Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Aikar]

-Me and members of my clan are really looking upon this game as it mostly seems to cater what we expect of a true mmorpg. I come from Darkfall and feel very dissapointed into what it turned out to be.

We love sandbox enviroments and I think it is the essence of gaming. Good to see this game has a talented group of developers, who realized this, and are making it possible with effort and current technology.

Now although it overall looks promising and in the good direction I have a few concerns:

-I dont understand your decision of instancing sieges/battles. I mean, I know you think it is done to prevent "griefing" or other parties involved in the outcome, but ARTIFICIALLY restricting such an important player interaction event that way is completely anti-sandbox and against gameplay realism itself.
You have the balls to work in such a game with extensive sandbox philosophy and enviroment yet instance battles? kind of contradictory to say the least. And yes, open world ffa sieges and battles are viable and much more sandbox and politics involved (if not check Darkfall). Would like to hear your arguments against what I (and many others) think its a very weak and counterproductive feature to fit into the concept of the game.


-Another issue i'd like to bring is about player-enviroment interaction. I know you can terraform at will (pure sandbox and I love it), but when I see videos and screenshots of buildings and rooms etc, they all feel so void and empty. Will there be tools and items to decorate/equip buildings with? and if so, will it be in a preplaced fashion? (such as how darkfall housing worked) where you cannot place furniture or other items in the same way you place buildings within the world, but instead have a scripted spot to be placed with no choice involved?

Thanks for the interest and for the awesome job you're doing so far. Keep up the good work and the consistency of effort and i'm sure this game will blow the market, because you already have the perfect vision of the future of mmo.

[Telakh]

You can fight enemy guild memebers as much as you like without any instant battles. But if you want to besiedge their fortress, you have to win from one to three instant battles in advance, depending on the guild monument level.
Battles are instant for 2 simple reasons - they are pre-announced and so, no buildings, claims, walls and other artifical objects should be present on the battlefield, no matter if they already excisted or were quickly constructed by the defenders. This will prevent griefing.
Second reason - player limitation. Every additional player is not a plus to the system, it is a multiplier. If you have 30x30 battle, it means that there are 3600 network transactions every tick (each player must receive information about every other player). If you have 60x60 battle (just twice more), it is 14400 transactions already. Every server has it's limitations and players should be comfortable to play and don't use dozens of twin characters to lag the battlefield.
If you are smart enough to suggest a better way to solve these 2 problems - fire it up.

There will be plenty of decorations in the future, maybe even custom constructed buildings, but that is not important for the testing stage. Developers promiced to make it later after relase.

[Aikar]

You can fight enemy guild memebers as much as you like without any instant battles. But if you want to besiedge their fortress, you have to win from one to three instant battles in advance, depending on the guild monument level.
Battles are instant for 2 simple reasons - they are pre-announced and so, no buildings, claims, walls and other artifical objects should be present on the battlefield, no matter if they already excisted or were quickly constructed by the defenders. This will prevent griefing.
Second reason - player limitation. Every additional player is not a plus to the system, it is a multiplier. If you have 30x30 battle, it means that there are 3600 network transactions every tick (each player must receive information about every other player). If you have 60x60 battle (just twice more), it is 14400 transactions already. Every server has it's limitations and players should be comfortable to play and don't use dozens of twin characters to lag the battlefield.
If you are smart enough to suggest a better way to solve these 2 problems - fire it up.

There will be plenty of decorations in the future, maybe even custom constructed buildings, but that is not important for the testing stage. Developers promiced to make it later after relase.

Thanks for the reply.

The worst thing you can do to a sandbox game is adding artificial restrictions to the gameplay. It goes against gameplay realism, which is the base framework for player tools and overall sandbox, in return of scripted/timed/linear behaviours (aka hand holding).

