This is long.

I archive here a self-discussion about SWG, about writing blogs, about the armchair designer, about being a loser, about the frustration, about the passion, about combat systems, about the ‘virtuality’, about organization and observation, about self-consistency, about the communities, about dreams and nightmares.

Hopefully hidden in the “read more” link on the right so that it won’t contaminate the rest (if there’s still something uncontaminated around here).

—

Geldon:
If I were in charge, I’d be solely tempted to halt development on SWG and work on SWG 2, and this time redesign the flow of the game from the ground up to have the same kind of pulse-driving lightsaber and blaster action that KOTOR has.

Everything can be fixed with some dedication. A few adjustments in the core points can already improve the game by far, then getting more time to start addressing the roots.

Considering their plans, like the new PvP system and the changes to the TEF, I believe that they are still going in the wrong direction, maybe even worst than before.

Geldon:
Heh, it appears we’ve swapped positions. I seem to recall it was me debating with you that SWG’s combat needed balancing, not a total reimplementation, at some point in the past. Now I’m suggesting perhaps nothing short of a pre-release redesign may do the trick to make SWG’s combat exciting and you’re telling me that SWG just needs a few good adjustments?

Raph Koster:
(as a provocation)
What would be the right direction, to your mind?

My point of view is unchanged. What I write about the class system and the combat system still applies.

Recently on Terra Nova Jeff Freeman wrote:
“SWG’s creature handler is a profession which satisfies a variety of interests, for example. By comparison, other systems are less appealing, or appealing to fewer people.

I think we should have designed every profession and every activity with the idea that it should satisfy multiple motivations. I believe that would have given them all more depth.”

And my reply confirms what I wrote on this forum long ago:
“Or maybe transform these relatively closed professions into different roles that can be impersonated with the same character. So that I could chose to have one role in the combat, one role in the social aspect, one role in the crafting and so on. Including and delivering all that the game has to offer.

As discussed on Grimwell months ago.”

About the combat system I always criticized that it must feel as ranged combat with weapons instead of Pie Wars under hallucinogens. Same stuff I wrote on F13:
“The comments are obvious. Before this conquest system matters the combat itself must be fun and interesting on its own and ‘feel’ like a proper combat system instead of a misplaced simulation of Pie Wars with hallucinogens (that again is the aim even of this combat revamp, like I commented on its thread).

But on what is based the conquest system? You can really conquer terrain and destroy sturctures? Or it’s just another roleplay into the roleplay where you have to pretend you are controlling this zone so that an ‘x’ more amount of NPCs spawn somewhere else?

Obviously this would be a wonderful idea for the game we expected. Believable range combat, fighting around structures, combat with vehicles, turrets. Organizing squadrons, strategies, moving troops. Blow things up, conquer bases, fight within them, shooting from behind windows, taking cover.

I guess this is still a distant utopia.”

The TEF system needed to be adjusted in the annoying parts, not dodging those problems and bypass that design choice to go back at the separated models.

Obviously all this is about the cheap commentary. But I’d like to delve if it was useful. For example, imho, the very first step for the combat ‘revamp’ should be a rework of the interface and the controls, along with the animations. Most of the problems of SWG are in the ‘feel’ of the character, how it moves, how it interacts. The combat in general must be redefined in this feeling. It must feel real and not again that formal system dressed with graphic that Raph is still pushing forward.

Once the basic of the controls are redefined the gameplay should be revamped to shift its focus more on the elements of ranged combat that can be translated directly in the game. Work on the arcs of fire, work to give a role to the environment and so on. It’s a start and there’s no definite end. Just a long list of progressive stages.

About the classes it’s the same. Replan them into three groups as we already commented, redefining the roles so that the same character can access various sub-sets of activities but still with one role each (one role in crafting, one in social, one in combat… etc..).

With the resources they have you have NO LIMIT. The core point is how to employ those resources at best and I simply have a different opinion of what should be done and how it should be done.

