f13.net

An avatar-based sci fi game is in the works from PitchBlack games of Phoenix, Arizona. Sub-based MMORPG.

Their site is here: http://www.primeonline.com/

With superb timing it manages to be highly evocative of Star Wars: Galaxies and also brings back DAOC's much-missed three way faction brawl. It also seems to be taking a leaf out of Trion's book in terms of professionalism (although early to say that, hope that doesn't come back to haunt me!). It certainly is looking more streamlined than the games that have influenced it.

The game has three factions that are unique races, 2 alien and one human. Each race has 6 classes. The alien classes are original and interesting while the human ones are very reminiscent of SWG including medics wielding stim packs and commandos wielding assault cannons. I think I'm going to play an Antelis http://www.primeonline.com/game/classes/antelis/

Character progression is a hybrid of class-based and skill-based. You will progress your skills by filling up boxes with experience points.

PVE is all of the expected standard fodder plus also dynamic events managed by a member of staff. They do this in Eve, there are quite frequent Live events, I got blown up at one recently. I just wonder if this features implies that they're aiming for a single server game. They haven't said so anywhere else but managing hand moderated events in a structure like Rift's (which had ninety-something servers at launch) would be a nightmare. Another key element of the PVE is a mission system - does anyone else here miss running 'naff missions out of Coruscant in SWG?

Another element I like is this: "There are a few "instanced" PVE areas that require a small group of 6 players, but most of Prime's encounters are open world and therefore it's up to the players themselves to decide how many players should comprise the group." I found in Rift, where I ran a raid guild it was much more comfortable all round doing 5 and 10 man raid rifts in the open world where I could bring any number up to 20 than trying to herd my cats to the specific demands of 20 man instanced raids.

PVP consists of open world pvp as you grow more powerful (I guess they mean higher level areas are more likely to be contested), large scale world faction battles, an arena system and a bounty hunter system. You can gain renown by surviving with high bounties on you.

The professions page implies a rich crafting system. Interestingly it states "Players will travel far and wide to purchase the weapons of a high-end Weapontech." That is not the case in WoW where everyone and his brother is a master crafter but it was the case in Galaxies. Of course that may just be marketing department flavour text. The resource surveying system is demonstrated in one of the videos (linked below). Looks like players will be in for a lot of resources hunting and that certain areas may be rich in specialised and valuable resources - an interesting design feature in a gameworld carved up into 3 pvping factions.

Combat is a straight forward tab target hotkey based system although there's no autoattack. Players have a health bar and an energy bar, HAM has not been brought back to haunt us. You drop harvested resources when killed - I can see an emergent playstyle already!

A blog piece is here (and is how I heard about it): http://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=5208
Interestingly the blogger took one look at the SWG-style hotter/warmer resource scanning system and thought "I'm in." It's the little things...

Youtube has 6 videos that I found, 3 interviews (well technically I think they're monologues as no questions are asked) and 3 demos of gameplay:

Interview: Warren Weems CEO on the corporate and production background.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPp1m2lDu0o&feature=related

Interview: Lee Phemister Art Lead talks about the art team.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT3GrBrvEqg

Interview: Zyad Khadri Art Director on the look and the feel of the art and design.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOPD838vg7w&feature=related

Short demo: Character creation. Pretty cool sci fi armour for the humans, nice monster look for the Rodons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijSDIyzJxGc

Short demo: Start area, UI, mob combat, resource surveying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MP0KIFOfUE

Long dev Q&A (55 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UVodT1PPCU



They have a careers page which currently has 2 jobs on it:
http://www.pitchblackgames.com/home/jobs.cfm

Looks pretty good, he said warily.  Still plenty of time to fuck it up, but it looks like it might be worth keeping an eye on.

Not really getting an SWG vibe from it, though.  Hardwired preset classes, hardwired preset factions, boo.  I get the impression that all the classes for each race are basically mirrors of each other, yes?  Human engineer = Rodon hybrid = Salent antelis, or telepath = reaver = zin, that kind of thing?

The only other feature I'm seeing that sends up red flags is the idea of tab targetting hotkey combat without autoattack, which in my experience is generally really awkward since there aren't enough mouse buttons so you need to spam your 1 key rather than LMB to shoot or something (thinking of Age of Conan here).

But it might be cool, I'll keep an eye on it.  They're supposed to release sometime this year, so sayeth the FAQ, is it in beta or something?

There's definitely some elements. If you watch the second demo you see the SWG resource locating system. It's certainly not a clone though.


They say not. More like Shaman:Paladin in Vanilla WoW.


I would be astonished if this is a 2011 release and pretty surprised if it makes it out in 2012. Sanya said something snarky about testers complaining there was nothing to do in a recent pre-alpha test of the engine.

