decorate it as a shop, then put yoru vendors in there and load them up with goods.

If the devs can make the world large enough that something like that works, then by all means, go for it. I'm not sure what resources will be available to a game starting out like this one.