FOOL dev quotes round-up

WorstUsernameEver

But best title ever!
The Vault has a new round-up of developer quotes for Fallout Online.

Chris Taylor about the combat system:<blockquote>We try to read as much as possible, but lately, it's been hard to keep up with everything! ^_^

Some things are pretty locked down, like the combat system. We had a strong concept for the combat system from the very beginning. It's not FO1/2, and it's not VATS. It's a SPECIAL based system that works in a MMO environment. You can say it's specially designed for us. We never intended for it to be a FPS or pure shooter. Character skill and stats are very important to the combat system. Probably 50% of the equation. Character gear, player skill, decision making and timing make up the other half.

Like I've said in the past, what gets said here does influence us, naturally, but we do have a very strong vision for the game, so we're not rewriting it based on what we read.

There have been more than a few moments where this forum has made us realize that there was something missing (hey, it's a big game design, there are gaps here and there) or we could tweak it one way or another because we hadn't fully fleshed out that particular feature.

We've got our own strong idea of what the game should be, and we're confident in our skills and experience as game developers. But that doesn't mean we don't listen to the community. Honestly, however, I'd say that it's very difficult for the community to understand the game as a whole at this stage. When we get to beta testing, and people have a chance to play the game instead of discussing it in theory, it will be better for everyone involved.</blockquote>And guilds:<blockquote>I saw a post or two about the naming of "Guilds", and hoping for something other than "Guild" as the name of a player-based social group.

Well, we tried. Internally, we called them something else. We set up wiki pages for the new name, all references in the design docs used the new name, etc... And we kept referring to them as guilds whenever we had a discussion.

Finally, we caved in. If people are going to call them guilds, we might as we support that.

So, our "guilds" are Guilds. Yar, it's not quite appropriate ("Faction" is reserved for something else, and "blankity-blank-blank", the name that we tried to get people to use, was stolen by another part of the design and co-opted to do something else), but it's what everybody uses.(1)

(1) Geek op-ed piece: It annoys me when a paper-and-pencil RPG calls the DM something besides DM, if fantasy, or GM if anything. A GM is a GM. It's not a keeper, or a storyteller, or a HPIC or whatever. It's a GM.</blockquote>Thanks Ausir.
 
Bewitched said:
Chris Taylor sounds just like Todd Howard/Pete Hines when he talked about Fallout 3, lol.

Got the same impression, yeah.
 
We're certainly looking forward to the next MMO from Blizzard
I tried EVE for about 1 hour and couldn't hack it.
There will be restrictions. Our vision of PvP requires player consent.

So it'll be another WoW clone devoid of social/political conflict and with meaningless pvp but full of little achievement maze-grinds to cater to the 12-year olds and addicts.

It's the Fallout world. Anything but FFA loot or similar mechanics is an unforgivable design failure.

What this game should be: Inspired by SWG when it comes to social mechanics (including housing/townmaking), inspired by EVE when it comes to PVP and politics, inspired by WoW when it comes to combat mechanics and polish.

What it will be: An uninspired, toothless WoW clone pushed out by the suits looking for easy profit per investment and produced by people infatuated with WoW.
 
Julius said:
We're certainly looking forward to the next MMO from Blizzard
I tried EVE for about 1 hour and couldn't hack it.
There will be restrictions. Our vision of PvP requires player consent.

So it'll be another WoW clone devoid of social/political conflict and with meaningless pvp but full of little achievement maze-grinds to cater to the 12-year olds and addicts.

It's the Fallout world. Anything but FFA loot or similar mechanics is an unforgivable design failure.

What this game should be: Inspired by SWG when it comes to social mechanics (including housing/townmaking), inspired by EVE when it comes to PVP and politics, inspired by WoW when it comes to combat mechanics and polish.

What it will be: An uninspired, toothless WoW clone pushed out by the suits looking for easy profit per investment and produced by people infatuated with WoW.

I like how you base most of this on statements that have NOTHING to do with the actual game.
 
gumbarrel said:
Julius said:
We're certainly looking forward to the next MMO from Blizzard
I tried EVE for about 1 hour and couldn't hack it.
There will be restrictions. Our vision of PvP requires player consent.

So it'll be another WoW clone devoid of social/political conflict and with meaningless pvp but full of little achievement maze-grinds to cater to the 12-year olds and addicts.

It's the Fallout world. Anything but FFA loot or similar mechanics is an unforgivable design failure.

What this game should be: Inspired by SWG when it comes to social mechanics (including housing/townmaking), inspired by EVE when it comes to PVP and politics, inspired by WoW when it comes to combat mechanics and polish.

What it will be: An uninspired, toothless WoW clone pushed out by the suits looking for easy profit per investment and produced by people infatuated with WoW.

I like how you base most of this on statements that have NOTHING to do with the actual game.