Saw a bit of their character creation video. I think they're in for some really unbalanced sides. The two aliens races are ugly with a capitol U.  You have a choice between ugly beastmen things and the other is a kind of skinless, skeletal race. The beast people lack even any furry appeal. I know in EQ ogre and troll were among the least played, Wow had lower population for Horde pre-Blood Elf iirc.

The second gameplay video above does look like SWG - the UI elements are very similar, as is the perspective/world style. Also, the skill system doesn't seem too far off from SWG either - you gain "points" via exp to buy the next level of a skill. You can't max all your skills, but you can max a couple of branches. They mention respecs too, though it probably won't be to the extent that you could change classes completely. One of the cool things in SWG was the hybrid classes, but they are much more hellish to balance.

Hopefully it's more like Berserker:Mercenary:Blademaster from DAoc.

Hopefully not. Blademaster at release was the worst class I've ever played and I've picked some really underpowered classes. None of those three were spectacular mind you since Mythic didn't have a clue how to balance anything and "light tanks" were mostly garbage.

Pre-left axe nerf berserkers were definitely not garbage.

This sure does appear to be headed down a short road to DAOC faction imbalance. Also the name is stupid. They should just leave it at Prime.

One of the highlights so far has been Sanya Weathers's robust moderation of the forums. As Scott Jennings noted  (http://www.brokentoys.org/2011/07/05/what-she-said/)she drew a line in the sand (http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org/2011/07/05/it-gets-better-and-it-begins-with-us/) regarding the use of gay and faggot a few days ago.

Here's some excerpts from how she's starting out in Prime:


http://forums.primeonline.com/index.php?/topic/3-the-fine-print/

That is fucking AWESOME!

I've been beating the drum for a zero tolerance policy on official forums for as long as I can remember.

I'm never giving up the word faggot, no matter how many shrill activists screech that it's totally making teenagers shoot themselves. Fuck you guys, I voted to let you get married, I'm keeping this word. It's a good word, used to describe useless waste of space people long before it was used to describe people who like fucking the same gender.

It's cool, bro. It just means you can't post on some forums.

Here are some other words which you should bravely reclaim:

nigger, spic, kike, chink, zipperhead

Let me know how it goes!

Strange the first reply on that blog isn't "Well that's retarded."  Which is pretty much what you would normally get if your blog or game had the full spectrum of today's gaming audience :)

I'm not entirely sure what this game is. Some parts of the sight go really far to say "We are not like those other stupid games" but then does not describe anything really. Granted I have not watched all the videos, but the website is lacking in details. I have no idea if this is a shooter, faux shooter, typical RPG...... or what.

Sanya's always been in favor of that same policy, she just never gets much opportunity to enact it because most game companies don't seem to want to rid themselves of these customers.

WUA's just trolling, don't feed him.

I know he's trolling. It's a bit heavy handed. I think a better troll would've been to flip the script and start freaking out about Sanya using the word "gay" at all in her posting.

Lol.

Here is some good and interesting news for the crafting junkies.  I imagine they will even stick to this so long as the pvp is based around gathering mats.

Banning people from the forums permanently who are thinking about quitting the game.   I'm sure that will go well.  :uhrr:

Seems sensible to me.  Don't make an "I quit" thread just to drama troll or because you don't feel special enough or think your points would be lost without such teenage melodrama.

It puts a nice bow on things too.

Erm, wouldn't that make you.....

Thus his lack of a desire to give up the word.

Comments are pre-moderated. I leave it to the reader to speculate upon what percentage of received comments are actually allowed to appear.

In any case, watching professionally offended language-police bark at the moon is worth a laugh if nothing else, especially when they're dealing with the internet. Yeah, you go, this is a battle you're totally going to win.

I owe you an apology, Kail, the faq does indeed state a 2011 release is what they are planning:


http://www.primeonline.com/game/faq/

What threw me is that Sanya said this in the Beta Faq:

http://forums.primeonline.com/index.php?/topic/56-beta-faq/

To be fair she didn't say when that engine test was. She's only been there a month though so I assume it was recent.

In the interview with the CEO Mr Weems explains that they're using a lot of shortcuts, such as licencing the Hero engine, to make the production process shorter. It will be impressive though if they can go from pre-alpha empty game to launch in under 6 months. There's a real possibility that this SWG-like game will launch in Q1 2012, same quarter as SWTOR is expected. Then former SWG players will get to decide whether we're SW or G. I'm definitely G.

God would that make life so much easier.

I see a small chink in one of those words.

I think the idea is to rid the forums of internet drama queens looking to get on Tyra.

If the game doesn't launch with the ability to place orders for gear my interest level just went in the crapper.  I'd rather not have to interract with crafters - not that I dislike them, I'd just rather be playing the game then begging folks to make me gear.

