[suggestion] A persistent campaign game world.

[Teala]

Ummm...I dunno if anyone has mentioned this yet, but what if, there was a server set up that allowed players to join certain factions and then go out and have player group campaigns based on the map of Calradia?  Are any of you familiar with the game Planetside?  If you are then you know where I am going with this ideal.

Anyway, once the game is finished and well balanced in both the SP and MP game, I was curious if the developers had thought of taking this game one step further and giving us the ability to play on a persistent world map scenario where factions will compete for territory.  I'm sure there is a way this can be done if everyone puts their brains together to figure it out.  There are some brilliant people that are developing this game and some of the beta testers that I have conversed with are very well educated and very savvy in game design. 

Might sound a little crazy I know, but OMG, think of the team rivalries this could create and think of the impact this might have on multiplayer gaming on the Internet.  This kind of combat is what a lot of gamers have been looking for and TaleWorlds has created the best medieval combat in any game I have ever came across - ever.  FPS players would eat this up.    Far be it for me to read the future, but this game could be as big as CoD and SC and the BF series. 

It would be awesome if there was some kind of persistent world where players can come together and create kingdoms and try to take control of Calradia.  It would be Planetside only in a medieval setting.  I'd even pay a monthly fee to play in such a game!

 

[Timothy the Knight]

This has been discussed before. It's not gonna happen. Too damn complicated to implement properly. Even a system where all players are restricted to the same party is quite unlikely, and if it ever happens it will be through a mod most likely.

Yes, it would be great, but it's a technical impossibility. What if someone leaves the game? Does his party just disappear and reappear when he logs back in? Everyone'd use that to avoid death, then. Does the AI step in to take control? That would make the party easy to beat. And what to do when one party engages in a fight? does everything just stop until the fight is concluded? That would be boring for everyone not involved in it.

So yeah, too many practical problems.

 

[Kleidophoros]

In an interview with a Turkish game magazine armagan said that they wont me making a MB MMO as it wouldnt fit the MB theme or engine. Yet they dont throw the idea out of the window since they might think about a MMO in long term.

 

[Teala]

This has been discussed before. It's not gonna happen. Too damn complicated to implement properly. Even a system where all players are restricted to the same party is quite unlikely, and if it ever happens it will be through a mod most likely.

Yes, it would be great, but it's a technical impossibility. What if someone leaves the game? Does his party just disappear and reappear when he logs back in? Everyone'd use that to avoid death, then. Does the AI step in to take control? That would make the party easy to beat. And what to do when one party engages in a fight? does everything just stop until the fight is concluded? That would be boring for everyone not involved in it.

So yeah, too many practical problems.

It's actually worked in many other games.  I do not see why it could not work here.  It worked in Planetside for one and similar versions have worked in DAoC, Warhammer, WoW, Aion, Shadowbane,...are you even familiar with how Planetside was played?

Also, I recall after this game was launched, many people said M&B would not work well in multiplayer mode and here we are beta testing a multiplayer version of the game.  So though you deem it impossible...I do not.

 

[Berserker Pride]

Okay this has all been said before in another thread so I am mostly paraphrasing.  The simplest system to accomplish this is to have players replace the existing faction lords.  So a simple swap script and you are done.  Maybe a switch for the flag too not hard.  So when you leave the ai lord is subbed back in and goes on his merry way.  And the main theme of this game would be conquest of territory.  Because you are swapping in and out the more complex marriage stuff would not be present in this gamemode.  A couple problems exist.
1)Battles take way longer than travel.  And everyone gangbangs you while you go to fight looters.
Solution
1)You aren't alone in the world so any of 19 of your faction's armies can go with you and watch your back while you fight bandits or whatever.
In fact just like td you should not travel alone if you don't want to get surrounded or cut off from your faction's territory.  Your other faction lords would also ensure that your territories or castle weren't attacked while you were in a battle.
2)After a set time in battle(five minutes?) the game could make it impossible to join the battle in progress.
3)Make travel time longer or the map bigger so that every battle doesn't have everyone jump in.

2)Possible network problems because of a lot of players bots and stuff going on.
Solution
1)I'm not really sure on this one but other games have had similar setups as Teala has mentioned.

My point is don't be quick to throw out what could be the future of the game someday.  Strategic battles could be awesome.  It could even allow players to just jump into your lord party if they didn't want to lead one of the faction armies.  This would allow your character to advance in skills just like singleplayer.
If you lvled high enough you could even swap the king out.  I would play this all the time if it was a gamemode.

