This is a post based on a reply I made on Reddit. When I read the initial post, I realized how my game is using the power of open source to solve some inherent issues with PVP based Multi-player Online Role Playing Games.
The first issue mentioned was performance. While open source itself does not help directly with this, the Wograld policy of keeping system requirements low helps a lot with this issue. Who cares if the graphics are beautiful if you can barely play due to the frame rate. Forget about pvp then, because performance will be so abysmal for many people that you will hardly be able to pvm.
The next two issues are things that are directly resolved through the useage of open source for both the client and server of the game. Bugs were explictly mentioned. A lot of games (I'm looking at you Runescape.) have ongoing bugs that are never fixxed even though the developers probably know about them. With open source, the playerbase can directly fix bugs and actually commit a fix in order that the bug just goes away. Eric Raymond is famous for his quote "With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." Well, now by having all the code, both client and server open source, it will be shallow enough that finnally the bugs can get fixxed.
The second issue deals with game balance. Ideally, the developers will understand game balance and how communities work. They should understand the underlying dynamics, and while they should listen to the players, they shouldn't necessarily give them what they ask for, instead they should make a game that creates a healthy and thriving community, and not one where all the players quit over time because game balance is too broken. Sometimes, the developers fall into blind spots and never actually understand how communities work. If that happens, the original game code still exists and the community itself can fork, and players can play a balanced non-broken game instead of a broken one.
The last issue mentioned deals with cheating. Some people think closed source software somehow prevents or lowers cheating, but looking at all the closed source proprietary games with cheating problems proves that closing up the source code does not prevent cheating. Instead, some games though they could prevent cheating and still have certain calculations running on the client side. Cheating can be prevented by running things on the server side.
Showing posts with label PVP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PVP. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Losing House Keys, Even when you don't die.
This last couple days, rather than being able to work on much of anything pertaining to Wograld. I have been searching for my house keys. This is one thing that games can easily fix that cannot be easily fixed in meat space. That is losing your means of entering your house. In addition, the bad guy who looted the keys from you can break in and take all your stuff. In my case it isn't so bad since I can (mostly) rely on family members to let me in, since usually someone is home here. It still sucks though because I also lost keys to my storage unit, a dresser drawer key (that fortunately wasn't locked) and my favorite irreplaceable key chain.
I remember when I played Ultima Online in the early days, besides pk stat loss (Crossfire is worse because it has stat loss for everyone not just pks), boring gold only monster loot and terrible lag, it also had this problem that when you lost your house key, there was no way you could get it back or change the locks. Therefore, once someone stole and/or looted the key, there was no way to ever make the house safe again for anyone to store things. The looter could not have it be safe, because you probably had a copy of extra keys as well. The only way to fix this was to demolish the house and start over, but since every time someone used a key on the house, it refreshed it, well you can guess what happened, griefers (intentionally or not) filled the landscape with virtually useless houses.
Anyway, later versions of UO, as well as many other games, don't have that annoying feature. You can have a ban list, and those characters can not enter your house at all. It is like a magic force field just doesn't let them inside, another method is to have an invite list, letting only thosse people you allow access parts of the house. In Uo there were four tiers of permissions owner, co-owner, friend and guest (or something like that) the owner was the only one who could demolish the house, the co-owner could add people at the lower tiers as well as move containers that were locked down around the house, friends were allowed to access certain containers that were marked as friend. It was handy to friend your guildmates and put extra supplies in those chests. Finnaly, on private floors there was a guest status that allowed you to enter into areas you might not otherwise be allowed inside. This level did not allow you to access any containers or anything, just walk around the building. While this was fun and very convenient, some people missed being able to have all out battles in homes without the I ban thee going on. Dueling areas still worked very well, however the maximum housing size was not ideal for some types of combat. In addition archers could stand in windows, shoot arrows out, and be perfectly safe from looting. Since in crossfire, the internals of houses are seperate maps, I can't imagine this to be an issue, although I supposed someone could run between maps to avoid dying or something.
I remember when I played Ultima Online in the early days, besides pk stat loss (Crossfire is worse because it has stat loss for everyone not just pks), boring gold only monster loot and terrible lag, it also had this problem that when you lost your house key, there was no way you could get it back or change the locks. Therefore, once someone stole and/or looted the key, there was no way to ever make the house safe again for anyone to store things. The looter could not have it be safe, because you probably had a copy of extra keys as well. The only way to fix this was to demolish the house and start over, but since every time someone used a key on the house, it refreshed it, well you can guess what happened, griefers (intentionally or not) filled the landscape with virtually useless houses.