—
To add a few other ideas:
Sometimes I fancy about ‘interviews’ for a work in this industry. And I imagine general types of questions like “If you had to pick just one element of a mmorpg that you’d consider the most important, which would you choose?”

My imaginary answer to this silly question is: “The LFG system.”

This is an obvious meta-link with SWG. The game has a terribly weak LFG system, one of those that you could remove from the game without saying and noone would notice. It was the first aspect of the game I criticized as I started to play and wrote on the old WT.o. In general these minor aspect are ALWAYS overlooked by designers while they are terribly important for how the game plays, for its flow and its life cycle.

An LFG system isn’t just a detail. It brings up a nearly infinite list of related issues. Each strategically placed in a core point of the design. An LFG system means reconsidering how your class system is built, in which cases the players need cooperation and how this cooperation works concretely. What the players feel the need to search? What they miss? What they have too much?

This brings directly to another aspect that SWG *strongly* needs: a reconsideration, reorganization and valorization of the content already in the game. One of the biggest flaws of the game is that you don’t know how to access most of the content. You don’t know it exists, you don’t know where it’s located and you don’t even know why you should go to see it (why you need it).

All these aspects need to be reconsidered, they need to be analyzed and organized. Build a table to show where are the strengths and the weaknesses and how to organize everything to improve the general feel. To offer and show clearly to the players what the game has to offer, without hiding or trivializing it.

So the “LFG system” isn’t anymore a detail with zero relevance for the game. It becomes the *final* result of a long process or reorganization of the elements already in the game. This brings to the actual changes to the game only on a very final stage because 90% of the work is pure design and organization.

From the result of all this you’ll have the traits that your LFG system needs. So you build it and you’ll finally organize the content itself so that it isn’t anymore wasted, dispersed, ‘mudflated’ and forgotten.

This is a rough demonstration of RADICAL changes that don’t involve a direct work on the game (as coding, production of new content, new art, animations etc..). The replan of an LFG system, from my point of view, may have a STRONG impact on the game, along reorganizing the content, the roles of players, the classes and all the various interactions. And without the need to build a NEW game, without recoding directly everything and all the rest.

Also. When I say that the game need just a few, well-put changes, I don’t mean that after you do those the game is perfect. I just mean that if I was “in charge of everything” I’d NEVER wipe off what they have already to begin from zero a whole new game. Instead I’d start to work with different layers and stages. At the end, in the long term, the game will be completely different but capitalizing on what I have already available.

(and I also wrote just maybe the 10% of what I was thinking because for example I left out another important layer tied to the LFG system: the ‘consideration’ system. It’s another topic I was thinking about recently because it’s not a problem of SWG only. Eve-Online also has no form of it. This because I was thinking again to WoW. WoW not only solves perfectly the problem of the /con, since it has the levels but it also solves directly all the (connected) problems I rised above. How you organize the content? How you valorize it? Why the players need each other? What exactly they need from someone? How they can they find each other? Where they go to meet? How they know if someone else can use their help? Why they should help someone else? etc… In a (infinite) list of correlated questions you touch every single aspect of the design of the game. The whole structure of the quest/zone/travel/public channel systems is the very final result.

For example it will be HARD to come up to the same good design of WoW in SWG. Why? Because WoW is extremely focused, SWG not. You have to level, everyone else needs to level. There’s loot and experience. All the questions above have DIRECT answers because the system is focused. You know what the players will do, you know why they’ll build groups, you know what classes they’ll search, you know in which zone they’ll go at a precise level, you know which quests they’ll do. Etc… What is the consequence of these observations? The consequence is that zone-wide public channels become an optimal way for an LFG system. Because the zones of the game become “boxes of content”, directly organizing and grouping the whole server population within a precise level range. The quests in that zone will form a few, organized and easily manageable (both for devs and players) list of quest-lines. So the parties will be organized following this general plan and you know directly, as a designer, how to develop the content, where to put something soloable, where to put something for groups, the types of the reward you should offer, consider the downtimes, place down on the map the NPCs quest-givers and so on. you can regulate the social interaction, you can regulate the quantity, quality and ‘flow’ of the content, you can regulate how to show this content to the players so that they are aware of it and are willingly to experience it (for example by showing directly the final reward with all the stats on the loot clearly visible).