Yes I know how intensive it can get for the servers, but its far away from impossible to handle. If again, you look at darkfall, at release we were having constant sieges in multiple places at the time with more than 200 players per side.
Once they patched out and upgraded servers a bit, those sieges were very stable and incredibly fun (if your comp could handle), and Darkfall combat system is more fast paced with wider and multiple physics processing for almost anything, which means even more server overload.
The point is, I could understand such decision some 10-15 year ago when technology for large scale network architecture was still evolving and having instanced "massive" battles/content was a no brainer no matter the focus of the game. But nowadays it is perfectly possible to run everything on the same instance and would bring a lot more to the table, specially if the game is sandbox.

[Telakh]

Yeah, right. Tell this to EVE developers They continiously fail to solve the lag issue for the last 5 years, despite that they have no hitboxes, fixed target system and no complicated calcualtions but collisions.

The worst thing the developers can do to any game, is make it disballanced and not protected from griefing. It should not be sacrificed for the roleplay and immersion.

[Aikar]

Yeah, right. Tell this to EVE developers They continiously fail to solve the lag issue for the last 5 years, despite that they have no hitboxes, fixed target system and no complicated calcualtions but collisions.

The worst thing the developers can do to any game, is make it disballanced and not protected from griefing. It should not be sacrificed for the roleplay and immersion.

Griefing is roleplay and doesnt break "immersion", since its a very human behaviour, being in a separate dimension where nobody else can enter however does.

If you feel more "immersed" with games that through artificial restrictions and mechanism only promote your playstile then sandbox is not for you im afraid.

No harm intended, but sometimes people mix concepts and ideas.

Sandbox means people can just be whatever they want and play however they want within a gameplay realistic enviroment.

Sandbox is as roleplay as it can get, and as immersive as it can get, artificial restrictions however bring none of that in any way.

[Telakh]

Griefing is roleplay
..sometimes people mix concepts and ideas.

You have strange methods of playing RPG

Sandbox is sandbox. Roleplay is roleplay. Don't mix them up.

And once again, no game should sacrifice griefing for roleplay. And by the griefeing I mean using game mechanics im an unintended manner in order to affect gameplay. That is the worst thing that can happen to roleplay.

[Siegbert]

Well, I see two main points for the instanced battles:

1. as Telakh mentions, lag plays a vital role in big battles and if this game will play out anything like Mount&Blade Warband (which it's supposed to) you will not want any lag blurring out your movements.

In M&B servers are quite lagless up to approx. 120 players. Now, there are servers with up to 200 player slots but I wouldn't recommend playing on them if you plan on engaging in combat. You will simply not be effective and the game is far less fun.

2. Having played a bit of Rust every time we build some nice little home you could be sure within the next 24h it was gone.
It's very frustrating losing everything you worked for for hours just because you have a private life or the need for sleep.
Scheduled battles let you know when exactly the enemy will attack and you can defend yourself properly.

[Aikar]

Well, I see two main points for the instanced battles:

1. as Telakh mentions, lag plays a vital role in big battles and if this game will play out anything like Mount&Blade Warband (which it's supposed to) you will not want any lag blurring out your movements.

In M&B servers are quite lagless up to approx. 120 players. Now, there are servers with up to 200 player slots but I wouldn't recommend playing on them if you plan on engaging in combat. You will simply not be effective and the game is far less fun.

2. Having played a bit of Rust every time we build some nice little home you could be sure within the next 24h it was gone.
It's very frustrating losing everything you worked for for hours just because you have a private life or the need for sleep.
Scheduled battles let you know when exactly the enemy will attack and you can defend yourself properly.

And instancing and scheduling artificially is the way to go around this?

The problem is that most of you assume sieging should be fast and destroying a building a matter of minutes, but that hardly should be like that. Breaking through a wall or a keep was a massive effort in medeieval times, and defending parties always knew in at least a few days of advance who was going to siege and when (more or less).

