Protomodules

[rob]

Hey all,

Tim is working on some new loot this week. We are going to try to roll it out in pieces as we finish them. That means that the system will be incomplete for a while, but at least we can all play with the parts that are finished.

We plan to have new loot called "protomodules". These will be somewhat like the "modules" we discussed earlier, except that they won't really do anything. Initially, you'll just be able to collect them. You do this by driving near a loot bag, and they are automatically added to your short term storage.

We haven't decided what to call the short term storage yet, but it acts somewhat like the backpack you have in a normal RPG, with three important differences. First, protomodules are auto-looted. Second, the short term storage has infinite capacity. Third, the protomodules can only live in short term storage for 24 hours before they disappear -- you have a day to save them permanently.

You'll save the protomodules permanently in long-term storage, which acts a lot like the RotMG vault. It has limited capacity, so you'll need to make decisions about what to save and what to throw out.

For stats, protomodules have only a level. We plan to allow "crafting" of protomodules -- combining (say) three level-N protomodules to yield a level N+1 protomodule. We are also considering trading, although the spamming and gray-market stores of RotMG have got me thinking that an auction house or module market might be a better way to do it.

This week's build will likely have a small subset of this -- just looting and the short-term storage, but without the "storage" part. You'll lose everything on logout. But we can test the implemented parts and hopefully we'll have more to show the following week. Our plan is to use protomodules while building and testing the systems, and then later implement some loot with actual uses.

Rob

[Ood]

Short term storage of a tank is obvious:

Cargo Bay.

Sounds like a cool update.

[hypevosa]

An auction house would be better than trading in my book since it's secure on both ends - I just hope there's the capacity to offer combinations of gridshards and items for other items, instead of straight 1 to 1 trades.

Eliminating trade so we don't have a repeat of realm of the mad merchant or of the grey market item selling will be a great plus. I will, however, miss being able to GIVE people items. I can't think of a good method of allowing players to give items that won't be easily exploited, sadly.

As for storage names, I'd say the temporary storage should be the Flash Storage Bay. Where I permanently affix things should be Hardpoint Ports.

Question though, is this actually going to be a copy and paste of the vault? Is this a per-tank thing?

[rob]

We were thinking that both short and long term storage would be per-account. The reasoning is that if you had different inventories per tank, it would be easy to forget which tank had the item you were looking for.

[hypevosa]

Alright, I was trying to imagine exactly what the modules were for since we already have prisms for bonuses across all tanks and augments for individual tank stat empowerment. I guess I don't really understand what they're for.

[quicklite]

They could be for very specific things, such as cooldowns for certain triggers, buffs for certain weapons/triggers, possibly extra weapons (but probly not), upgrades for shard effectiveness (e.g. how much health a minor health shard will give you), or maybe even upgrades for things not covered by prisms (health/shield regeneration, rotation speed, the amount of time that elapses without taking damage before your health/shields regenerate), etc. Could be cool

[hypevosa]

Someone on IRC said rob originally said that players might be able to add 10-20 guns.

I want to fire a broadside! D:

[quicklite]

10-20 guns? Well, firstoff, I'd like to see those guns, or at least some of those guns go on death. It would give you more of an incentive not to die .
And also just wandering around with that much friggin firepower all the time just sounds a little stupid tbh. Though I'm liking this concept, and I seriously hope that whoever told you that wasn't BSing you (no offence to whoever told you that) >_>

[hypevosa]

Yes, I think they'd need to disappear on death too, and probably should slow your turning and moving speed, but the possibility alone sounds like glorious fireworks.

[tarbomb]

I'm excited to see what becomes of protomodules.

What I'm wondering, though, is how you guys are planning to maintain single battlefront and balance without diluting the effect too much. Some kind of tradeoff system might work here. You want 20 guns and a 5-layer shield? No problem, but you're slower than an arthritic tortoise. Alternatively: Hypevosa suggested the ability to spend gridshards for battlefield power; perhaps we could have some kind of GS Converter that would convert gridshards into a boost; higher levels would suck up more shards while providing a bigger boost.

Assuming the current everyone-gets-everything loot scheme stays, I don't see the need for trading at all. As long as ridiculously rare items aren't introduced (and they shouldn't, considering that that would make the game much more dependent on luck), any player can progress quickly by tagging along in a group. No trading and shared loot encourages coop play instead of playing for oneself, just as it does now for prisms.

Is the 24 hours played time, or real-world time?

On the 20-gun thing: Here's the original source:

We are striving for a mouse-only control scheme that lets players operate the game with one hand free. We'd also like the control scheme to scale up to big vehicles with 10, 20 or more guns.

This post is almost a year old and doesn't necessarily state that the game will have megatanks, but we can hope, can we?

[rob]

Nothing is likely to come of protomodules. They don't have any in-game effect are are just to have something to practice with as we develop the inventory, crafting and trading systems. We'll come up with "real" items later.