The “organization of content” is again strictly tied with all this. And in SWG you need a completely different work (hence the reorganization). Because it’s way harder to define the classes, this makes way harder to define how the groups interact, this makes way harder to define where they’ll meet, this makes way harder to define where you’ll place the content and how you’ll instruct the players so they know why they should desire to see and experience it, this makes way harder to define a proper /con system (a re-iteration because the /con system directly defines what type of character a group needs, how many characters in total the group needs to face the encounter and so on…).

At the end all this makes way harder to define how you’ll build a proper and useful LFG system.

If all those points are correctly analyzed, considered and restructured, the game will make a *significant* step forward. The game itself will know where are its own strengths, what it lacks, if its social aspect is fun enough to involve the players and, finally, where the development should focus to make the game evolve and improve its success.)

(and about the consideration system: my point of view (and I know that SWG has already one but, yes, as poor as the LFG system) is that this difficulty of not being another EverQuest should be directly considered. So the design solutions that will come as a result of the observations I described above should be completely different to the structure of other games. I believe that it’s directly from those core differences that SWG should draw its own personality and specific traits. Exactly the opposite of imitating other genres and other designs. It’s not a case that I dislike the direction of the game. To find the fun you don’t start to develop dungeons and offer ph4t l33t as it happened after the launch. For me SWG failed at that point, when, instead of learning from its mistakes and start going in its own *unique* direction, it began to copy the other games, hoping to please and content the general audience, offering this and that in “bags of mess” without a clue and an aim.)

So this message became more like a stream of thoughts that noone else aside me will be able to follow, maybe I’ll try to rewrite it in the next days to pick each point and explain it more simply and logically. The conclusion probably ties with all I write above only in my head:

I wouldn’t criticize Raph because the game ‘sucks’. I’d criticize him because he stepped back. The mistakes are the health of every process, SWG needed even more a precise direction, analysis and plan *after* the launch. It needed even more a unique trait and personality.

Raph stepping back (it doesn’t matteras if as triumph or not) has been, from my point of view, the biggest loss for the game. No matter how much I criticize his design and his approach.

Maybe the real way to improve the game and transform it in a phoenix would be about putting at the wheel both Raph himself forcefully along with a designer that hate his work on the game. The result would be amazing :)

—

fallingdownv:
I was actually always amazed by the group gathering tools in SWG. I mean come on, you can search for people to play with based on blood type! If that’s not a LFG system, I don’t know what is.

Idiocy, maybe?

fallingdownv:
Not really sure what that means but I’ll take it as an insult if that will make you happy.

As you wish. If you actually read that long post I write you’ll understand that my point of view of an LFG system is the end result of a long and complex process of evaluation and reorganization of every element of the game.

The fact that in SWG you can search for a blood type is the exact demonstration of how they NEGATED the process I described.

CmdrSlack:
EDIT : Bonus points — Actually list them in detail as opposed to just blathering on about how you’ve posted a bunch in a ton of places.

The difference between you and me is that I read and remember what other peoples write. I remember what Darniaq wrote, I remember what Geldon wrote, I remember what Dundee wrote, I remember each single word that Raph wrote. I follow all of them, I hunt the comments, I make my own opinions on those words, I remember them and I value them.

I do not feel the need to rewrite everything every two month because the history has been wiped again and the same arguments are being brough up and the exact same stuff has to be repeated and then forgotten one month later to be again rediscussed the month after.

You can tell all you want that my idea are crap but you CANNOT tell me that I just criticize for the sake of it without having my own point of view.

I criticized already the details and I’M NOT going to rewrite everything I did in the last year AGAIN so that peoples can have fun mocking me.

The details you want are there for those who are interested, those who cannot see them are just those searching something to mock me.