Anyway, later versions of UO, as well as many other games, don't have that annoying feature. You can have a ban list, and those characters can not enter your house at all. It is like a magic force field just doesn't let them inside, another method is to have an invite list, letting only thosse people you allow access parts of the house. In Uo there were four tiers of permissions owner, co-owner, friend and guest (or something like that) the owner was the only one who could demolish the house, the co-owner could add people at the lower tiers as well as move containers that were locked down around the house, friends were allowed to access certain containers that were marked as friend. It was handy to friend your guildmates and put extra supplies in those chests. Finnaly, on private floors there was a guest status that allowed you to enter into areas you might not otherwise be allowed inside. This level did not allow you to access any containers or anything, just walk around the building. While this was fun and very convenient, some people missed being able to have all out battles in homes without the I ban thee going on. Dueling areas still worked very well, however the maximum housing size was not ideal for some types of combat. In addition archers could stand in windows, shoot arrows out, and be perfectly safe from looting. Since in crossfire, the internals of houses are seperate maps, I can't imagine this to be an issue, although I supposed someone could run between maps to avoid dying or something.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Local and Global Chat
I received two more of the x11 books today, so now i have 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8. I heard there wasn't a 7, I don't know if thats true though. Hopefully it will have all the information in it I need to begin programming x11. I am tired of using the buggy default C functions scanf and gets, I heard gets is really bad and you shouldn't use it, but that is no reason to pay any attention until something breaks. There is a problem with them that whenever you run a function before using them, it seems to skip over the input getting step. Hopefully I know enough C syntax to begin programming instead of leaving it entirely up to other people like I was doing before.
But what I really want to discuss is local and global chat. I was reading how in Darkfall there is no local chat. That really changes the social dynamic of the game, making it a less social game. Apparently, most of the chat goes on in guild chat. I think just having global chat is too overwhelming, espeacially since there are more than 8 people on the server. I think that if you are in a large crowd and everything you say has to be directed at every single person, it makes you just want to shut up about some things, because you can't really get to know people as individuals, just what ever they chose to broadcast about themselves. It is like if everyone just read blogs and no one ever used email or instant messageing, you wouldn't really get to know people because when you blog, unless you limit it to friends only, you are broadcasting to the whole internet. Maybe that isn't always such a good thing.
Sometimes things are too personal, and you don't want everyone to know them. For instance, on a pvp server, you don't want every pker in a large area to know that you and a couple other people are going to try and hunt kobolds. Then the pks will come and kill your small band, taking your loot away. It would be better if only you and the couple other people in the area heard it. Then you have a chance of having a successful hunt without the gank squad showing up. Now, there is the possibility that your other party member could try and pk you anyway, but that risk is much lower than if the whole server knows what you are up to.
One possiable way to deal with no local chat is to mostly only have guild chat. Guilds are groups that play together. They could find each
other outside of the game on places such as message forums and websites. The problem is that some players new to the game may not even know about the guilds, or even have an idea of what guild would most fit their play style until playing the game a bit. Also, players may fall out with guilds, or wish to form new ones while in game. If you don't have a local chat, it can be hard to get people to met up and decide if they like playing with the other players enough to want to join the guild. Furthermore, some things make sense to happen outside of guilds. It would be like if you only talked with your family members ever, except when you were blogging or something. It would get hard pretty quickly, since you might end up with the warped way of thinking that your family (or guild) has set up. Seeing other people and talking to them one vs one or on a small group basis can do more to change a persons mind about something rather than hearing everything broadcast over the global channels. I would not want all my personal problems broadcast on live tv for everyone to see. Some people might like that, but I doubt the majority of us would want that to go on.
But what I really want to discuss is local and global chat. I was reading how in Darkfall there is no local chat. That really changes the social dynamic of the game, making it a less social game. Apparently, most of the chat goes on in guild chat. I think just having global chat is too overwhelming, espeacially since there are more than 8 people on the server. I think that if you are in a large crowd and everything you say has to be directed at every single person, it makes you just want to shut up about some things, because you can't really get to know people as individuals, just what ever they chose to broadcast about themselves. It is like if everyone just read blogs and no one ever used email or instant messageing, you wouldn't really get to know people because when you blog, unless you limit it to friends only, you are broadcasting to the whole internet. Maybe that isn't always such a good thing.
