Mortal Online podcast

[Sack]

Guys, just posted a 1 hour cast regarding the latest Mortal Online powerpoint presentation. Check it out... let me know if anything is misconceived or incorrect. Better yet, share your opinion or point out oversights.

http://www.mmoSmackTalk.com

[HolyPeanuts]

Whoa I listened to it all...

Most of what you said was pretty much correct, I guess.

And I kinda agree with the blur effect you were talking about with the first person view. In the video it kinda felt like tunnel vision.

[Murata]

I don't want to intrude or hijack this thread, but more podcasts regarding Mortal Online can be found here.

I haven't listened to your podcast, but I will.

[Sack]

Originally Posted by HolyPeanuts

Whoa I listened to it all...

Most of what you said was pretty much correct, I guess.

And I kinda agree with the blur effect you were talking about with the first person view. In the video it kinda felt like tunnel vision.

That's one hell of an attention span you got there

About the blur... TO ME, it seems like a blurry fish-eye view when moving. Maybe it's not so bad. I get sick when others drive, but when I drive... it's on. The same might happen when I'm behind the controls in game.

[Sack]

Originally Posted by Murata

I don't want to intrude or hijack this thread, but more podcasts regarding Mortal Online can be found here.

I haven't listened to your podcast, but I will.

hijack away.

[Sam]

I just skipped through all the Darkfall stuff, but then I realized I was at the end of the podcast and you never really stopped talking about it.

[LightsabeR]

Listened through it and it's always good to hear what people think about the game.

Gonna try to answer some of your questions and comment on some of your opinions. Hope I don't come off as a huge fanboy:

- Firstly, no, there was/is no connection between the devs of MO and DF, at least not directly. The reason there are various similarities in many of their core ideas is because both dev teams based their games on UO.

- You say that MO seems to be very similar to DF. To reply to this, I'd like to quote one of the devs responding to the claim that MO will just be DF with better graphics:

Originally Posted by Mats Persson

To me it's like saying Half-Life is just a graphically polished Doom as they are both first-person-shooters. Just because our games both have FFA-PvP, Full Loot and an "Open World" as fundamental features doesn't mean they will be the same game.

You can read the full post by clicking on the "View Post" button.

- You stated that you think MO will need global chat in order for trading to work. I would disagree. MO will rely on player interaction in the most basic sense of the word. You will actually have players gathering in certain areas (town squares, taverns, ect) to socialize and trade their goods. Players will be able to upgrade their houses into shops and hire NPC salesmen to sell their goods. Adding global chat would in my mind lessen the need for direct player interaction, which to me seems like a rather bad idea.

- No auto-respawn means you will enter the "etherworld" when you get killed and you will need to find a priest or some other means to resurrect your character.

- Combat will be far more advanced compared to DF:

Originally Posted by Mats Persson

In all the games you mention, you are a cylinder. Other people are cylinders. When you "attack", the system checks if the other cylinder is close enough (and if there's something in the way, at least in AoC) and that you are facing it, and if the other cylinder is facing you or not - and then sends damage to it (in AoC, the "direction" of the attack is also being sent). Then the system calculates damage and stuff. Everything else is just eye-candy. Weapons do not connect, because there are no weapons. Armor doesnt connect, because there are no armor. "Blocking" is just a check whether you are holding down a button or not. Animations doesn't matter. You can "hit" someone when they are at a 45° angle and the animation of your sword misses completely. You can "block" something although your shield is facing the opposite direction. The animation could have shown you your character humming a friendly tune, the weapon could have been switched to a boquet of flowers - becuse they don't matter.

In MO, a character is made out of boxes, and so are his weapons and shield. A weapon will trace and actually hit other boxes - and the boxes will have different stats and attributes. It will matter what gear you have on that very part of your body. Armor parts aren't just grouped together to form a virtual "defense" stat. A hit in the head will give more damage. If you don't have a helmet, it will deal more damage, not because of some virtual "defense" stat that is overall lower, but because your hitbox is actually unarmored. You can strika at specific body parts, and you have to know your own weak spots and move to protect them aaccordingly.

Blocking is done by actually blocking the incoming blow. If you hold up your sword to block, but miss to meet your opponents sword, he will hit you and the block will fail. If your opponent strikes your shield when you are not "blocking" and hold it low or at the side, the shield will still block the blow as it has it's own collision. If you hold up your shield by "blocking" and your opponent manage to get around it - it won't be a block.