Problem is that sieging a city should take a preparation, camp building, skirmishes etc to plan for objectives without the need to artificially schedule every step within game by scripting, but just through the very tools provided to the players, they should themselves prepare and know how long will it take to build a sieging outpost and how much time will they want to invest in it, the defending party should be organized enough to notice about this movements (with bare scouting) and if not maybe they should have been better in this regard, the sieging party then building up siege weaponry at the camp and munching up, the defending party preparing and trying to harass them or maybe route and burn their siege weaponry, and so on... it just that massive meta which takes days and lot of organisation to make player interaction really stand out that the game will be potentially missing just because of restricted patterns proper of themepark games which im concerned about.

[Aikar]

Griefing is roleplay
..sometimes people mix concepts and ideas.

You have strange methods of playing RPG

Sandbox is sandbox. Roleplay is roleplay. Don't mix them up.

And once again, no game should sacrifice griefing for roleplay. And by the griefeing I mean using game mechanics im an unintended manner in order to affect gameplay. That is the worst thing that can happen to roleplay.

Roleplay is playing a role. Window dressing and backstories that are not consistent with how others percieve you in the gameworld is pipe dreaming and I dont want a game that "supports" those players through artificial restrictions at the expense of other playstiles in a so called sandbox. Maybe its you who's mixing concepts here...

Of course unintended use of game mechanics should be bannable and nobody is against that, the problem here is that some people percieve any sort of griefing as "unintended for the game", which in a sandbox is quite contradictory. But a griefer can simply be some guy who amboushes weaker players knowing he has the advantage, and that playstile should be perfectly admitted in a real sandbox.
An ideal sandbox should allow all type of playstiles within a gameplay realistic enviroment and tools strong enough that everything and every type of player interaction is put to balance by the players themselves and not through artificial restrictions.

[Siegbert]

I don't know how long sieges will take but I doubt it will be more than a few hours. Enough for a Russian guild to steam role my settlement over night...

If I'm not quite mistaken, I think the siege itself is not instanced. There will be a open field battle beforehand that decides if the siege will be aborted or continued.

[Psychobilly]

There really need to be strong incentives for larger guilds NOT to steamroll small settlements. Some kind of vassal system whereby the larger guild benefits more from taking in a settlement rather than destroying it. If the only option is to join a zerg, this game will suck and lose many players.

Instancing will be kind of pointless when a 60 person force tries to battle a 10 person guild. If a 10v10 instance is forced, THAT would be interesting.

People who cite Darkfall need to understand that Darkfall has the second best MMO engine on the entire market. Only Sony's Forgelight has better netcode for mass scale battles. Torque 3D, as far as I am aware, is completely untested for anything truly large scale like a Darkfall siege or PS2 battle. Just because that technology exists, doesn't mean it is open source or available to just anyone. Both engines are highly proprietary.

[Telakh]

OK, according to your measures, this sandbox is not ideal.
Thing is, that you have nothing reasonable to suggest. All current development plans have more positive than negative sides, and every time you say it should be done in an opposite way you will be countered by strong arguments while you have nothing to response with. And so, such critics is pointless.

[Aikar]

There really need to be strong incentives for larger guilds NOT to steamroll small settlements. Some kind of vassal system whereby the larger guild benefits more from taking in a settlement rather than destroying it. If the only option is to join a zerg, this game will suck and lose many players.

Here is the magic of sandbox and player tools. What happened in darkfall for instance is that "abusive" clans who took onto the small ones instantly get very bad perception server-wide by the other players and that was a HUGE factor before making any decisions. Weaker clans had overall much more support from the community in such cases, and most of the time, if they played their cards right, had a lot to win. ( I have been leader of a small to medium alliance and know exactly what I am talking about ).

Instancing will be kind of pointless when a 60 person force tries to battle a 10 person guild. If a 10v10 instance is forced, THAT would be interesting.

Instancing and Forcing a 10v10 is even more of an artificial restriction and hardly sandbox. If a clan is huge and strong, it should be percieved by the others in such ways without any artificial restriction.
I dont know what's with the carebearism here... if your clan is small and with little allies it shouldn't be able to hold same holdings or territory than huge player organizations.
This solutions are bad.