Megatanks are not currently on the roadmap, but we may end up there. Maybe you'll laboriously craft an amulet of destruction over a period of days, which you then consume to become a barely-mobile megafortress for 30 seconds or so....

We are actually thinking of introducing uber-rare items, and making trading a more integral part of the game. I'll post more detailed thoughts on this later.

The 24 hours is real world time. We considered the played-time idea, but in the end we decided that it might discourage people from logging in. "If I log in to Grid 12, I'll have only minutes to decide what to do with my nearly-expired module. I'll just go play Pokemon instead."

[hypevosa]

Apr 24, 2013 7:02:11 GMT -5 rob said:

Nothing is likely to come of protomodules. They don't have any in-game effect are are just to have something to practice with as we develop the inventory, crafting and trading systems. We'll come up with "real" items later.

Megatanks are not currently on the roadmap, but we may end up there. Maybe you'll laboriously craft an amulet of destruction over a period of days, which you then consume to become a barely-mobile megafortress for 30 seconds or so....

We are actually thinking of introducing uber-rare items, and making trading a more integral part of the game. I'll post more detailed thoughts on this later.

The 24 hours is real world time. We considered the played-time idea, but in the end we decided that it might discourage people from logging in. "If I log in to Grid 12, I'll have only minutes to decide what to do with my nearly-expired module. I'll just go play Pokemon instead."

Ah, I understand, so we're just testing systems more than anything else right now. I wonder when we'll get to the real items then.

Woo megatanks! I would ask though that megatanks, if we do come to it, be something worth attaining. 30 seconds of sitting dead with a bunch of guns isn't very glorious - I'd much rather have the tanks just be impossible to repair (and perhaps even be aggro magnets) so a skilled pilot and wingmen can keep them going for longer. Working days for a 30 second payoff means either the payoff is insanely broken (5 second drill and wall clearing), or very disappointing for the effort put into it.

I've always loved free trade and free market - one of the reasons I left runescape was when they abolished free trade I saw the most complex and interesting economic system I'd observed get destroyed. I actually learned alot about business practice, speculation, custom, advertising, etc from the 2 months I spent as a merchant turning 4 million gold into 44 million. That said, the grey market will pop up again, especially if we have uber-rare items again which is what really sparked the market in ROTMG.

I don't think we should have any uber-rare items, instead we should just have a crafting system that makes items rare because they take a long time to find and cobble all the right bits together, while still being able to be lost/degraded on death. This makes greymarket harder to accomplish, as items aren't introduced at an incredibly high rate by higher player populations (like doom-bows), you have to have people actively searching for and crafting ingredients for them. Also, by having it so ANYONE can craft an item, you make it so that anyone attempting to use the grey market for an item must compete with the normal market openly and easily providing the supplies to make it. It won't really be worth anyone's time. Ultimately, some will still go the easy route and buy the item because they're lazy, but you'll cut the buyer population significantly by not having the "it's a 1/1000 drop! screw that, I'll pay 15 bucks" because it'll be that they need 20 of these common parts that drop 50% of the time instead.

I am willing to admit, at one point in ROTMG my girlfriend was so sad that she caused my death and lost my 1/1000 doombow drop, that she went and surprised me by buying one for 15 bucks since we were both certain I'd never see another one. Having really uber rare items ("I may never get this drop again...") is a mistake if you want to avoid the grey market. Making it so a player KNOWS they can get an item, it will just take a little time, destroys grey market item for all but the laziest who would exploit it in all situations.

I understand your reasoning behind using real time not ingame time, but realize it's two sides of the same coin. You will now have people feeling like they have to log into the game or go marathon gaming to make good use of it - both are unhealthy behaviors.

[quicklite]

Apr 24, 2013 7:02:11 GMT -5 rob said:

Nothing is likely to come of protomodules. They don't have any in-game effect are are just to have something to practice with as we develop the inventory, crafting and trading systems. We'll come up with "real" items later.

Megatanks are not currently on the roadmap, but we may end up there. Maybe you'll laboriously craft an amulet of destruction over a period of days, which you then consume to become a barely-mobile megafortress for 30 seconds or so....

We are actually thinking of introducing uber-rare items, and making trading a more integral part of the game. I'll post more detailed thoughts on this later.

The 24 hours is real world time. We considered the played-time idea, but in the end we decided that it might discourage people from logging in. "If I log in to Grid 12, I'll have only minutes to decide what to do with my nearly-expired module. I'll just go play Pokemon instead."