Now isn't this, in fact, revolutionary for a MMO? And please, show me all of those games that already have it.

- MO will not have grind in the sense that you will really need to macro your skills. The "grind" in MO will be about finding out how to combine different skills and gear and what works best for your play style or in a certain situation. While you will be able to get your skills up relatively fast, you'll spend a lot of time perfecting your character.

- No, the combat features they described are not being done in DF, so they are not being disingenuous. DF is rather basic compared to what MO promises to be, when it comes to combat. It makes a huge difference if you have 1 hitbox or 5+2 (5 body parts, 2 for each equipped item the character is wielding). Also, FPV combat has never been done right in a MMO and it will be done right in MO.

But yes, if you would want to find a MMO that has most similarities with MO's combat, then that would most likely be DF.

- You kinda missed the point of primary skills, their caps and the secondary skills. It actually means that the primary skills (which are rather easy to level up), like for example swordsmanship, can be untrained. If you gained some secondary skills while using your swords (secondary skills are harder to level up, but don't directly effect PvP), you will not untrain those skills, but they will be locked and you won't be able to use them. If one day you choose to go back to swordsmanship and train up the primary skill associated with it, the secondary skills you once learned will become available to you once again.

- Yes, there will be player organized trading caravans, since there are no global banks.


Ok, that's all I got.

[NizeGuy]

Originally Posted by LightsabeR

- You stated that you think MO will need global chat in order for trading to work. I would disagree. MO will rely on player interaction in the most basic sense of the word. You will actually have players gathering in certain areas (town squares, taverns, ect) to socialize and trade their goods. Players will be able to upgrade their houses into shops and hire NPC salesmen to sell their goods. Adding global chat would in my mind lessen the need for direct player interaction, which to me seems like a rather bad idea.

If I (I probably don't) remember correctly, housing and player owned shops won't be in release. So until it gets implemented, it will be pretty difficult to sell your stuff without a global chat.

[LightsabeR]

Originally Posted by NizeGuy

If I (I probably don't) remember correctly, housing and player owned shops won't be in release. So until it gets implemented, it will be pretty difficult to sell your stuff without a global chat.

Firstly, we don't really know for sure what will and what will not be ready for release, so fingers crossed.

And I don't think that even without player owned shops trading would be difficult. You simply take your goods and travel to a nearby market place, be that a city square or any other area that the players choose to be fitting.

[NizeGuy]

Originally Posted by LightsabeR

Firstly, we don't really know for sure what will and what will not be ready for release, so fingers crossed.

And I don't think that even without player owned shops trading would be difficult. You simply take your goods and travel to a nearby market place, be that a city square or any other area that the player choose to be fitting.

Yea sure, it sounds easy enough. But in Darkfall it really isn't. When I want to buy arrows, I have to ride for 20 minutes

Sometimes you can get the merchant to come to you, but since there won't be global banks in MO, merchants wont be travelling much with their goods, unless they are protected and in a caravan.

But you are probably right. It's not hard finding buyers, it's just damn annoying riding for 20 minutes to get to the merchant and get the message "sorry dude, I sold it to someone else". WTF!

[Shaehl]

Originally Posted by NizeGuy

Yea sure, it sounds easy enough. But in Darkfall it really isn't. When I want to buy arrows, I have to ride for 20 minutes

Sometimes you can get the merchant to come to you, but since there won't be global banks in MO, merchants wont be travelling much with their goods, unless they are protected and in a caravan.

But you are probably right. It's not hard finding buyers, it's just damn annoying riding for 20 minutes to get to the merchant and get the message "sorry dude, I sold it to someone else". WTF!

That's why there will be unofficial areas where merchants go to sell their wares. All you have to do is go to one and find someone selling arrows.

[NizeGuy]

Originally Posted by Shaehl

That's why there will be unofficial areas where merchants go to sell their wares. All you have to do is go to one and find someone selling arrows.

Exactly. But if I right now, wanted to buy some arrows, I had to ride like 20-30 mins from my clans city. Ofcourse I can buy arrows from clan members, but then the merchants won't be going to these unoffical areas, since it would just be easier to sell to your clan mates or alliance mates.