Sometimes things are too personal, and you don't want everyone to know them. For instance, on a pvp server, you don't want every pker in a large area to know that you and a couple other people are going to try and hunt kobolds. Then the pks will come and kill your small band, taking your loot away. It would be better if only you and the couple other people in the area heard it. Then you have a chance of having a successful hunt without the gank squad showing up. Now, there is the possibility that your other party member could try and pk you anyway, but that risk is much lower than if the whole server knows what you are up to.
One possiable way to deal with no local chat is to mostly only have guild chat. Guilds are groups that play together. They could find each
other outside of the game on places such as message forums and websites. The problem is that some players new to the game may not even know about the guilds, or even have an idea of what guild would most fit their play style until playing the game a bit. Also, players may fall out with guilds, or wish to form new ones while in game. If you don't have a local chat, it can be hard to get people to met up and decide if they like playing with the other players enough to want to join the guild. Furthermore, some things make sense to happen outside of guilds. It would be like if you only talked with your family members ever, except when you were blogging or something. It would get hard pretty quickly, since you might end up with the warped way of thinking that your family (or guild) has set up. Seeing other people and talking to them one vs one or on a small group basis can do more to change a persons mind about something rather than hearing everything broadcast over the global channels. I would not want all my personal problems broadcast on live tv for everyone to see. Some people might like that, but I doubt the majority of us would want that to go on.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Housing, lockdowns and Siege Warfare
In most kinds of strategy games, there is a war going on. Eventually, one player or team dominates the map, banishing the other players to oblivion. This works great when that is the object of the game. It does not work so well, however, when the game is a peristant world based on world lore where the war lasts for years and years. One faction dominating the world ruins the persistant world for all the other players not in that faction, because they have no hope of beating the dominating empire. This has happened in both Ultima Online (on the standard shards in felucia not the siege ruleset shards) and also in Shadowbane.
Many times, this happens because game designers trying to design a pvp world think that it is better to be able to completey destroy towns and housing, allowing one faction to win destroying the map and the reason for playing to begin with.
Let us look at warfare and faction in the real world. Why does one empire not dominate our entire globe? There are several reasons for this. The first of these is that for thousands of years we did not have a fast system of communication with the other people around the world. It was hard for news to travel very far very fast. But this is far from the only reason that we do not have a gobal empire. There are several different cultures and terrain types thoughout the world. Certain cultures seem to thrive in certain terrain types, and wither away on others. For instance, Muslims thrive in the desert, and do poorly in temperate or humid climates. Furthmore, if one faction gets ahead technologically, others soon follow. Even if the faction that got ahead technologically tries to keep the technology to itself, somehow, it always gets out to the other enemy side of the fence. Finally, war is a costly thing for all sides, the wars are usually over resources, as soon as there are less people less resources are needed, so the fighting stops. For the most part, no one is trying to completely eliminate the other side. First of all, it is futile to try to eliminate a people that is as strong as your people are, secondly it just seems that people would rather trade for what they need rather than dominate the whole world.
Some pvp based mmorpgs try to have things in game like siege warfare and house destruction. The trouble is, once the winning guild takes the losing guilds houses, what are they going to do with it? In Ultima Online, you were limited to one house per account, a guideline that makes sense. There are only so many houses a person can occupy in real life as well. It makes little sense to have a lot of houses everywhere, and not even remember how many you have (like a certain presidential candidate who did not win the US election) Players characters can really only be in one location at a time, so the same guild does not really need ten different towns. One town is adaquite for the needs of most guilds (although perhaps they might have outposts for specifice purposes) really, there is only one place where a given group of people tend to hang out and meet up. It is easier to find your friends and guild mates where you already know they will be, rather than trying to be everywhere at once when you don't know where to go. Furthermore, consider travel times. That is why it makes sense to have a home base rather than scattering the empire all over the world.
Realistcally, a human does not want the orc stick huts built on the undesirable savannah or the orc forts built into the sides of the moutains. The orcs have no desire for the thick forests found in human and elven lands. While undead seem to be more comfortable in any terrain, they tend to perfer places that are more remote and out of the way, as well as places that have an erie or gloomy feel, such as swamps.