Personally, I'd just put a "subscription status:" tag on the forum avatars to stop the idiocy of "I QUIT" threads that don't actually involve quitting. Would take the wind out of them if the status said "6 month recurring" or add some weight if it said "Non renewing"

Banning them seems silly, but basically trying to get to the same point: I quit threads are pretty much pointless drama.

I am with you on this one. "Faggot" is such entrenched part of the internet culture that no amount of misplaced political correctness would ever change it. At this point its use has nothing to do with sexual harassment and everything to do with poor sportsmanship.

I find whole "zero tolerance" parallel to "tough on crime", both policies doomed to fail and are only there to score political/marketing points. If you actually follow-through with them you end up turning things for the worse.

Well, good luck declaring war on The Internet. Send us postcards from the battlefront.

P.S. WUA, fuck you faggot for making me agree with you! What a fag.

Not really, it turns 'ex-players who will get back for next expansion' into 'pissed ex-players who badmouth your game in a medium you have no control over and never come back'. Most people make "I quit" posts to convince themselves that they want to quit, because on some level they are still interested/passionate about the game. The same "interested/passionate" that brings them back for the next expansion when they manage to somewhat forget what pissed them off in the first place. You slam the door while they are on the way out and you can kiss your re-subs goodbye. I also imagine such policy might turn first serious community issue (see: monocles) into game-killing event.

I got a feeling we will soon find out if it possible to kill a title with idiotic community management. I suspect that it isn't - Abashi didn't manage to kill EQ, Ghostcrawler didn't put a dent into WoW subs and I don't imagine that Sanya would be any different regardless of level of douchebagery in her new title.

Going to side with WUA on this one, the internet has already at least half stolen fag(got) away from hate speech and I'd like to see them finish the job. Also when I read it in my head online it doesn't sound at all like it does when people say it out loud and I don't find it troublesome in the slightest.

Also, the word 'negro' is so firmly entrenched in US language that it will never change in its use of identifying the coloured folk.  :oh_i_see:

As for the game: seems like the most interesting thing about it is the forum moderation, which isn't a good sign. Also - an open world MMO with a player-based economy that will launch before the end of the year with 3 factions, 18 classes,


Good luck with that.

I am sorry you feel sexually harassed every time some anonymous idiot in online game that doesn't even know your gender calls you a fag, but maybe it is time to toughen the fuck up?

You can make all those points in posts without invoking the drama llama like a 5-year old, with a sulky "I don't like this, I quit!" post.  Given how emotionally stunted you are, it's not surprising you can't concieve of that fact.

I'm on the fence on the rules. I love them but I realize how they can be pretty detrimental to a healthy player base. Besides that, I'm definitely interested in this.


While I'm not a fan of the word personally, I'll just go ahead and paraphrase General Disarray - South Park did it!

The words negro and colored never happened to acquire any other popular usages. The vastly more offensive word "nigger" did, however, and a much longer and more serious campaign still has never managed to get a certain subset of black people to stop using it. The only reason the new usage hasn't been absorbed by white culture like every other bit of black slang in the last hundred years is because it's come into existence while an extraordinarily powerful taboo still hangs over the word.

The word faggot has acquired a secondary meaning without ever having held such significant taboo status. Maybe you think it should have, but it didn't, and now the cat is out of the bag as far as that secondary meaning goes. You can try to alter the course of the language and create such a taboo through the power of lecturing if you want, but good fucking luck with that.

You're better off getting really offended when someone uses faggot to demean people attracted to their own gender, letting it slide when someone uses it to demean people who kill them in video games, and letting the word change meaning. You say things every day that would have had someone wanting to beat the shit out of you a few hundred years ago.

It is entirely possible that in the year 2100 the President of the United States will get up in front of a crowd and say "I have met with the President of Russia, and he is my nigger!" and no one will bat an eye. It will be no stranger than the fact that you can tell someone that their mother is "nice" and not get punched in the face the way you would a few hundred years ago.

The word Nigga was moving into white culture about 10 years ago. I took offence to someone using it on a Diablo 2 site (the Lurker Lounge) after which they apologised to me in a PM and stopped using it. The thread where I objected meanwhile had turned out like this one with one side citing Eminem as proof and the other side reminding everyone what Martin Luther King died for.

It was an awesome thread, WUP, you should have been there.

There's no guarantee that the use in one context changes the use in the other. Both are insults.

However, I won't stand in the way of internet troll rights to call people fags because they want a cheap way to push buttons. Reconsided my statement, and although I recognise it probably won't change anyone's already entrenched position, these kind of things only improve if people stop doing them. One of Sanya's points was that the internet only becomes nicer if we act nicer, which I agree with.

My point in that post was the same as yours - words change meaning, fall in and out of use. At one point, calling a black person 'coloured' was considered the polite way of referring to race; now it's a loaded term, filled with historical context.  

EDIT: Reconsideration.

Willful ignorance.  Lovely.