[deathrogue54]

not bad i enjoyed it

[Sack]

Originally Posted by Sam

I just skipped through all the Darkfall stuff, but then I realized I was at the end of the podcast and you never really stopped talking about it.

Sam, the first 26 min are specifically dfo. The remainder of the cast is a monologue reviewing the latest mortal ppt taking it in perspective of the latest mmos... dfo being one of them, and the most similar.

[Sack]

Originally Posted by LightsabeR

Listened through it and it's always good to hear what people think about the game.

Gonna try to answer some of your questions and comment on some of your opinions. Hope I don't come off as a huge fanboy:

- Firstly, no, there was/is no connection between the devs of MO and DF, at least not directly. The reason there are various similarities in many of their core ideas is because both dev teams based their games on UO.

- You say that MO seems to be very similar to DF. To reply to this, I'd like to quote one of the devs responding to the claim that MO will just be DF with better graphics:

You can read the full post by clicking on the "View Post" button.

- You stated that you think MO will need global chat in order for trading to work. I would disagree. MO will rely on player interaction in the most basic sense of the word. You will actually have players gathering in certain areas (town squares, taverns, ect) to socialize and trade their goods. Players will be able to upgrade their houses into shops and hire NPC salesmen to sell their goods. Adding global chat would in my mind lessen the need for direct player interaction, which to me seems like a rather bad idea.

- No auto-respawn means you will enter the "etherworld" when you get killed and you will need to find a priest or some other means to resurrect your character.

- Combat will be far more advanced compared to DF:


- MO will not have grind in the sense that you will really need to macro your skills. The "grind" in MO will be about finding out how to combine different skills and gear and what works best for your play style or in a certain situation. While you will be able to get your skills up relatively fast, you'll spend a lot of time perfecting your character.

- No, the combat features they described are not being done in DF, so they are not being disingenuous. DF is rather basic compared to what MO promises to be, when it comes to combat. It makes a huge difference if you have 1 hitbox or 5+2 (5 body parts, 2 for each equipped item the character is wielding). Also, FPV combat has never been done right in a MMO and it will be done right in MO.

But yes, if you would want to find a MMO that has most similarities with MO's combat, then that would most likely be DF.

- You kinda missed the point of primary skills, their caps and the secondary skills. It actually means that the primary skills (which are rather easy to level up), like for example swordsmanship, can be untrained. If you gained some secondary skills while using your swords (secondary skills are harder to level up, but don't directly effect PvP), you will not untrain those skills, but they will be locked and you won't be able to use them. If one day you choose to go back to swordsmanship and train up the primary skill associated with it, the secondary skills you once learned will become available to you once again.

- Yes, there will be player organized trading caravans, since there are no global banks.


Ok, that's all I got.

LightSaber, thanks for addressing some key point in the cast. This is some good info. A couple replies to your points:

- First of all, there is nothing wrong with being a fanboy... it is the spice of life
- If I ACTUALLY SAID that, "MO will need global chat in order for trading to work", then I misstated my intentions. I could have sworn what I was articulating was more along the lines of speculation and experience with a sandbox system where global chat facilitates trade. More specifically, I am definitely interested in a limited communication system if it would lend to the necessity for caravan style trade.
- About the "disingenuous" comment: the mo documentation language is excessively exclusionary stating that there is nothing out like this (im paraphrasing). With that in mind, most people will say that there is a lot of similarity, at least on the surface, between dfo and mo. The problem this creates, that is making such an exclusive comment, is that it causes a fair number of people to raise an eyebrow (and that's a hell of a lot of eyebrow hair raising)... kind of like it's a scam (think back to RYL haha). For the record I don't think there is anything underhanded intended, or even that this is really a weak game that they will attempt to peddle for top dollar. If you take nothing out of this, just take the fact that it raises eyebrows, and therefore veracity comes into play (for a guy like me anyway). Of course if they genuinely did not think of dfo at all when writing that language... then it just becomes a statement that doesn't seem 100% correct . Bottom line "I was just saying...".
- About primary/secondary skills... so how many primary skills can you have? Can I effectively wield a sword and cast? Or will one of those act as my primary skill?

Thanks again for the response.

[Sack]

Originally Posted by deathrogue54

not bad i enjoyed it

thanks!