Logically, it makes no sense to raid and destroy towns filled with a bunch of monsters living a low level of of sophistication. Where are you going to put the hundreds of rusty swords that you loot from the losing guilds treasury? Thats right, you don't need that stuff. No one in your guild can use it, and they sure are not buying it at the shops. If they actually had something worth taking, however, it would make more sense. If they are guarding a mine with valuable minerals, or protecting an area with dragons that have solid scales for armor, well, then it makes sense to kill them and take the resources.
You could cite vengance as a reason for doing this, after all orcs killed your family, or whatever, but the fact of the matter is, as soon as you wipe them out in one area, they keep coming back, and if they don't then the world gets peaceful and boring. You spend the rest of the time picking flowers and decorating your over-priced home. Wait a moment, this was supposed to be a pvp game, so where are the other players to fight. Thats right, they all quit because you looted their last rusty sword and had no way to get back on their feet.
Thats why you should not be able to take houses from other players and loot all their stuff. If you think that is a good idea, then I have houses in Detroit Michiagan and Baltimore Maryland to sell you. After all, land is valuable wherever it is, even if no one wants to live there.
Many times, this happens because game designers trying to design a pvp world think that it is better to be able to completey destroy towns and housing, allowing one faction to win destroying the map and the reason for playing to begin with.
Let us look at warfare and faction in the real world. Why does one empire not dominate our entire globe? There are several reasons for this. The first of these is that for thousands of years we did not have a fast system of communication with the other people around the world. It was hard for news to travel very far very fast. But this is far from the only reason that we do not have a gobal empire. There are several different cultures and terrain types thoughout the world. Certain cultures seem to thrive in certain terrain types, and wither away on others. For instance, Muslims thrive in the desert, and do poorly in temperate or humid climates. Furthmore, if one faction gets ahead technologically, others soon follow. Even if the faction that got ahead technologically tries to keep the technology to itself, somehow, it always gets out to the other enemy side of the fence. Finally, war is a costly thing for all sides, the wars are usually over resources, as soon as there are less people less resources are needed, so the fighting stops. For the most part, no one is trying to completely eliminate the other side. First of all, it is futile to try to eliminate a people that is as strong as your people are, secondly it just seems that people would rather trade for what they need rather than dominate the whole world.
Some pvp based mmorpgs try to have things in game like siege warfare and house destruction. The trouble is, once the winning guild takes the losing guilds houses, what are they going to do with it? In Ultima Online, you were limited to one house per account, a guideline that makes sense. There are only so many houses a person can occupy in real life as well. It makes little sense to have a lot of houses everywhere, and not even remember how many you have (like a certain presidential candidate who did not win the US election) Players characters can really only be in one location at a time, so the same guild does not really need ten different towns. One town is adaquite for the needs of most guilds (although perhaps they might have outposts for specifice purposes) really, there is only one place where a given group of people tend to hang out and meet up. It is easier to find your friends and guild mates where you already know they will be, rather than trying to be everywhere at once when you don't know where to go. Furthermore, consider travel times. That is why it makes sense to have a home base rather than scattering the empire all over the world.
Realistcally, a human does not want the orc stick huts built on the undesirable savannah or the orc forts built into the sides of the moutains. The orcs have no desire for the thick forests found in human and elven lands. While undead seem to be more comfortable in any terrain, they tend to perfer places that are more remote and out of the way, as well as places that have an erie or gloomy feel, such as swamps.
Logically, it makes no sense to raid and destroy towns filled with a bunch of monsters living a low level of of sophistication. Where are you going to put the hundreds of rusty swords that you loot from the losing guilds treasury? Thats right, you don't need that stuff. No one in your guild can use it, and they sure are not buying it at the shops. If they actually had something worth taking, however, it would make more sense. If they are guarding a mine with valuable minerals, or protecting an area with dragons that have solid scales for armor, well, then it makes sense to kill them and take the resources.
You could cite vengance as a reason for doing this, after all orcs killed your family, or whatever, but the fact of the matter is, as soon as you wipe them out in one area, they keep coming back, and if they don't then the world gets peaceful and boring. You spend the rest of the time picking flowers and decorating your over-priced home. Wait a moment, this was supposed to be a pvp game, so where are the other players to fight. Thats right, they all quit because you looted their last rusty sword and had no way to get back on their feet.
Thats why you should not be able to take houses from other players and loot all their stuff. If you think that is a good idea, then I have houses in Detroit Michiagan and Baltimore Maryland to sell you. After all, land is valuable wherever it is, even if no one wants to live there.
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