The word hasn't taken a new meaning.  It's still a shortened way of calling someone gay and implying it's a Bad Thing.  The sting may be lessened as kids are generally more tolerant about such social issues, but it's still a negative connotation.  Trying to argue otherwise is just the homophobic form of "I'm not a racist -- I just say really demeaning things about people who aren't white".

Yeah, you might have gay friends, but you're still a fucking ass.

Strangely enough I feel as though I've seen an increase in the use of nigga or nigger in-game and on forums over the last 10 years.  It's almost like the kids are using it because they know it will get someone to "rage" about it. It was very sparingly used when I first started playing online games in the mid 90s.  The art of trolling is definitely weaker these days.

obligatory boondocks clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5FR1LGsT7E

People who play VIDYA GAMES are stunted man-babies. Tres surprise.

There is very clearly no gray areas in the rule. Any thread, even "thank you for all the fun times" falls under this rule.

Good. Email your friends in game, post on your guild site, send a letter of thanks to the company that made the game. Fuck right off of the forums.

Good luck fighting player base, Sanya. That what community team should be doing, right?

I understand she is trying to create positive forum environment, but instead she will end up with UO-Stratics level of "Peachines" - not a community but a set of one-dimensional sycophants.  This alone is not enough to kill the game, but it certainly won't help it any ether.

I don't think that's true. You can have forums without having rampant lunacy. The official forums shouldn't be focused around opinions of the game. They should be an information source that people use to connect with each other or report bugs, and as a source for developers to release information to the public. That's it.

I get a giggle thinking of sinij giving Weathers advice on community relations. Its adorable.

While I bemoan the festering, fetid sewage that infests some mmo communities, a zero tolerance policy isn't going to fix it.  Zero tolerance policies are generally idiotic.  Better to have vague community standards when one is set to be judge and jury/God of the forums than to explicitly attempt to lay out every instance of how or what is not allowed, and refuse to play with forum-lawyers.

This will be interesting.  I think it's the wrong approach. 

I also think that the emphasis lately of protecting gays from bullying is misguided, because there is no shortage of bullying going on.  (I'm not just referring to the games community here; my daughter's middle school is very heavily into protecting gay kids from being bullied - other kids, not so much.  So if you're gay, it's all "oh you poor thing" but if you're not, it's "toughen up!".  I'd like to see the emphasis on ending bullying, not just on "don't pick on gays."

Where does the word "pussy" fall?  Is it homophobic? Anti-woman? Which protected class does this word offend?  It has a very specific meaning, similar to "wuss" only stronger.  Is there another word that means the same thing?

I'm old enough to see more than a little irony in people who are described as "gay" complaining about the word "gay" being co-opted to mean "stupid."  (Words change meaning over time, and although it still makes me cringe to hear it, I've been fighting against this usage for 20 years. My kids aren't allowed to say it, but I hear people in their 30s use it routinely.)  "Gay" has meant 3 completely different things in my lifetime.

One more thought.  How many thoughtful posts in F13 would be deleted under those rules? So many that this community would cease to be.

Those rules are really dumb.

As a non-gay person, you don't get to decide what offends gay people. Insert black, Asian, Latino, etc, etc there if you prefer. That's really the beginning and end of the conversation. There's no argument to be had here. It's also private property. If Sanya wants to ban the word "the" from the forums, that's her right. This really isn't a free speech issue.

Counter-point on zero tolerance policies: Elitist Jerks. If you've played WoW and you've ever gotten decent information there, you have draconian mods to thank.

I'm not objecting to these rules either on the basis of a free speech issue (because it's not, as you point out) or on the basis of having draconian mods.  I'm objecting to the rules as laid out as being silly.

I have no problem with a mod saying "I'm the mod and I decide, end of story."  I have problems with a mod attempting to control the uncontrollable by laying out silly rules for a zero tolerance policy.

Zero tolerance policies don't work properly and can also be exploited.

It's completely controllable within her corner of the internet. If I have a userbase on my forums of 10k posters, damned straight it's controllable. It's absolutely proven to be controllable on other sites (like the aforementioned EJ) with userbases of 10x what she's liable to get.

"Don't say faggot" and "don't post goodbye posts" don't strike me as terribly onerous rules.

Most will never use the forums to post. Read, sure.

Elitist Jerks isn't the same animal. They don't have to deal with 99% of the "drama llama" material. People don't go there to post "I Quit", and they don't go there to whinge to the devs about the perceived-imbalance-or-nerf of the day.

"Draconian" at EJ means that they obsess about content-free posts and grammar mistakes. Mods at the official forums wish they had enough hours in the day to get to that level of minutiae.

So? The word was an insult hundreds of years before it was used to refer specifically to gays. Assuming it doesn't go the way of "blatherskite" or "scabrous" anytime soon, that period in the 20th century and the first part of the 21st where it referred specifically to gays (because those silly cavemen had a problem with that back then) will be a footnote.

