Do monster have different looks like say when you make a slime you got green, yellow black, etc or that just for the humans and dwarfs? Well if you have it at all.
Characters will be able to be customized, so I don't see why we can't have different colored slimes. The idea was more of that a slime changes color to enable different abilities.
Though, quite honestly, I have practically zero faith in your assurances that your system will keep senseless griefing at bay, and I also speak from experience as Sappho and others earlier on this thread did when I say: A few players who enjoy the kind of gameplay most would consider "griefing" with lots of time on their hands can and will destroy the fun of a large number of "average" players. You can destroy buildings? They will stand there all night while you sleep dismantling it brick by brick no matter how long it takes (this literally happened to me in 2 different games even when there was supposedly no real incentive for them to do such a boring thing). You can permanently kill characters? They will spend days starting a new character for scratch, gathering equipment and just enough will and influence (in this stage they will act like decent people towards others), then suddenly go on a rampage, kill as many people as they can before the community can react, then happily die and start the process anew. As far as they are concerned, their goal is accomplished, they aren't losing anything by losing their character, which was built for the sole purpose of their one rampage.
In the situation you describe, that's entirely possible. However, a griefer, or five griefers, wouldn't be able to affect the larger playerbase if the larger playerbase takes steps to ensure some kind of mutual protection or civilized area. This could be as simple as a farmer having hirelings guard his properly (properties will be clearly defined), or patrolling guards taking care of trouble makers.
Though that leads to a question: There's a lot of mentions of the game engine being available for players to start their own worlds. When will that be available? How much will it cost? What will be its limits? How flexible/modable will it be (source code provided, or only high-level script language, etc)? Will it include ALL the necessary tools to make a proper (though smaller scale) server?
That will be available as soon as the default game world is up to snuff. We can't very well offer engine licenses without ensuring that the tools are working properly.
We haven't decided on a price for the engine license yet.
I'm not sure what you mean by "limits". The world building toolkit will allow you to do the exact same thing that we're doing. The engine has been built from scratch, and we're using the engine to build our own world. If a player wanted to do the same, they would be able to.
How flexible/modable will it be (source code provided, or only high-level script language, etc)?
Er. The engine itself will support various types of actions that can be created, as well as world-level parameters that can be implemented. For instance, if a world builder doesn't like the idea of permadeath, implementing a respawning system (or anything you would want) would be fairly simple to do.
Will it include ALL the necessary tools to make a proper (though smaller scale) server?
Absolutely. That's the point of the developer toolkit. Anything we'll be doing with the main game world (and more) will be able to be emulated or changed, or whatever with the toolkit. It's one of the main reasons we've decided to go this route. If the main game world isn't the right fit for a player, then they can always create their own. ^.^
Because I'd certainly be far more interested in hosting/joining a small-scale private whitelisted server with ~20 players on it than playing on your large scale and most likely griefing-infested servers. Then you'd have a small community of players that want to essentially play the same game. As in, if they all want total war and killing each other randomly, great, and if they all want to build/roleplay/enjoy the world but with minimal PvP, great too, but not a mix of both where only one side gets to enjoy the game.
I understand where you're coming from. To me, player population fuels the game world, but in a smaller community, there wouldn't be as many disruptions. And the world builder could simply assign scripts to monsters, or create NPCs civilizations to provide a challenge to the playerbase. Again, it's all up to whoever builds the game world.
Also, I've signed up on your site for the beta, how is that sign-up different from the 25$ reward on kickstarter? Other than the kickstarter reward including the finished game, and possibly a priority to getting into beta, is this signing up to the same beta?
And finally, will you be offering something like a Paypal option or somesuch for pledging while the kickstarter is running?
Signing up for the beta doesn't ensure beta access. And the kickstarter reward guarantees beta access. On the subject of PayPal - we're considering moving the pledging concept to our website if Kickstarter falls through. The stretch goals would remain the same (with donations and account purchases continuing to fuel them!) and would be there forever. The rewards would remain the same, so if someone were to PayPal $25 or something, they would gain the same rewards as the Kickstarter pledge, except immediately instead of "when the drive ends".
Sorry if I missed it in the pages of discussion I just had time to skim through, but I think my question about being killed while offline has still not been answered. So, for the third time: Can your character die while you are not logged in? This is a very important question. If the answer is yes, I can`t see myself paying to play this game. Too much stress spending all my time worrying about how my character is doing while I`m supposed to be sleeping or working or doing something else.
As it stands, I probably will not sign up for the beta. I`ll probably wait until the community establishes itself and see what kind of world it turns out to be. It`s possible the player base will be good, in which case I`ll give it a shot, but I can`t bring myself to invest in advance in something so impossible to predict which could potentially turn out to be something I would hate.
Yes. Your character can be pulled apart by shrieking wraiths while you aren't online. We felt that to create a truly persistent and living world, it would be awesome for everyone to be in the game all the time. Ideally, you'd want to run a simple script that mitigates the risk to your character. Maybe something as simple as just going to the cabinet to get food when hungry, but staying inside. Or if you have some hirelings guarding you, you could do some outdoor work.
On the other hand, if you were to offer a separate game server without permadeath like Wurm does, I would contribute to your kickstarter and sign up for beta immediately.
We don't intend to provide that game world, at least not in the immediate future. However, I'm pretty sure -someone- will create that type of game world when the toolkit is released. All the more reason to support the project, and get that toolkit developed and released!
Honestly I am crazy interested in this game, I loved HnH, I like minecraft, ect ect. Anything that has real consequences and danger for your character as well as the ability to build and grow and work with others towards a conman goal is my dream game. I can not wait to see this, and really wish it turns out as what the devs hope it will.
Sweet! I hope to see you in the game. Even I'm itching to play it, and I'm the lead designer. XD
On the subject of it being what we say it is - we have the benefit of not having an investor or a CEO with the game experience of "watching football" on their resume telling us what to do, or what "sells". All of the ideas of Topia Online come from gamers who simply wanted to create a real sandbox MMORPG. Some concepts are included to balance others, but the game is still exactly what we wanted. We're not planning on turning it into something lame, even for sales. That's another reason we're working hard to develop the toolkit - if our view of a sandbox isn't the same as another person's, they can easily make their own game world.
