A friend recommended I try to break up these long posts into something smaller and more managable. So, here it goes!
So, my first post on wild speculations was on the Sandbox and how that might play out in terms of rules and structures. Another two focused on the Cafe, and hwo much crunch they're likely to build around social dynamics between players. I guess that leaves us with the Theme Park, doesn't it?
What's to speculate? This is what MMO's do, right?
Fighting. Running. Jumping. Fighting. Dying. Re-spawning. Fighting some more.
Action scenes are a staple of gaming, from the early days of arcades. It's no surprise then that most MMO games tend to be combat-heavy, if not completely combat-centric. Sure, you might have a puzzle or two to do (between fights), or crafting missions (requiring materials from dead monsters, to make better munitions) or collections (grind, grind, bloody-mess, grind), but at the end of the day, the thing you'll be most called-upon to do is murder things. And heck, they told us we could expect brutal violence side-by-side with brutal politics, so there's not much on which to speculate here, right?
Guns are decoration. Disciplines are lethal.
In one of the interviews, they told us that the guns a player can get would be mostly periferal, and that vampire characters would be much more likely to use their Disciplines to fight than firearms. Things we can assume, more or less, based on that:
- Bullets are probably going to have little actual impact on Kindred. This fits the "bullets do bashing" trope we've been seeing for a while, but to imply most vampires will see guns as a decoration seems to strongly suggest they're taking this even a bit further.
- Mortal PC's, with no access to Disciplines, are going to be completely out-classed when the gloves come off, unless they decide to include Hunter-type powers (which I'm guessing will be rather unlikely). This means mortals are probably going to need to avoid Themepark zones, lest they get caught in the cross-fire of ramaging Kindred gangs. Like ya' do.
- Themepark zones are probably going to be away from the eyes of Mortals. After all, scary, destructive Disciplines are probably going to be the kinds you really don't want showing up on YouTube, so Kindred wil most likely throw down in more isolated parts of town. Though I suppose Mortal PC's could technically go there, there would likely be little reason for them to do so (ie, none of the goals that they would want to accomplish would require them to do so). That, coupled with the ease with which mortals will permanently die in this game, would help foster a sense that Theme Park zones are for the big kids, giving Kindred players more room to throw their power around without endangering the Masquerade.
- They've said they're willing to retool the Disciplines to fit better into an MMO. This was a major improvement from Vt:M Redemption to Bloodlines. Allowing the game developers to create special powers that capture the feel and experience of the Clans counts for a lot more than trying to cram each dot's mechanics into a computerized format. That means we really don't know what those Disciplines are really going to look like, nor how they'll interact with one another in any of the three Zones of play. Still, we might be able to discuss what it will feel like to play as a given Clan, and how that might suggest how some powers might work (as we'll get into next week).
- Wild Speculation of the week: What if Discipline Levels, as we know them, went away? What if, in their place, your Discipline menu resembled more the Talent Trees from other MMO's? (I'll point out here, that most Talent Tree menus do have three major components, and every Clan does have three Disciplines...) This would allow CCP to design a schema of achievement that's far more flexible than the five-dot system White Wolf made to keep things simple for a table-top game. They could still balance players' access to powers by starting them off with smaller tricks, and saving the big guns for much further advancement in the game. It would also let players customize their characters' capabilities, based on the style of play they most enjoy. Players with high levels of Presence, for instance, might get to choose whether to put points into a Passive power that made direct attacks on the character cost Willpower Points (helpful in the Theme Park), one that let the player spend Blood to give Willpower back to every player around her who does what she says (Cafe), or a power that (on activation) gradually weakened the Willpower of other Kindred in her current Domain Zone (primarily good for weakening those looking to steal your territory, or for issuing a challenge to another player whose Domain you're here to take). Alternately, that same player could, instead, continue building up her existing, lower Discipline Powers, forming a stronger foundation, rather than diversifying her options. Just something to think about.
- Lastly, it also all but spells out that every Clan is going to have at least one power that will be more effective in combat than a gun. Otherwise, you're going to have some of the Clans romping around, tearing heads off, while the Elders of the others hide in Elysium, never venturing out to the rougher parts of town.