Language reflects the attitudes of the people, not the other way around. You're not going to Newspeak people into a different attitude even if you could somehow make them quit saying faggot. By the same token, when attitudes do change, the fact that faggot slid back into use as a nonspecific insult isn't really going to mean shit to anyone.


The couple of gay friends I've had have thrown the word faggot around plenty, not in any sort of ironic sense, and have basically shrugged at me when I asked what the deal was. They weren't television characters or professional activists, and didn't feel compelled to change their language based on what they like to fuck. I guess they didn't get their handbooks and decoder rings in the mail when they came out.

I'm sorry, I know it melts your brain, but lots of people who think gays should be treated exactly like everyone else and have every right straight couples do will say that WoW rogues are all faggots and not give it a second thought. Furthermore they're not going to give a rat's ass what you think about it. Who the fuck are you? What the fuck do they care if you're offended? They weren't talking about your group, piss off.

This forum is what it is because we have people who self-police at times, and moderators who take out the trash.

That and we're generally an older group than your average forum. Although, I think I was 23 when I found WT.o

The thought of explaining privilege and social constructs to you makes me want to stab myself to death, so I won't do that, WUA. I'll just point out that you're going to be exactly like your crazy uncle who wishes he could still say nigger in public in ten years. The one who says that he hears black people refer to lazy black people in their neighborhoods as niggers so IT MUST MEAN LAZY! I don't expect you to change your mind. I just want to point out that you're not going to turn back the clock, faggot IS an offensive word and the rest of the world will judge people for their insistence on not changing with the social times.

And people who play too many video games are still stupid man-babies.

And a lot of people do think <insert least favorite group here> should be shit on.  I can't force people to forget their prejudices any more than I can force how they speak.  I can speak up when they act like it's no big deal, because it is, and people do get hurt by those with the attitude.

I've got friends who throw around words and act inappropriately, but I know they harbor no ill will and don't care.  Much like you.  I can deal with that.  Other though actually believe those words and because idiots throw them around without thinking, they take them to heart and get emboldened to actually hurt others.

Your gay friends have one huge advantage in being able to call one another faggots.  They're gay.  It's about reclaiming the word.  Many groups which have been on the receiving end of such language do so.  You can use it around them and their friends and be fine.  They know you and your feelings.  Try walking into the middle of a country western bar and start calling people that.  Do it with bile and acting like you mean it.  If you walk out with all your teeth intact I'll be impressed.  Because even a drunken hick can tell when someone's trying to put them down, and calling people your word of choice isn't a compliment.

Modern Angel , I hate to stop you from further vilifying WUA, but you need to have your head checked if you believe half the things you typed here. You must be doing community organizing/sensitivity training for a living and bought into that drivel.

I heard there was a MMO coming out called: Prime Battle for Dominus.

But i still have no idea what its about yet.

Judging from this thread its mostly about fags.

Forum moderation?

I'd play that.

Have you reconciled the fact that the same demographic group that tends to be most supportive of gay rights, that is to say the young, is also the group that Sanya can't get to quit calling each other fags on the internet without dropping the mod bomb on them? It's not like Grandpa told everyone stories of how getting shot running up the beach at Normandy "fagged up" his whole year and the kids just picked up the terminology. The kids made that up on their own. And it was Grandpa who hated gays, the kids don't give a shit.


No. I'm not talking about the whole "black guys calling each other nigger" effect. I'm talking about "I was using fag as a synonym for dipshit and didn't stop when I came out" and me being puzzled and getting back a shrug. Hell I remember sitting next to one friend's super butch out-as-fuck girlfriend (she was super clingy and would get pawned off on me to hang out when my friend wanted some time to herself) watching UFC, and the two dudes are fighting over who gets to "mount" and she goes "Man these guys look like faggots!" I'm just like "Seriously, I know technically that word doesn't apply to you, but... like... what?" and she just goes "Dude whatever."

I don't know. I forget why we were talking about this. But yes, I've known some gay people who spoke the same way other people of their age group did, and who didn't suddenly become offended by it when they came out.


I could also probably walk up to that drunken hick and be like "You're such a fucking Hessian! Yeah you're such a German fucking mercenary in the Revolutionary war! Hey look this guy is a fucking Hessian!" with genuine bile and get my ass beat. Because he's a drunken hick. That's beside the point though. Of course it's not a compliment. It's just not an insult that applies specifically to gays in the minds of a lot of younger people. I mean it does in the minds of drunken hillbillies, but it's not like anyone is claiming that it's not still used as a slur against gays by anyone.

Frankly I think there should be a "Lawmakers: Quit being such faggots about gay marriage!" campaign. Steal the word away from people actually using it as a slur, and provide me with amusement in the process. "Senator Hurfman, you recently voted in favor of a ban on gay marriage." Yes that's right. "We just wanted to know, why are you such a fucking faggot about this?"

