Core: Pendulum Design Notes
Core: Pendulum is the next RPGWO server being developed by Asche/Empesta, and is presently a rogue-in-progress. Effort is being extended to allow Core to once again become an official server. Core will probably use a modified 1.15 server.exe, although if the stars align and Mickey and I work out an agreement I would love to use a V2. Don't hold your breath.
Overview
RPGWO as a game engine offers a much greater variety of theoretical situations than are currently being exploited by the breadth of servers available to players. Designers make assumptions about RPGWO based on past mechanics but the possibilities offered are much more diverse. Core: Pendulum (“C:P”) seeks to expand and rework base assumptions on what an RPGWO server must contain and the sort of gameplay it entails.
C:P will be a dynamic, high-stakes sandbox environment with a focus on player-versus-player combat and the struggle between player groups. Without heavy focus on scripts (which are notoriously unreliable) C:P will feature large player-conquerable, pre-developed NPC areas. Players will form guilds that will be able to do combat with other guilds for control of these areas, which will produce valuable resources and possibly allow for the installation of area-improving infrastructure.
Combat has been reworked to make PVP more accessible to combatants of all skill levels, primarly through the removal of Defense skills that allow the total negation (“evasion”) of damage. It will now heavily rely on Personal Skill-Based Healing and Armor, with a greater emphasis on preserving stamina and mana. Greater skill will allow for the use of more resistant armor and more powerful weapons, making the onslaught against a less-skilled opponent easier but not as sure or as quick as contemporary RPGWO PVP. The system is intended to allow newer players to have a noticable impact on PvP even from the get-go, but still provide noticeable benefits to more experienced players. This and the dramatic slowdown of combat pacing will allow for more strategic combat between a greater number of individuals, even for brand new players who will be able to inflict at least a single point of damage every tick no matter what, and at the very least force an opponent to dedicate some resources (such as stamina or healing) towards these lesser threats. Limited testing has been done with these themes in mind and most participants said the system makes combat more interesting and engaging.
C:P will have a heavy emphasis on story and a dynamic plotline, with a focus on integrating the actions of the players into the evolving plot of the game. The aim of the flow of the plotline will seek to make events relevant to the player in terms of tangible rewards and/or consequences rather than arbitrary changes in the underlying lore of the world.
Combat Changes
With the removal of Defenses the emphasis of combat shifts from constantly minimizing the amount of times they actually receive damage to managing the amount of damage that they receive and keeping their vital resources (Health, Stamina, Mana) high through the use of skills, items, and tactics.
Through experimentation, the formula for how Armor interacts with incoming damage has been inferred and this has immensely helped with weapon balancing and design. When an incoming attack is sufficiently higher than the subsequent defense skill (which, in C:P’s case, is always 0), the damage is tripled and then the AL is applied. A weapon that deals 4-7 damage deals 12 to 21 damage in a defenseless system, always. (Normally, in RPGWO, if your defense is close to the attacking skill but low enough to ensure a hit AL is applied before the crit triples the damage. If the skills are roughly equal and a crit does not occur, AL is applied to the base damage).
Recovering hitpoints therefore becomes more important than normal RPGWO combat. The Medic/First Aid skill - once expanded and fleshed out - will be the primary means to recover. This primarly forces the player to manage their stamina, as it will be used for both offensive actions and recovering hitpoints. Medic items will be varied, with some providing more efficient healing for the stamina expended, while others will focus on the most amount of hitpoints that one can recover in the shortest amount of time. Different combat philosophies and gear loadouts will lend themselves to different combat builds. Stamina recovery items will be extremely burdensome and will cut into the Burden available for gear and armor.
Being Overburdened will not make as much of a difference immediately in a Defenseless system. Players will have the option of pushing past the Overburdened limit to complete their gear loadout, with the consequences only lessening their combat capability, not eliminating it. A clever player might always fight overburdened and consider the 50-attack setback a worthy trade for being able to fit his whole set of massive armor.