– I’ve said how the classes and roles need to be reorganized in the game
– I’ve said why the forced interdependence of the classes to stimulate the socialization is a broken model
– I’ve said why the previous TEF system works better and should be improved without going back at Trammel/Fellucca
– I’ve said that the fancy effects in the combat system do not fit
– I’ve said on which gameplay elements the combat should focus
– I’ve said how the interface should be reorganized
– I’ve said how the controls and the concrete feel of the character should be redefined
– I’ve said how the meta-game of the proposed conquest system is weak and not consistent

But who cares about SWG? Mocking me directly as a person, dismissing all the possible arguments is way easier, more fun and less demanding.

Remember, you are here for a good laugh after a day of work, not to discuss game making a too serious face.

I’m here to please you.

—

AFFA:
You definitely have your own point of view, but I sometimes find it difficult to follow.

That’s my own problem I know already. I try the best I can since I have no advantage at being obscure. There’s the problem with the language and there’s also the fact that the struggle to be understood I finish to write too much. As an example Margalis on F13 was able to write effectively and directly in a few lines what required me many pages of explainations (the discussion between MUDs and graphic mmorpgs).

AFFA:
I have also noticed that while you have good insights into a game’s problems, your solutions tend be vague.

Because to go in detail I’d need a lot of work, think more, plan more, write more. Is worth it? Often what I write is to test the terrain, if I find useful to delve, I do it. I like a lot roleplaying the designer and suggest concrete ideas, not long ago I posted an idea for a combat system for an ideal mmorpg. So I’m vague because I put down a general direction of how I’d approach a problem. This doesn’t mean that I don’t want to delve, it simply means that I want to see before if it’s worth the struggle or not.

The other problem is that to not being vague about the general design of SWG, in particular, I’d need a lot of informations, data and studies I do not have now. My playtime within the game is terribly limited so to go in detail I’d need to study directly the whole thing, like Darniaq did. This is the direct reason of the second message I wrote about the LFG system. It’s an approach I described but I don’t know where exactly that approach will bring. The result comes from data I do not know/I cannot have access.

AFFA:
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen someone post a proposal as detailed as a good design document on a gaming forum.

The more I know a game and feel less as wasting my time, the more I do this. I planned and wrote a lot of stuff in the past about both DAoC and WoW. The point is to see where it leads, peoples in general don’t like to read a page of hypothetic design if it doesn’t come directly from the real devs and it just become a self exercize that brings nowhere since you cannot see what was good and what wouldn’t work.

So I like to do this in the rare cases I feel like contributing to something since it’s ,in general, just a waste of time (and I’m the first to notice the flaws and reshape completely my own ideas after time passes and I notice different points of view).

AFFA:
I often have a “feel” for how to fix a problem, but the precise details are something I’d have to work out with a spreadsheet or playing a few hundred “games” against myself. And if I did that, I’d probably find some flaw in my reasoning and have to refrain from posting, which isn’t as much fun. While I care about on-line games, I usually don’t care enough to do serious analysis. There are exceptions, of course, and I’ve sent extremely long “analysis and solution” pieces to game companies and forums before. But I prefer playing games, even semi-broken ones, to doing the work necessary to figure out how to fix a game. Perhaps this is another reason that I am no longer in the industry…

For me it’s just a division between wasting time or not. I prefer a lot more the creation process of games instead of playing them directly. I pass a lot more time reading and thinking than actually playing but 99% of the time I also feel like wasting my time since:
1- Whatever I can figure out has no use aside the one of thinking more (so recursively worthless)
2- I cannot even objectively figure out whether what I thought can be useful or not

So my attitude about going in detail depends on the purpose. If I feel that defining my ideas about SWG (for example) and working on them and then explaining them is just for the purpose of having a chat to be forgotten two days later, well, I give up and like better a superficial point of view to ‘dictate’ a direction that goes along my point of view.

This can surely be useful fro myself. Because discussing directly is already a way to learn, shape ideas, change the point of view and all the rest. But then it falls again too easily on the “wasted time” pit.