Holy shit, that would be awesome.  :why_so_serious:

It's quite sensible and will still end badly.

The discussion not related to this game will stop now.

This discussion is interesting, yet another derivative mmorpg is not. Why must you hate funfags?

Agreed. Although probably developed as a policy to stop the "I QUIT!!!1!!1!" dramatics, it also runs into the sphere of someone doing a more thoughtful "Goodbye to the community"-style posts. Or the "goobye - I'm taking off for six months". (Or even the favoured "goodbye, I'm off on military service for the next year")Because if you issue blanket bans you are getting rid of potentially sensible community members and if you enforce it selectively you are playing favourites.

Sometimes being part of the community is saying goodbye.

Also opens the door to hilarity when Sanya (or any dev) leaves and has to choose between breaking her rules or posting a goodbye thread.

Well, there is a technical difference between a "I hate this game and quit" and "I'm taking a break".  Both in intent and style.

True, but that isn't what the rules say. Only that you have to state intent to leave the game for a forum ban.

If you think that clear-cut rules will prevent drama, you are sadly mistaken.

I intend to stop playing my character. (ban/no ban?)
I am taking a break from the game but letting my subscription stay current. (ban/no ban?)
I am not having as much fun as of late as I used to, should I cancel? (ban/no ban?)
My friend is canceling the game. (ban/no ban?)
My friend is canceling the game because he/she got cancer and want to spend time with family. (ban/no ban?)
Such-n-such canceled the game, ban them from forums too! (ban/no ban? if so who?)
Here is chat log of such-n-such talking in general chat about quitting. (ban/no ban? if so who?)

This took whole 2 minutes to come up with, dedicated community will be a lot more devious.

Not to mention how it is entirely possible to craft a forum post that doesn't break any of those rules, yet is still a nasty post that goes against the spirit of the forum rules.

I think Sanya is generally smart, but I don't think that this will work the way she envisions.

An interview with Sanya has just been published by blogger Scarybooster here:
http://www.scarybooster.com/?p=1063

On Diku Archetypes:


With 6 maxxed out abilities I wouldn't be surprised to see maxxed out healing being very common. Especially if healing the group with Heal 10 costs the same energy as healing oneself with Heal 9.

This kinda happened in Rift in the Expert dungeons early on (pre-nerf). They were fairly difficult but the difficulty was mainly a matter of incoming damage. People evolved a playstyle of taking 2 or 3 healers in a 5 man group. It was very normal in the early days to have tank, one dps, 3 healers.

In Prime I can see groups of six being 6 group healers (who can all do something else) one of which perhaps is a specialised healer.

I'm guardedly in favour of this as a mechanic. Waiting for healers sucks. Being a healer in a diku generally sucks too.





On The Experience System


I hope they sort out the botting that plagued games like UO, SWG and Darkfall. If healing gives you exp you end up with afk healers bot healing their afk friend who is standing in a fire. I still remember with some bitterness going into the med centre in Coruscant in SWG and being unable to get healed because all the player medics were busy healing bots running action bar burn macros.

I'm also unclear about whether any exp can be spent anywhere. So can someone spam heal a guy who's afk in a fire for a week to become a master marksman or the server's first maxxed out weaponsmith? Or do you need specific crafting exp to level crafting etc.

.

Can we talk about this elsewhere? It's more interesting than Yet Another Shitty MMO. Politics?

Bah. Late to the party. OK.

This has the same (single short word) (colon) (nerdy phrase using name of gameworld) naming convention as Rift: Planes of Telara and frankly it sounds pretty silly in both cases. I mean I know the whole (Something) Online thing is pretty dated at this point, but at least I could say the full titles with a straight face. I wonder what other games would have been called under this format...

Ganks: Pillaging of Sosaria
Poop: Weighty Socks of Norrath
Queue: Flaming Servers of Azeroth
Snore: Crafters of Tatooine
Fucked: They Made Us Use Eberron

Blame White Wolf.

Broken: The Incomplete Quest for Hyboria.

Spreadsheet: The Accountants of New Eden

Taxi: To Victory and Beyond

Doesn't that baseball players generic fantasy game also use the same naming convention?

Why does this need pve or crafting? ugh.

Because it's a title made from a MMO wishlist.

Remember when Rift was just called "Heroes of Telera" and then they changed it to "Planes of Telara" and then they changed it to "Rift: Planes of Telara"  and then the Planes of Telara part started disappearing from their logo and now I think its just "Rift" (if you look at the website this is even more obvious).

I hate the bastard who owns Rifts but I'm still kind of disturbed Trion got away with outright stealing the name like that.

It started of as just Rift, but it got confused with some other Rift franchise so they changed it.