 

[Kapt Torbjorn]

This has been discussed before. It's not gonna happen. Too damn complicated to implement properly. Even a system where all players are restricted to the same party is quite unlikely, and if it ever happens it will be through a mod most likely.

Yes, it would be great, but it's a technical impossibility. What if someone leaves the game? Does his party just disappear and reappear when he logs back in? Everyone'd use that to avoid death, then. Does the AI step in to take control? That would make the party easy to beat. And what to do when one party engages in a fight? does everything just stop until the fight is concluded? That would be boring for everyone not involved in it.

So yeah, too many practical problems.

Could make it where they have to enter a town or castle before logging out.  The party would fight their battle on the map, but it would show up on the campaign map as two parties engaged for however long the battles take.  Anyone could jump in, so you might chase down a small party and find yourself facing the entire Vaegir army, and then suddenly your army comes to help (and then your computer frys).

There's ways to work around all these obstacles, it's just a question of is it worth it, and will the people play it.

 

[Akxyd]

I think MMO with mount and blade gameplay can be great but it is an enourmous work for game dev because you need to create a true world (and not some maps like now), you need to developp classes with levels and skills (therefore it's not a RPG), you need to balance that and the last but not the least : you need to sell your game and buy servers, developp a background, find a system xp (wolf bashing in M&B... lol), talewords is not Blizzard (and it's good), a good mmo costs some millions and it's an extremely risked thing.

I think like you: medieval mmo with a new gameplay and a persistent world based on pvp is the future, but taleworlds need some years to gain experience and size, I don't doubt to the futur of talewords, it's a futur big (if he's not bought by this ****in activision or EA)

 

[Kraven]

I think MMO with mount and blade gameplay can be great but it is an enourmous work for game dev because you need to create a true world (and not some maps like now), you need to developp classes with levels and skills (therefore it's not a RPG), you need to balance that and the last but not the least : you need to sell your game and buy servers, developp a background, find a system xp (wolf bashing in M&B... lol), talewords is not Blizzard (and it's good), a good mmo costs some millions and it's an extremely risked thing.

I think like you: medieval mmo with a new gameplay and a persistent world based on pvp is the future, but taleworlds need some years to gain experience and size, I don't doubt to the futur of talewords, it's a futur big (if he's not bought by this ****in activision or EA)

Just wanted to reply to the bolded part while I had a few minutes to spare.

A RPG does not equal classes, progression(gear, levels, etc) is a part of most RPG's, but not a necessity for an RPG

 

[Berserker Pride]

Agreed I would prefer that an M&B MMO would be about strategy and warfare not how high your mining skill is.  Of course your character would gain skills just like singleplayer which would be as complicated a class system as I would need.  Basically a choice between leadership and personal combat prowess and what combat specialty you focussed on.

 

[Teala]

Also, what I am talking about is not to far off from the single player campaign.  You'd use the existing map from Calradia.  The difference is a big portion of the characters in the game are not just bots, but players.  Believe it or not I have spent some time figuring just how TaleWorlds could make a persistent campaign world.  I'll post my ideals on this thread once I have the design paper finished so maybe they can look at it, and with it, design their own version or use the one I suggest - I do not care...I would just love to see this game be more than a BF2 or a CoD4 game, especially when it could be so much more.

 

[Attacksmurfen]

While it would be totally awesome I see it would take a lot of coding.
Practically, giving the players all thinkable options for setting up a server with a solution that fits them is the way to go, IMO:

2 players/teams:
All battles that are 1-player vs CPU or CPU vs CPU are dealt in the same manner as in the SP game, that is during campaign time, 30 seconds to 2 minutes depending on the armies sizes. During this time the other player can join the battle to help his CPU ally or the other player.
When the 2 players meet in battle, they fight it out in a battle map just like in SP.

More than 2-players/teams:
If more than 2 players are playing they would either have to wait, or all battles would have to auto-resolve. Or, when all players join the same battle it would of course be in a battle-mode.
When a player joins, he gets control of a lord and his castles or starts as a warband. When a player leaves, he gives the control to the CPU or to another player if he wants to. Server-side locking certain lords to a certain player/players should be possible.

Just make all solutions server-side options and I can see a lot of people playing it.