Uber-rare collectibles that do nothing? Not that I'm disappointed with the protomodules doing nothing (that was expected) but it feels stupid to have something ridiculously rare and valuable that doesn't actually actively reward the player for getting it. Though on the topic of uber-rares, I'm with hype on this one; having weapons (such as doom bows and whatnot) that can only be achieved through ridiculous luck/painstaking grinds in realm aggravated me to no extent. It didn't only just bring jealously between other players (I've done 1000 UDLs, and that a**** gets it on his first go!? I deserved that demon blade, I did all the work, that guy just spellbombed him once and ran away! etc.), but also begging through feeling an inability to actually get the darn thing and hours after hours of painful grinding that made the game far less enjoyable (I will never touch a sprite world ever again ._.). Whereas the system hype mentioned would get rid of all that: a goal that is both logical and nicely reachable, meaning that having cool stuff is more likely to bring respect instead of jealousy and constant begging (probably >_>), and one that takes out the majority of the grind (sure, you'll still have to collect many of one thing, but it's not all from the same thing, and at least you'll get results and therefore progression towards your goal, whereas whenever I did a sprite world, I was one dex richer, but I felt nowhere closer towards getting my dream EP.

And as for real world time...please don't. I've played so many games that rely completely on real world time, and the problem with that is that the real world doesn't stop for you, like games should do. Playing becomes a responsibility, and you get punished for not being online (Your villagers/facilites imploding, your sweet armor/weapons disappearing). Playing becomes a chore, instead of a recreational thing. You get annoyed that you were busy last week and therefore you wasted half your stuff on that sweet gun that you just missed out on. Then eventually you just get fed up and either stop buying things, or simply leave. Ofc, this sort of game does work for some people (but not me >_>). There's loads of games that operate under this mechanic and that area really damn successful. But for a game that seems to be establishing itself as a (relatively) casual, multi-choice, play at your own style, play at your own pace sort of game, imposing those sorts of obstructions on people's gameplay speed (was that the right word? ) would kinda ruin the nice little thing you have going on atm.

[hypevosa]

It's really an ethical decision in my eyes. Do we want the player to play because the game is enjoyable enough to sustain that behavior on its own, or do we want them to play because they feel like they have to play?

I went back to realm again and again because I enjoyed playing, even if it was grindy and unpleasant at points for me. I played runescape forever because I felt obligated to go back, and I dropped it once I was mature enough to not play a game that was a job.

[rob]

Apr 24, 2013 10:11:33 GMT -5 quicklite said:

Uber-rare collectibles that do nothing? Not that I'm disappointed with the protomodules doing nothing (that was expected) but it feels stupid to have something ridiculously rare and valuable that doesn't actually actively reward the player for getting it. Though on the topic of uber-rares, I'm with hype on this one; having weapons (such as doom bows and whatnot) that can only be achieved through ridiculous luck/painstaking grinds in realm aggravated me to no extent. It didn't only just bring jealously between other players (I've done 1000 UDLs, and that a**** gets it on his first go!? I deserved that demon blade, I did all the work, that guy just spellbombed him once and ran away! etc.), but also begging through feeling an inability to actually get the darn thing and hours after hours of painful grinding that made the game far less enjoyable (I will never touch a sprite world ever again ._.). Whereas the system hype mentioned would get rid of all that: a goal that is both logical and nicely reachable, meaning that having cool stuff is more likely to bring respect instead of jealousy and constant begging (probably >_>), and one that takes out the majority of the grind (sure, you'll still have to collect many of one thing, but it's not all from the same thing, and at least you'll get results and therefore progression towards your goal, whereas whenever I did a sprite world, I was one dex richer, but I felt nowhere closer towards getting my dream EP.

Nobody is interested in a super rare item that does nothing. I'm talking about real items.

As for rarity and random drops being no fun, first of all I disagree. Second of all, we are working on plans to make trading much more efficient and less aggravating, so you can trade for whatever you can't seem to make drop. We feel the system we are envisioning (more details in a later post) would eliminate begging, shouting in the nexus and black-market stores. It would actually resemble EVE's item economy in many ways.

Apr 24, 2013 10:11:33 GMT -5 quicklite said:

And as for real world time...please don't. I've played so many games that rely completely on real world time, and the problem with that is that the real world doesn't stop for you, like games should do. Playing becomes a responsibility, and you get punished for not being online (Your villagers/facilites imploding, your sweet armor/weapons disappearing). Playing becomes a chore, instead of a recreational thing. You get annoyed that you were busy last week and therefore you wasted half your stuff on that sweet gun that you just missed out on. Then eventually you just get fed up and either stop buying things, or simply leave. Ofc, this sort of game does work for some people (but not me >_>). There's loads of games that operate under this mechanic and that area really damn successful. But for a game that seems to be establishing itself as a (relatively) casual, multi-choice, play at your own style, play at your own pace sort of game, imposing those sorts of obstructions on people's gameplay speed (was that the right word? ) would kinda ruin the nice little thing you have going on atm.

The real-world timer we are discussing is not like Evony or Travian or other MMORTS games where someone destroys your city at 3AM. We are not making FarmVille. All we are saying is that when you pick up an item, you have 24 hours to decide whether you want to keep it. It just takes 2 minutes at the end of your session to stick the item in your vault.