I think that's a key issue. What some people dislike, as far as I can tell, is having to find a friendly crafter to buy the stuff they need. If it's easily available then I don't think people care whether it was made by a PC or spawned by the server.

If you want non-crafters to accept a player-driven economy then it actually helps to make the process of buying stuff as impersonal as possible.

For example, in SWG people complained about having to find a decent crafter and go to their shop and give them money. In Eve, generally speaking (I mean buying non-cap ships in Empire) you can buy spaceships and other stuff without any contact at all with the producer. For people who choose not to take an interest in the economy, those items may as well have been produced by NPCs. Whatever complaints people have about Eve, it doesn't have the combat-players vs crafters vibe that SWG sometimes had.

Galaxies had relatively few top level crafters. Eve has a ton of crafters. In Galaxies a gun made by the top guy was significantly better than a gun made by the 10th best. In Eve a Rifter is a Rifter is a Rifter.

It's supply and demand. Short supply allows people to be dicks. This happens in Eve with Technetium and supercaps.

Maybe the key to making a crafting-heavy game playable for non crafters is to make sure it's a buyers market.

Two things that really help Eve are the single server economy and the generous auctionhouse functionality.

If you had to find a player to make you a Rifter every time you needed a new one it would be a horrible game. Even horrible for Rifter-builders.

There really is no reason not to allow people to sell and buy on long duration orders. In Eve it's 3 months. One of the reasons I got bored of Rift: Planes of Telara was that I kept spending some time putting up order after order on a tedious Auction house UI then come back a couple of days later and find 5 orders had sold and 45 orders had been sent back unsold to my mailbox. I had other options of course but I didn't like any of them. I could just let stuff build up infinitely in my huge bank (which is what I mainly did). I could start walking past orichalchum mines without mining them but I'm too much the pack rat to do that comfortably. I could vendor it but that's annoying, you're vendoring the top resources in the game on a server where tons of people really need it.

In Eve I could put up the same orders for 3 months and go do something more fun.

I'm a little pessimistic about Prime's economy. People will be split by server (at least 3 at launch, they've said). Servers will be split by faction. So at best you're reaching 1/9th of the customer base.

A fun option is that it looks like they may feature resource smuggling and a black market. This is the equivalent to Eve players selling supercarriers to the people who are invading them. It's appealing strongly to my evil inner capitalist. "We suddenly lost after the other guys got a load of Prime from somewhere and out-teched us!" Walks away whistling.

This is what I meant in another thread when I said meaningful crafting was fine but not TOO meaningful. I think it was the SWG death thread.

Well the other end of the scale is buy 5000 gold of mats, click Start Craft while reading a book a couple of hundred times, make your thing that gives you +40 Stamina, never craft again until the next Expansion.

It's just horrid to us crafting fanatics that our beloved playstyle got replaced with THAT.

It would be interesting to see a God's view Venn diagram of the following mmo player characteristics:

Hate pvp
Love pvp
Hate crafting
Love crafting
Hate participating in player economy
Love participating in player economy

Of course that would only be meaningful in the context of a single game (or version of the game in the case of SWG  :awesome_for_real: ) since implementation details are probably more determining than initial player inclination.

It just seems like many of the folks who most loudly despise player economies are those most enamored of pvp, and vice-versa, yet the player economy is just another form of pvp. 

Hate           ----------- Love
PVP            ------X----
Crafting       ----X-----
Player Economy --X-------
PvE            ---------X


 :awesome_for_real:

My bars would all be pretty high.

I actually get into PvP when it's not ass.  Just no one besides WAR managed to make PvP fun for me.  And that had plenty of issues with the game and mechanics until it was too dead to devote resources to fixing its problems.  I expect this will be more of the Gear >>>> Everything Else paradigm.

Stealth interview at Game Riot (http://gamerriot.com/forum/threads/class-interview-3-stealth.2517/)

There is a question answered about how everyone has healing skills as more of a downtime dampener and how that works, as well as stating healers are still the ones to be relied on. The rest of the interview focuses more on how stealth works - and I personally like it. The main portion of how stealth works is in the spoiler below. The rest of the interview is about what PB envisions for their stealthingcloaking classes

That was kind of evasive.  Can he not re-stealth because the ability is on cooldown, or does the cooldown not tick while he's in combat?  Because they also say the cooldown will be just a few seconds at max level.  Sounds depressingly similar to Warcraft.  "Stealth" = invisibility hotkey with a long cooldown.  Support classes get an ability that "helps" detect stealth.

Some of it sounds weird, though. "With Disguise, the intent is that you do assume the identity/appearance of the target class, and you appear that way to everyone including your own faction."  THAT'S going to ruffle some feathers, depending on if the game allows you to damage allies or not.