- Possible counterpoint: "Yeah, but there have always been combat differences between Clans. The average Brujah will mop the floor with an equally-average Malk in a direct, 'no one gets the element of surprise' cage match. There are some Clans that just don't like to get their hands dirty. It's just the way things worked." Yup, I say. That's how they worked. And then, when those Clans absolutely needed to hurt things, they brought firearms. The Ventrue and Toreador show up with Uzis. The Malkavians Obfuscated in Assault rifles and rocket launchers. That sort of thing. We can probably assume CCP's going to want to give every character (or at least the Kindred) access to each of the areas of play. Just as the Nos will probably have something to do with the Cafe style of play, the less stereotypically-violent Clans will likely need to have some access to Themepark-style play.
One Last Speculation for the Road...
And then there's the question of why one would want to go out here. The answer might just be "blood."
The previous two computer games have played a bit fast and loose with the Humanity system, particularly when it came to killing "enemies." Innocent bystanders and police would whittle away your Humanity if you killed them, but you could murder all the gang-bangers, mercenaries and vampire hunters you wanted. In fact, if you were powerful enough, you might even find yourself gaining more blood than you spent in these areas.
The same might be true for the Theme Park zones in the MMO. These places would be lethal to mortals, and dangerous for un-tested Kindred, but veteran vampires might find them an ample supply of fresh Vitae, possibly creating a soft division between players who get most of their blood by Sand-boxing (or possibly the Cafe) and those who take the more immediately dangerous route of hunting in the Barrens. It might also allow CCP to appeal both to players who enjoy rough-and-tumble shooters as well as the ones who prefer something more political/territorial.
Teaser for Next Week
Of course, the question then arrise just what it'll be like to play as each of the seven Clans in the Theme Park. In order from most the combat-friendly Clans to the ones that might require the most retooling, next week, I'll post more specific speculations, breaking it down by Discipline, and how those Disciplines might combine to give each Clan the texture we've come to know and love. See you then!
7 Comments
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-2 Merits
z.o.o.
319 days ago
I apologize for the grave logical breaks in these preceeding posts. I can not text well.
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-2 Merits
z.o.o.
319 days ago
...if a player looses humanity then maybe her bare feet begin to bleed more profusely while she stands amongst the mirror shards in her mind's eye. If she looses willpower then maybe her mirror frame begins to show bubbling as if being melted by heat, so on and so forth. P.O.V. is the only way to go when interacting with mind's eye/interior room dot page.
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-2 Merits
z.o.o.
319 days ago
I loved the interdisciplinary tug-of-war that dot placement created in VtMB. To use a talent tree is to create a carrot for the donkeys who would bray the loudest at their inability to democratize the governing metric which dictates the interdisciplinary tug-of-war of dot placement. The dots don't need to be graphical dots, their affect can be artfully represented in different ways. For example: The dot page for clan Malkavian can be the reflection of the player's avatar assembled from shards of broken mirror found on the floor of the players mental space or, "Savage Garden" if you will, and placed in a tarnished frame which looks exactly like the clan symbol. If a player picks offensive mirror shards most oftenAren't dots an integral part of the World of Darkness identity? Why is the existence of Hunter powers such an improbability? The very existence of Kine avails itself the existence of Hunter powers, does it not? The idea of being a fledgling vampire who is forced to be weary of both the light and the dark excites me. Precariousness. Ummm hummm.
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0 Merits
Bjorn Stalvind
325 days ago
I would suggest researching the way Eve's talent tree works; that would be your best bet as to how they will go about it.
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3 Merits
HfxTenor
325 days ago
The talent tree concept is definitely intriguing, but it begs the question - what happens when I wish to learn a 4th, 5th, 6th discipline? Will more trees get tacked on? Or will it be like Bloodlines - you can never learn another discpline other than your starting 3?
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0 Merits
jlcrowl
323 days ago
That's a great question, Hfx. The cop-out answer is "We'll know when they tell us," but something tells me they're likely to start with the Only-Three option at first, before considering the option of letting players learn more. From a play-balance standpoint, I think it'd be harder to playtest all of the possible combinations of Discipline sets, especially if they did decide to go with the Talent-Tree option. Might be something to work out in later patch updates. My theory, at least.
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1 Merits
326 days ago
I'm hoping that White Wolf and CCP are going to think more "roundly" than they are linearly. I would HATE to see your average MMO "talent tree" in a game produced by either of these companies.
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