These systems will encourage multi-person combat to evolve tactically. You might, as a three person group, heavily overburden one combatant with impressive defenses and rely on them to soak up damage while another lightly armored and mobile individual provides most of the damage, and a third dedicates most of their stamina to healing. The goal is for players to specialize naturally in their own ways - emergent gameplay that the class-less structure of RPGWO heavily lends itself to. While specific combat roles will be kept in mind while designing equipment and skills, the pick-and-choose nature of RPGWO will provide for a continued evolution and development of different skill and equipment combinations as the players experiment with the options provided to them, and effort will be put forward to offer enough of a variety of different tools to avoid combat devolving into a familiar set of three or four viable builds.
Equipment and Crafting
A greater variety of equipment will exist at every skill level. Only a portion of it will be player craft-able, and there will definitely be better and worse weapons at the same skill levels. Since the combat is moving away from defenses, equipment will play a greater part in determining the outcome of a fight. Equipment is being designed to provide a lot of options during combat, with Burden, Stamina, and Mana being the limiting factors of use. Players will be forced to consider what they can afford to carry with them without reducing their combat efficacy. Since personal healing and stamina will play a greater part of combat, players will be forced to carry restorative items with them - items that will ultimately take away from the amount of Burden they can dedicate towards protection and offensive equipment.
No longer are the days of carrying hundreds of tomatoes for stamina restoration. Only food prepared with the Cooking skill will provide stamina restoration, with higher levels of the Cooking skill producing food that has a more favorable weight-to-stamina ratio. Excellent cooks will always have combat friends waiting for their delicious munchies.
Magic is being included, but will be heavily modified. My previous experiences with Necromancy and Gate Magic gave me insights into the magic system but were generally underdeveloped and poorly executed. Magic will be seperated into four main catagories - Defensive spells that give short-duration buffs, Offensive spells that give short-duration debuffs, Restorative Magic that can cure debuffs and heal others (but not the self), and Utility spells similar to Blue Magic. I don’t know how I will divide these skillwise, but no offensive direct-damage spells will exist.
Armor will require skill to equip. Several skills will be created just for armor, and certain other skills will also provide the ability to wear some armor (such as Mining, which will have low-AL, high Burden, light-producing armor that gives stamina regeneration). These skills will be based on a single statistic (such as DEX/1) and can only be raised via stat improvement. There will be a defensive skill for each attribute and these skills will also allow for the equipping of other items (such as accessory slots) that keep with the theme of the skill. Strength-Based Defense will feature items such as bulky, large armor and powered gauntlets whereas a Quickness-Based Defense will be more likely to provide bonuses to Run or Stamina Regeneration. I expect these skills to heavily contribute to a wide variety of different builds, especially because no one defense will work well against all weapon types. It will be advantageous to have multiple defensive skills. I am still deciding whether or not I should add some way to raise the skill through usages (such as repairing said armors).
Weapon skills will retain the Core weapon philosophy of having multiple weapon types within each Skill. It is likely that I will retain the themes of previous Core systems, but all the weapons will need to be heavily tweaked to interface with the new combat changes. Features such as Shield Cirpigvention, Armor Cirpigvention, Weapon AL, Shieldbreak, and Stamina Damage will be much more important and game-affecting than they previously were. I will likely run several weapon betas to test PVP balance.
World Interaction and Sandbox PVP
C:P will be a Forced PK world for all players, including those that do not have any offensive skills. Stealing will be enabled and encouraged. The way we will handle the Forced PK aspect is by making everyone a Non-PK player but having the vast majority of the land in the game set to Forced PK. Land we designate as “normal” will by default prevent players from attacking each other, but the option to become “PK” will allow the more aggressive players the opportunity to fight each other even in the starting zones. I am considering giving players who are that hardcore some sort of advantage or extra options.
Players who wish to own their own land will not be able to do so in the Safe Zones.
A lot of work is being done in to craft a living, breathing world. Rather than small areas of designed terrain and populated towns, the world will consist of large terrain features and a large number of small settlements that constantly dot the landscape of the world. Each of these features - be they a small fishing town or simply a wildlife-dotted steppe - will have its own NPCs, Quests, and most importantly, Control Nodes.