I could spend a lot more time to examine things and shape better the zones of my ideas that are more nebulous but I feel like doing that only once I can see it going somewhere and I prefer remaining on the surface (that still matters because it still defines the approach I’d take) in those cases that I do not find useful or stimulating for me.

Raph wrote recently a book because he felt the need to research something, delving more into it. Chances are that he had already a general point of view on that topic and the book was an optimal way to make previous ideas clear and make new ones. It’s also obvious that he felt the need of this ‘process’ because of his work. Because what he did has a purpose and so he felt like dedicating his time to it.

AFFA:
Most of us don’t have photographic memory. I can remember some of the details of your previous posts about SWG, but certainly not all of them. I probably haven’t read many of them. Many people only read one site.

The discussion we had was shaped in a very similar way. I do not know the game but I believe that, as a group, we were able to define and agree on a few core points. I’m also sure than right now each of us will have a completely different way to realize concretely what was discussed.

Again I contributed describing a general approach, then using directly the details Darniaq was suggesting me to delve on a problem I didn’t know directly.

So it wasn’t and still isn’t important for me defining in a precise list how to organize the professions. I don’t have directly the competence to do it and I know Darniaq can do that 10 times better.

What MATTERS FOR ME, is about defining the approach. Once you have the right approach and we agree on the principle, the concrete work will be good no matter what. And this brought directly to the quote I reported:

Dundee:
SWG’s creature handler is a profession which satisfies a variety of interests, for example. By comparison, other systems are less appealing, or appealing to fewer people.

I think we should have designed every profession and every activity with the idea that it should satisfy multiple motivations. I believe that would have given them all more depth.

HRose:
Or maybe transform these relatively closed professions into different roles that can be impersonated with the same character. So that I could chose to have one role in the combat, one role in the social aspect, one role in the crafting and so on. Including and delivering all that the game has to offer.

The CONCRETE implementation of these principles depends on a lot of related data that I do not know. If now I start to build a concrete plan without directly studying all the other tied systems I’ll just confirm directly that I am CLUELESS.

Because what I’d build maybe works perfectly on those core points I defined, but breaks another long stack of other stuff that I didn’t consider because I haven’t researched them.

So, what I mean? I mean that discussing the approach MAY be useful in the case Raph or someone else read it. Because then they can use directly those ideas to study THEMSELVES the concrete solutions. The discussion becomes relevant and each can draw a personal conclusion as a result.

HRose, instead, doesn’t have access to all the data, the team and the concrete work to really hope to be able to define a concrete design that works flawlessly without even a concrete test and adjustments.

So I discuss on the idea-level because it’s the only level I have access. It’s the only level that has remotely an impact and it’s the only one where I directly do not waste my time.

—
To continue about the problems with the classes. What we discussed was simply about reorganizing the professions on different guidelines, following concretely what Dundee wrote.

The problem with Raph is that often discussing with him is like going against a wall. You cannot say anything because he *agrees* with you.

So when we discussed the playstyles and I stated that the MISTAKE is to design and shape the game around those playestyles Raph replied saying that NOONE does that. Considering the playsyles happens only after.

In a very similar way he commented on F13. Someone remarked that SWG was awful because of the feeling of the grind. His reply is that noone would ever design something deliberately as a grind.

How you counter this comment? I simply said that you CANNOT state this in a game where something called “hologrind” exists. How can you define it if not as “deliberate grind”?

The reasoning is the same about the class system. We have THE WHOLE GAME built to offer “units of game”. There’s the social aspect, there’s the economy, there’s crafting, there’s the combat etc…

While you can mix various roles and profession the game is still built as a focused appeal. You need to choose directly which section of the gameplay you want to access. At least without resetting your skills and starting over.

This is, from my point of view, BAD.

The reorganization of classes we defined on this forum was aimed to put a line between roles and playstyles. It’s GOOD to define different roles within a playstyle. So, taking the fantasy as an example, I can experience the combat in the game as an healer, or I can be a tank, or I can be a bard.

The gameplay will change so the experience will be different for the bard, the tank or the healer. BUT THEY ALL can go *together* and experience that playstyle.