Because there aren't many statements on the actual game yet. If you want a clue on how the game turns out you have to look between the lines, which admittedly is hard to do with just a few quotes. I've read through a lot of the dev posts and these quotes stuck out to me as examplifying the approach to the game that I can glean from the posts.
 
Yeah, them saying that they are looking forward to the next Blizzard MMO and that ONE guy tried EVE and didn't like it are good signs of what the game will be like.

NOT!
 
Also, can't blame anyone for not being able to get into EVE.
It's just not very beginner friendly.

I tried twice and still felt overwhelmed. IMHO, it's just not a good idea to to place the player anywhere and tell him "Okay, here's your big, limitless world. Now go and do whatever you like." without any useful guidance.

Open worlds should never start too open, or many players won't be able to set their own personal goals, since the endless possibilities might overwhelm them when starting.

But this may be slighty off topic...
 
EVE has a long tutorial which they have condensed over time and provides documentation on everything else. After the tutorial it suggests that you do missions for an agent so it's not like it completely dumps you off. If you don't do the tutorial then I have no sympathy. Granted, you really need to get into a corporation to start enjoying the game and the game is very complex, but that complexity is what makes it good.

I can't blame people for not getting into EVE as I was never quite tempted enough to buy a month but I can blame people, especially MMO game designers, for not being able to get past the first hour of play. And yes, I do realize that the learning curve is like scaling a cliff when starting EVE.

I do think that EVE would be a good source for inspiration in terms of PvP though. The idea of sectored space could definitely be modified and applied to at least towns in FOOL. I also think that it's economic model would be pretty perfect for FOOL, though figuring out how to make resource gathering fun would be a task (EVE didn't really do that, they just have auto-gathering so that you can do something else while your ship is harvesting in a window).
 
It's the Fallout world. Anything but FFA loot or similar mechanics is an unforgivable design failure.

Only if they don't want any chance of success. FFA means that the griefers can make the game absolutely unpleasant for everyone else, which means *no one will play the game.*

This is not a freeware roguelike.
 
meta its ok, people talk about how great a totally FFA system would be and blissfully ignore the lessons of UO and shadowbane or think it wont happen again.

FFA does not work

its been done before.

a couple times.
 
Exept that eve online isnt a true ffa, its only ffa in ,4and below so there is plenty of space where pvp is only allowed when in war.
And eve while sucseful in its special niece with about 100k subscribers is still a rather narrow game, and there are some drawbacks to going into ffa and go on a killing spree.
 
tunih said:
Exept that eve online isnt a true ffa, its only ffa in ,4and below so there is plenty of space where pvp is only allowed when in war.
And eve while sucseful in its special niece with about 100k subscribers is still a rather narrow game, and there are some drawbacks to going into ffa and go on a killing spree.

'True FFA' huh?

Where did I state that I want FFA everywhere, all the time, without consequences? Obviously it needs to be thought through and appropriately implemented like it is in EVE.
And EVE has 300k+ subscribers.
 
Julius said:
tunih said:
Exept that eve online isnt a true ffa, its only ffa in ,4and below so there is plenty of space where pvp is only allowed when in war.
And eve while sucseful in its special niece with about 100k subscribers is still a rather narrow game, and there are some drawbacks to going into ffa and go on a killing spree.

'True FFA' huh?

Where did I state that I want FFA everywhere, all the time, without consequences?

Where did he state he was talking to you? :smugoticon:

Love the sumg emoticon.
 
gumbarrel said:
Julius said:
tunih said:
Exept that eve online isnt a true ffa, its only ffa in ,4and below so there is plenty of space where pvp is only allowed when in war.
And eve while sucseful in its special niece with about 100k subscribers is still a rather narrow game, and there are some drawbacks to going into ffa and go on a killing spree.

'True FFA' huh?

Where did I state that I want FFA everywhere, all the time, without consequences?

Where did he state he was talking to you? :smugoticon:

Love the sumg emoticon.

Fairly irrelevant since in either case it's a strawman argument.
 
tunih said:
Exept that eve online isnt a true ffa, its only ffa in ,4and below so there is plenty of space where pvp is only allowed when in war.
And eve while sucseful in its special niece with about 100k subscribers is still a rather narrow game, and there are some drawbacks to going into ffa and go on a killing spree.

PVP is allowed everywhere. CONCORD wont prevent a pirate blasting your ship, even in 1.0 sec space. They will blow the pirate to atoms but that will not save your own ship. And thats why ganking is not a big problem in highsec (a miner might disagree). The Problem with FFA like it was done until now is the lack of consequences for the attacker.

FFA could work if there were dire consequences for killing people, like a criminal flag that means no town acces, restricted trade, being hunted, bountysystem....

It should be handled like Childkilling in FO2. You can do it, but it will seriously change the way you have to play.
 
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