Instead provide tools for players to overcome this situations in different ways. For instance, a small clan that wants to retain its independance against a neighbour alliance 10x its size may sort an arrangement of paying weekly tributes with mule transporting while still keeping their territory and no agression from them. It promotes player interaction, player roles, diversity and overall enjoyment and sandboxiness without hurting gameplay realism with artificial restrictions.
Another solution is to join a larger alliance so they cant be "touched", etc...

All this situations and player interactions is what creates complex meta game and enjoyment, and not hard coded artificial events.

People who cite Darkfall need to understand that Darkfall has the second best MMO engine on the entire market. Only Sony's Forgelight has better netcode for mass scale battles. Torque 3D, as far as I am aware, is completely untested for anything truly large scale like a Darkfall siege or PS2 battle. Just because that technology exists, doesn't mean it is open source or available to just anyone. Both engines are highly proprietary.

I agree with you here, however my point still stands, and if they cant make a ffa non-instanced enviroment because of server or net just cant support it, fair enough, just wondering if there were other reasons for this consideration...

[Aikar]

OK, according to your measures, this sandbox is not ideal.
Thing is, that you have nothing reasonable to suggest. All current development plans have more positive than negative sides, and every time you say it should be done in an opposite way you will be countered by strong arguments while you have nothing to response with. And so, such critics is pointless.

I believe I have PLENTY to suggest, which I did, . I think in our 2-3 posts there are lot of things to dig upon and think about.

Which are your strong arguments I didnt 'counter' (or cant)? specify please.

I am not necessarily against everything you said, In fact I wasnt.
Im against the things I am against... , I have no personal grudge to you or anyone here.

You can say my way to express ideas or suggestions doesnt "sound" appropiate sometimes, you know, I can agree with that, but its not something I do on purpose believe me, so sorry if you felt offended by anything I said (not my intention) or the way I expressed it.

Above all I respect every playstile (including the griefers ), thats why I love sandbox enviroments.

I agree development plans for the most part look good, its the first thing I tried to express in the OP, and of course Life is Feudal is my top 1 game being overlooked, as for many others. However nothing is perfect and there is nothing wrong with discussing things without having to attack eachother.

[Siegbert]

Instancing and Forcing a 10v10 is even more of an artificial restriction and hardly sandbox. If a clan is huge and strong, it should be percieved by the others in such ways without any artificial restriction.
I dont know what's with the carebearism here... if your clan is small and with little allies it shouldn't be able to hold same holdings or territory than huge player organizations.
This solutions are bad.

I agree. The numbers of participants should resemble the actual relative numbers of the forces attacking/defending. I'm not sure why some battles are instanced and some are not if it's all about player numbers. After all 200 vs 200 player battles could just occur on the green fields by chance anywhere. There will be nothing that restricts it, I think...

My biggest point would be to have a set time for decisive battles so you don't get frustrated because you just missed out an important siege and find you home destroyed.

[Aikar]

My biggest point would be to have a set time for decisive battles so you don't get frustrated because you just missed out an important siege and find you home destroyed.

Yes I agree but why do it through game scripting (artificially restricting player interaction/playstile) instead of doing it through player tools , such as maybe planning the clan territory a bit with people stationed at different positions, having lookout towers etc... making clan comunication very important, and roles such as scouts, building, strategy, resource management...

This way it should be easy for a properly functioning clan to notice enemy building up a siege camp or siege machinery (maybe even through a good spy) and hence being able to prepare or take action...

If they dont notice its entirely their fault, it should not be a given intel by game mechanics, it removes huge meta from the game....

See the key here is balancing player tools that allow for such interactions and make it equal in effort, clan organisation, resoirces, and time to either siege or defend properly, without ANY artificial restriction in place.

Its the same thing I've been repeating in this thread over and over, sandbox is gameplay realism + player tools = diversity and player driven world.

[Siegbert]

I can imagine it either way... Initially I hadn't be suggesting any instanced battles since I, as well as you, think it's a bit against the nature of a sandbox game.

However, having just played Rust a few weeks before, I was sympathical to the idea of some scheduled battles as it gives you a structure.