This breaks in SWG because you don’t choose just the role within a system, but you HAVE to choose which system you can have access to.

I DO NOT want to be only a crafter, only a fighter, only an explorer or whatever. I WANT TO access ALL the content the game has to offer. Not only I’ll be more pleased and happy about the game, but the resources of the game itself will be better shown and used.

And we are back to the original mistake, using playstyles to structure the class system. Something that Raph negated but still did concretely (same as with the grind).

A reorganization of the classes is about letting the players pick roles within each system. Pick a crafting role, pick a social role, pick a combat role. But all on the same character and at the same time.

EVERY DAMN PLAYER MUST have access to each of these systems. Each player then needs a specific role to choose within each system. So one role in the combat (these roles should be redefined from zero with the CU since I’m sick of seeing healers, tanks etc… in SWG), one role in crafting (tailor, armorcrafter, weaponcrafter etc..), one role in the ‘roleplay’ (dancing, playing a piano, playing a pipe etc…) and so on.

The mistake was forcing the selection at the development level. Instead of letting the players themselves choose if they like to focus on a particular system like combat instead of crafting. The access to each system should be completely open for EACH character. Then the players will chose if to focus a bit on everything, or just the combat or just the crafting.

At this point the CONCRETE implementation of these ideas isn’t easy and would need a massive amount of work and research to mantain ther game balanced and build the new groups correctly. But this work is USEFUL only in the case SOE decides to concretely pursue this strategy.

ONLY at that point the concrete work and design begins. Before it’s just wasted time.

—
Also, on a personal level. When Raph ‘asked’ me on this thread what I’d do since I seem just to push out critics, well, I felt exactly as one year ago.

One year ago Lepidus (“Wish” centent/story designer and promoter of the whole “roleplay events” stuff) contacted me on IRC to ask my point of view on what they were working. Expecting to find me pleased.

This after TWO MONTHS AND SIX HUNDRED *LONG* POSTS where I described how ridiculous was to ditch the PvP approach and all that Dave Rickey did to go with the idiocy of live events and GM-driven content.

If what is being done is *completely different* from the point of view that I wrote down for various months, you really cannot expect to find me happy of the result.

I mean, I don’t expect “wonder” if what happens in the development of the game is directly the opposite of the ideas I wrote down for months.

Sometimes I really feel like if peoples read what I write understanding the opposite.

Then they go like: “Hey, this is exactly what you asked.”
At that point I go in the berserk stance.

—

Geldon:
Put those last two paragraphs together and you’ll see why I’ve come to believe that nothing more than a completely different MMORPG will be capable of really pulling off Star Wars: The MMORPG.

Instead my opinion about the game is unchanged. SWG (and mmorpgs in general) was at launch and still is a building yard. Raph left it at the *beginning* and this was the worst hit and his biggest mistake (mistake for the game, then he is obviously free to choose to do whatever he likes).

While I do not like the game (I guess this is obvious) I still would develop and evolve it trying to capitalize on its strength along adding what it misses/does wrong. This is also why I’d expect my work to be aimed both at those players that still like the game and those who left (like me). More from the point of view of a dev than the game I’d like to build.

I’d develop SWG in a completely different way than how I’d develop WoW, for example. They are completely different types of game and MUST go toward completely different directions.

So I wouldnt choose to take it and transform it in EverQuest or in KOTOR.

Geldon:
So, what is a good direction? So far you’ve been doing a pretty good job of telling them what they should not do, but no definite answer on what they should do, specifically, about PvP and TEF.

I’ve wrote what I’d do (and to a large extent, including a lot more than just the PvP). *How* I’d do it depends on elements I have no control/do not know.

The TEF system is better than the new plan for a stack of reasons. Quickly I’d say that it doesn’t makes sense from the roleplay point of view, secondly I believe in PvE melting with PvP. My approach to this would be about solving the problems that the players encountered with the old system.

To suggest directly the fixes I’d need to know and study the game better because right now I don’t have the knowledge of what exactly the players didn’t like of the previous system.

