Caliane
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EQ Never
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Dr. Strangelizard or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lusty argonian maid
Big Flex
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Skip to 1:11:10
They start talking about EQ:N then. Just started watching it, so no idea what he will say. Just heard him call Smed crazy because he put TBs kid under a NDA when TB was shown EQN over a year ago.
can we have some rated R servers? so that the npc's dialog/actions aren't made completely benign/nonoffensive. likely answer no: more work. don't want to offend customer base.
Which is something that worries me. They have an idea, could not do it themselves, looked for ways to help implement it. But we are now left with just how much the SOE devs are able to draw from storybricks to match their vision (I assume that TB was given a fairly similar pitch, even though he might not have seen so much graphical flare).
It seems as it fits scenario one of my post. They are holding back on releasing information about storybricks because as a pure middleware product, it will not perform as they specify, but they are working on making it so. We have been told their vision and goal, end result will most likely be much narrower in scope than what they have planned. Will not be the first game to promise and not deliver. As long as EQN landmark delivers somewhat ok (no need for fancy AI building stuff), EQN will be a success even if their world events are as limited as GW2s. Just will not be a revolution, just a slight progress towards an idea that maybe someone down the line will figure out how to do properly. If they have not done it yet, it will not magically happen in the next year.
EDIT: Calling it now. If we do not get any more detail about Storybricks in the next two gameshows (I think there are two major ones left this year right?), then I doubt the tech is finished. At which point, from at the latest early nest year, we will start to get leaks about minor adjustments and pulling back expectations in regards to mob behavior and the social AI until SOE Live 2014. Things like "There needs to be some rudamentary pathing of NPCs" "npcs do need to have a fixed basis on who you are based on some things" "quests can never be quite random, so it is possible to predetermine where the class NPC will spawn next" "Mobs in different tiers of course also have higher hp and more and harder hitting abilities, not just a fancy AI script." All logical statements (based on current ideas on how mmo worlds work) and not saying anything about Storybricks not working. Just lowering the expecations gotten from their original pitch ideas that they were unable to implement fully.
Lenas
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Quaid
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I'm just struggling to wrap my head around their emergent AI...
let's say its launch week. They keep mentioning the Farmer's (really a high level wizard) house on fire and under attack by orcs. Save him and he offers the wizard class!
...there will be hundreds of players roaming the same area launch week... Do they all see the Burning house? Do we all help? That's a bit lame ass...
let's say its launch week. They keep mentioning the Farmer's (really a high level wizard) house on fire and under attack by orcs. Save him and he offers the wizard class!
...there will be hundreds of players roaming the same area launch week... Do they all see the Burning house? Do we all help? That's a bit lame ass...
Quaid
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I make everything on my menu from scratch at my restaurant, except the bread. I buy that in.
I would never be so arrogant to think I am as good a bread baker as someone who focuses their life on it.
Kinda the same thing IMO.
Oh, also tobasco. That shit is the nectar of the gods.
Denaut
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There is nothing wrong with middleware, at all. In fact, it is generally a VERY good idea to use middleware.
I applaud SOE pushing forward with better and emergent AI with EQ Next, I strongly feel AI is actually holding not just MMORPGs but all sorts of genres back (looking at you First Person Shooters). However, I am having trouble picturing how storybricks works into this. I've had many and often very long discussions about design and implementation of AI, sometimes in ridiculous technical detail, with other designers/scripters. By far the main limitation other than design is server cost, and I don't see how SB solves that problem. Likewise I don't understand why you would even use middleware for AI, it is VERY design heavy work, something middleware is usually not suited for.
Hopefully shit isnt that overcrowded because the entire top level of the world for the most part will be for low level players.
And I imagine it is more like Farmer Jim is really an old retired wizard and he teaches the wizard class. You need X faction with him to learn the class and there are a bunch of ways to do that and areas in the world where farmer jim might wander. I will be really disapointed if they fail so hard on story bricks that they end up just having the farmers house catch on fire every 30 minutes for ever so people can learn wizard.