In a real life scenario you wouldn't be out of game. You would be in the town that's besieged and it would be obvious to you when the enemy strikes, or you would know that by the next morning up on this hill there will be a battle.

In a game, you spend 2-3 hours in the evening in the game. When you log off everything can happen. But when you know that there'll be a battle that concerns all of your stuff next day 4 PM you can get back in there and have a real meaningful play time.

[Aikar]

I can imagine it either way... Initially I hadn't be suggesting any instanced battles since I, as well as you, think it's a bit against the nature of a sandbox game.

However, having just played Rust a few weeks before, I was sympathical to the idea of some scheduled battles as it gives you a structure.

In a real life scenario you wouldn't be out of game. You would be in the town that's besieged and it would be obvious to you when the enemy strikes, or you would know that by the next morning up on this hill there will be a battle.

In a game, you spend 2-3 hours in the evening in the game. When you log off everything can happen. But when you know that there'll be a battle that concerns all of your stuff next day 4 PM you can back in there and have a real meaningful play time.

You can say the same for the attackers. Again if sieging is not a matter of 2 hours but of days of planning and 2-3 days of executing (building up camp and siege machinery etc..) then it is par ground.

[Siegbert]

Yeah... I really doubt that in a game.
Is there a precedent for that?

I remember in PlanetSide 1 sieges could well take a few hours but hardly days without major stuff happening.

[Psychobilly]

Here is the magic of sandbox and player tools. What happened in darkfall for instance is that "abusive" clans who took onto the small ones instantly get very bad perception server-wide by the other players and that was a HUGE factor before making any decisions. Weaker clans had overall much more support from the community in such cases, and most of the time, if they played their cards right, had a lot to win. ( I have been leader of a small to medium alliance and know exactly what I am talking about ).

Short term vs. long term. What happened long term is that Darkfall lost almost the entire player base from the numbers it had at release. Same happened to Mortal Online. Servers went from cap to virtually empty over the course of a couple years. The problem is complex, with poor GM practices playing a big part in both cases. But of all those little guys who got snuffed out, most of them never came back. Personally I don't mind open FFA sieges included... but I'll be interested to see how this instanced system works.

[Hodo]

Yeah... I really doubt that in a game.
Is there a precedent for that?

I remember in PlanetSide 1 sieges could well take a few hours but hardly days without major stuff happening.

I remember WWII Online was the same way. Massive sieges that would last for hours and in some rare cases days that would involve a few hundred people per day.

There is nothing wrong with those type of things, but I hate to say it. Todays gamer just doesn't have the patiance for it, and has this intitled mentality where if they don't have it now, then there is something wrong or someone is exploiting. Honestly those were some of my most fond memories of WWII ONline.

[Bobik]

Well, our main bet is that oldschool gamers and some "todays" gamers that have grown up into more advanced gamers types should be enough to stay afloat financially and keep on pushing our vision of the game.

[Virdill]

Well, our main bet is that oldschool gamers and some "todays" gamers that have grown up into more advanced gamers types should be enough to stay afloat financially and keep on pushing our vision of the game.

If you succeed in create a quality game, we can make you rich LOL

I want this project / game has enough money to improve visibly and continuously

[Aikar]

Well, our main bet is that oldschool gamers and some "todays" gamers that have grown up into more advanced gamers types should be enough to stay afloat financially and keep on pushing our vision of the game.

If you succeed in create a quality game, we can make you rich LOL

I want this project / game has enough money to improve visibly and continuously

They are so far doing very good, and another important factor is that they have a very advanced vision and understanding of sandbox (even surprising many people introducing completely new features based on the same principles never seen in mmorpg such as double stat bars and player formations), hence gameplay realism too, which is a thing that Aventurine with Darkfall didn't seem to get ever since they split with the Razorwax guys at release...

My only worry is that at some crucial point they will lack enough resources to keep on with the developing and this project dies, because one thing is true: LiF still needs loads of work ahead, even if they release the game, to feel somewhat complete and start calling their future content "expansions".