All non-starting areas will be Guild-Controllable. This will be an automated process that basically amounts to Sieging, Protecting, and Converting Nodes to your specific Node. Although plenty of testing will be done before finalizing the process, a basic rough overview of Node Warfare goes as such:
Controlled Nodes are Items that serve as a sort of Generator using the Proxy code system. They allow the construction and management of structures that only work for the Guild presently controlling the Node. Some examples of Node-Supported structures are Node Defenses or extractors that harvest materials from Nodes automatically on a time delay. A Node controlling a mine might have a harvestable gas vent near the Node, and controlling the Mine will allow you to build a gas extractor nearby which will produce a Gas item every hour as long as you continue to control the Node. A Town node might produce trade goods that NPCs will accept for money. Controlling a Node, however, comes with a cost - for every Node that a guild controls, they will have to pay a maintenance fee weekly. Defaulting on the node payment will cause all controlled nodes and structures to fall inactive until the fee is payed. At the very least, this fee will make controlling every node in the game generally not efficient and practical, and there will always be low-quality nodes for low-powered guilds to lay claim to as the higher-quality guilds fight over the better ones.
Having to manually collect resources from these nodes will act as an anti-clumping tool, as the population of the world is forced to create a logistical network to manage their resources. Particularly profitable nodes will likely come under the protection of clever guilds, who will base nearby in order to more easily protect their property.
Taking a node that is under the control of another guild or an NPC faction is a multi-step process. Contesting a Node will be done by constructing a Node Disruptor next to the active Node - a process that takes several minutes and can be canceled by anyone. Once the Node Disruptor is active, a Controlled Node will become contested and slowly deteriorate over the course of 24 hours, at which point it will morph into a Monster with a wolf-ton of hitpoints called a “Contested Node”. If a Contested Node is defeated, it becomes an unowned node claimable by anyone. If a Contested Node remains alive for long enough, it will fade back into a Controlled Node and the Node Disruption Process will be forced to start from scratch. This system allows the aggressive party the chance to determine the time-of-day the battle will take place in, but gives the defending guild a chance to defend their property, effectively eliminating the ability to “ninja-gank” territory.
Most territory will start owned by random NPC factions. As part of a living world, the Administration Staff will occasionally attack nodes as NPC factions, and the plot of the world will heavily revolve around the actions of the node-owning guilds. To become eligible to own nodes, a sizable group of items, usages, and monsters will need to be personalized for each guild that wants to participate. I am currently in the process of developing automated tools that will accept an adjective (such as “Legion” for a guild named “The Grey Legion”) and automatically spit out the required code. Adding new active guilds will be as simple as pressing a button. Every night when the server restarts, any new active guilds will go into effect and be able to control nodes. I may even automate the process further so that the server searches for new guilds and creates the required items.
Dynamic, Emergent Gameplay
Because of the nature of the struggle for resources and the dynamic player-driven economy and conflict that will spring from it, players will never run out of things to do. Because no defenses exist, even brand new players will be able to contribute to combat against more experienced ones, and constantly training will be less necessary to keep up with your enemies (although you will be glad you got that extra 50 Blade skill when your opponent upgrades his armor!).
Expendables will drive the economy. Players will constantly need restorative items, ammo, and equipment for their struggles. A careful eye on quest rewards, monster drops, and the addition of gold sinks (such as the node control fee) will keep the economy from inflating out of control (as is typical for RPGWO economies) and an active effort to maintain this equilibrium will be put forward.
Hopefully these changes will make for a fun and interesting server that keeps itself occupied. Theoretically, the nature of the world will provide players with the constant ability to keep themselves entertained even without admin intervention. Your questions and comments are appreciated, and I look forward to updating you with more information as it becomes available and more of the content exits the planning phases and enters the development stages.
As of now, the Core team officially consists of me (Empesta/Asche) and only me but I am looking for more team members. If you have experience in RPGWO coding, scripting, or art then feel free to send me an Email at TheAdminEmpesta@gmail.com and we’ll talk about possible additions to my squad.
-Asche/Empesta
Topic: Core: Pendulum Announcement (Read 4114 times)
July 14, 2009, 06:23:21 pm