About the meta-game I said how this silly conquest system/territorial control is a roleplay within a roleaplay where no type of territorial control really exist (everything is virtual in SWG, nothing feels concretely and again we fall in an hallucination with no self-consistence, I wrote about this here). You just assume to ‘win’ and know that some more NPCs spawn somewhere else. For me this is weak, not compelling, not consistent and not fun.

Want the territorial control? So do it, allow the players to conquer cities, allow them to fight for the zones, allow them to attack a city and destroy it etc… Territorial control means this. The extent and the concrete implementation of the various elements that you can use as gameplay (combat veichles, using the strucutures as a real 3d fighting environment, strategic warfare etc..) depend again on informations I do not have. The client, the server, how much coding requires a specific new system, design implication, PvP and PvP contrasts etc…

The combat system itself again STRONGLY depends on what type of work can be done with the controls, how much they can be radically changed, how much the arcs of fire can become a design element, what type of twitch you can add, what type of strategic elements you can still use etc…

The first thing I’d do is about studying what happens outside, I know there are FPS games where you can find medics and support classes and still have fun. I’d start to study how to build different classes that work and are fun in a ranged combat with weapons and I’d directly avoid to transform a medic into a priest launching in the air a sparkling effect, DOTs, AOE attack etc..

All that stuff need to go or be reorganized to make sense. Again the concrete implementation depends on the resources and the possibilities.

I know where I want to go but the number and the merit of each stage of the development is a variable I cannot calculate or define.

Designing a complete combat system with the few elements I have would be just another worthless exercize that noone in this world would consider useful.

—
First, what you write can be easily dismissed as “WoW battlegrounds”. So I’d like to see something different, again because I believe games should differ and go into opposite directions.

My approach would be exactly the opposite. Whatever will happen to the PvP must happen on a concrete level and affect the world directly.

I agree that the faction population is strong balance problem and it surely needs to be looking at and fixed. Not with instancing though. If you have to search an inspiration go with Planetside. Build on each planet various “centers of operation” spreaded around, transform these into those battlegrounds with fun and deep, interactive elements.

To solve the unbalance you need to develop a new biniary system of resources. As an example the guards system can be one. So you can move NPCs troops around and use this variable element to already strart to address the problem. At the same time winning shouldn’t mean directly loosing, so you the conquest should involve a type of goal that you don’t loose directly as you gain power.

To limit this system you can use a similar strategy I thought for DAoC. Each faction has a limited pool or resources to use (in DAoC you can upgrade the keeps and the guards). This pool is fixed, it doesn’t increase, it doesn’t decrease. This means that if you have just one ‘node’ under your control, you can spend directly the whole pool into it. That node will become nearly invincible.

On the same level if you own all the ‘nodes’ on the planet, you have to use a bit of your pool on each. This means that you have to mantain many different and *weak* outposts.

What happens? It happens that large, powerful realms are hard to manage and lead. They are slow and chaotic in the organization. Instead a small commando group, well-coordinate can quickly start an hit-and-run strategy by assaulting each weak node and then hold it while it becomes more powerful.

Again the solution is to USE the unbalance. Make it FUN to play in the underdog faction, make it possible and compelling. It isn’t written anywhere that a fight needs to always provide the same original starting status to be fun. PvP is fun because of the unpredictability and because of the strategic level. The point is to include these instead of policing and closing the system, negating every type of variation.

Holding these ‘nodes’ can then be tied to the economy, the cities could be modified so that they can really become hubs that could finish in the hands of the imperials and rebels. You can jumpstart here a black market and add many different strategical elements that will include all the various layers of the game.

The opposite of isolating them and transform the game into a shapeless pile of unrelated systems.

Then you add the systems for the players. You start a ranking system, scoreboards, guild listings. You add the possibility to reach a status quo, mantain a role in the meta game and so on.

Again the possibilities are endless and again this is just an useless dream that will never happen and is not worth discussing (so just a loss of time going in a toilet).

So this is as far as I’ll go. I’m done here.

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The original thread was here.