The only part that wasn't clear about stealth is if the cooldown timer counts down while in combat or if the second you're out of combat you can stealth. The rest I didn't find unclear. Basically they're saying if you initiate combat from stealth, you cannot re-stealth until out of combat (no vanish type abilities). If you start combat while un-stealthed (meaning you were completely out of combat and then start attacking someone) then you can stealth. It is MUCH weaker than WoW/Rift and is closer to WAR's than anything

The disguise bit is odd, but I'm guessing the lack of friendly fire will also include no damaging of allies who are disguised either. I don't know but I kind of figure that is how it will be. Good if it does ruffle feathers, fuck feathers that haven't been ruffled in a while by games playing it safe.

Edit: From Sanya regarding disguising and friendly fire (http://forums.primeonline.com/index.php?/topic/478-stealth-interview-with-gamerriot/page__view__findpost__p__13191) -

Re: stealth, you're right, I was misreading (read "Even when the timer finishes, he still can’t cloak" as "Even when combat finishes, he still can’t cloak")

The friendly fire thing I still think will be a problem.  Friendlies not being able to skrag you makes me wonder what the point is of making you look like an enemy to your allies.  It sounds like a mechanic that's going to cause more frustration and newbie grief than it will add new and interesting possibilities or tactics.  The major scenario I'm worried about, though, is if enemies can damage you when you're disguised as one of them.  If not, it seems like a fairly useless ability (just tab over the targets and see who you can attack).  If they can't, it seems stupidly powerful.

It just seems weird to me, but it's hard to describe why.  It's like the game is trying to be an FPS, but then backing away at the last minute and bending things around to hold on to this tab targetting hotkey gameplay.  But it's just one skill for one class, so I'm not too worried, it's just kinda weird.

I agree it's weird, and along with espionage I can't see it being good for much more than just the first few weeks of gameplay (for different reasons, but similar shelf lives). The thing I like is that, afaik, they are actually trying something new and not just renaming it. Of course there could be another MMO that has tried a similar system to their disguise and espionage, but I can't think of it (and I'm not counting tf2 as it is a completely different genre)

Crafting page (http://www.primeonline.com/game/professions/) is up on the main site, and I imagine this should be a pleasantry to some around here as it's not exactly the same 'ole collect then hit craft all type crafting (though I don't know if mass production is available). I'd say it's worth reading for anyone interested


Basic run down of the system:

A few mentionables from their page:

Yeah, I can't imagine playing anything except a human. Invented races work when they have a strong and simple identity. For example, the Kerra in EQ and EQ2 are cat people. You don't need to know anything about the lore to appreciate them. I have no idea what a Rodon or Salent is meant to be in this game.

They should have just made all the races human and put in a ton of customisation options. Given the setting, you could always allow for some far out stuff like glowing eyes or robotic limbs for players who wanted to go down a more alien route.

I like the bug-reptilian species.

Crafting looks wonderful.  I'll have to try it out just for that system.

I'm a crafting whore. What's jumping out at you? I'm intrigued.

Paelos - experimentation is a big one (though that will be obsolete with the internet being the internet), the best items in game are craft and (almost) all items have a durability creating a good market to be a crafter in. Exchanging of schematics can be done by either experimenting, having someone tell you the mats, acquiring the final product and reverse engineering it, or by having a rogue-type character steal it from an enemy crafter. Also, some schematics are limited by the progress of your faction in war and the best materials are fought over (and can be looted from corpses of players if they have some on them). The skill of a crafter determines the strength of stats on an item (there is a max crafting level so all will be equal eventually though).

Things like that, imo, are making this a solid and fun craft system.

Crafting FAQ up (http://forums.primeonline.com/index.php?/topic/512-crafting-faq/):

Cancelled.

http://forums.dominusthegame.com/index.php?/topic/1811-closing-down/ (http://forums.dominusthegame.com/index.php?/topic/1811-closing-down/)

Part of me was thinking "Hmm, Hero Engine." when I read that.

Surprised they didn't do a kickstarter.

Oh, and this thread started so well too.

You forced me to start reading Page 1. That was a mistake.

(Thanks for fighting the good fight, though.)

Reading back through the thread made me realise:

1) Dominus has Sanya as their Community Manager; and
2) She violated her own "no goodbye threads" policy.  :awesome_for_real:

Kickstarter is probably being considered (or has been) but someone has probably written down on a piece of paper how much they think they need to finish the game and I'm guessing it exceeds what they realistically could get.

Allays sad when an idea never comes to light. Only trumped when an idea does not deliver.

Hope everyone lands on the feet.

Read: GW2 is delivering three faction RvR faster and better than we could.

Although, from the few tests I was able to participate in, they had an interesting setting and some good ideas. A pity that it didn't pan out.

I didn't read the last page and signed up for the beta. Weird that you can still do that.

Sanya on why they probably can't Kickstart this project (http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/6370/You-Cant-Always-Kickstart-Your-Heart.html).