[pkedu]

thanks for the link

[LightsabeR]

Originally Posted by Sack

- About primary/secondary skills... so how many primary skills can you have? Can I effectively wield a sword and cast? Or will one of those act as my primary skill?

I don't think they've given an exact number of primary skills one can have, if I had to guess, it will be around 10, 20 maybe (not all combat skills I would think)? I don't know, just a wild guess. Should actually ask one of the devs. :P

In the end tho, their goal is to make every player different and not allow a situation where a player can at the same time be a "one-man blacksmith-sorcerer-tamer-warrior-thief-hunter-whatever" (dev quote :P).

[trast]

I AM GOOOOOOOD.

Thanks, interesting points made.
And fun to listen to, as always.

Thank you Ryan.

[Sack]

Trast, there is no question that you rule worlds. Thanks for listening!

[Sack]

Originally Posted by LightsabeR

I don't think they've given an exact number of primary skills one can have, if I had to guess, it will be around 10, 20 maybe (not all combat skills I would think)? I don't know, just a wild guess. Should actually ask one of the devs. :P

In the end tho, their goal is to make every player different and not allow a situation where a player can at the same time be a "one-man blacksmith-sorcerer-tamer-warrior-thief-hunter-whatever" (dev quote :P).

This will be a good thing to know, as it is contributes greatly to the diversity of game play and each player's feeling of uniqueness.

[Sack]

First 40 min of this cast is a follow-on MO cast from last week. (cast 53)

Also, for those of you that are fanboys (which I think is a good thing... nothing wrong with having a little faith and love), what do you guys think of this thread :

http://forums.darkfallonline.com/sho...49#post3486949

[Xavion]

Sweet podcast!

[Sack]

Originally Posted by Xavion

Sweet podcast!

Hahaha!!! I think I posted it 20 min ago (cast 53)... but I'll take my lovin' where I can get it

[Xavion]

It's good thus far.

[Xavath]

I would like to point out that you said Darkfall dungeons are instanced...No they are not. They are not seamless and have loading screen when you enter or leave but they are not instanced. People can go in and run into other people that are in the dungeon.

Another thing, you are getting the 64km square wrong, it is not 64 THOUSAND Kilometer square. its 64 Kilometer (hence, km) square which if 8 kilometer each side if it were a square map, and 8 kilometers is like running for 15minutes on mount in darkfall. But am not saying MO world will be really small because they only say 64km square on the FIRST continent.

[Kopatch]

hey, great podcasts. been listening to it while was playing some poker and was very entertaining.

btw. i think you need to have Darkfall in order see that forum post, as it says i do not have permission to watch with basic forum account

[Sack]

Originally Posted by Xavath

I would like to point out that you said Darkfall dungeons are instanced...No they are not. They are not seamless and have loading screen when you enter or leave but they are not instanced. People can go in and run into other people that are in the dungeon.

Thanks for that update. Awhile back the devs mentioned on the forums that there would be a loading screen and that you would spawn in to random points; I never heard a change to that. As far as it not being an instance of many potential instances, I am aware of that... so either I misspoke, didn't expound on it enough, or the context of what I was trying to say was missed. Thanks for clearing that up though... I'll have to remember to add the correction.

Originally Posted by Xavath

Another thing, you are getting the 64km square wrong, it is not 64 THOUSAND Kilometer square. its 64 Kilometer (hence, km) square which if 8 kilometer each side if it were a square map, and 8 kilometers is like running for 15minutes on mount in darkfall. But am not saying MO world will be really small because they only say 64km square on the FIRST continent.

Thanks for correcting that... it is what I meant.

[Sack]

Originally Posted by Kopatch

hey, great podcasts. been listening to it while was playing some poker and was very entertaining.

btw. i think you need to have Darkfall in order see that forum post, as it says i do not have permission to watch with basic forum account

Wooah! Did not know that about the forums... that kind of blows. I don't think you have to have the game though... cause my game and forum accounts are not linked. IE I have totally different names and pwds for each, and neither is referenced to the other. Regardless, thanks for the tip, next time I want to include a reference, maybe I'll take a screen of the OP opener and perhaps some of the comments.

[Sack]

Just posted the 54th mmo podcast. Roughly the last 15 min pertain to Mortal Online. Connor (Epoch) talks a lot about what he's looking forward in MO. The first 45 min have to do with what's wrong with DFO.