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Antagonists - They don't need to be NPCs.


semipr0

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To be more exact, NPC's don't need to be expressly the only antagonist.

 

I'm somewhat underwhelmed by the reproduction of Minecraft antagonists (without the zombies) as the world antagonists in Epoch. While I can appreciate the design effort thats gone into the Sapper and the Cultist their overall place in the world just seems disjointed and like they're completely out of a different game entirely....which in all fairness other than the 3D design, and the AI management code thats gone into them...they pretty much are.

 

What I really feel would best suit Epoch, and lets just go ahead and agree that I'm not making Epoch so I definitely have no say in what it should be doing, this is merely my suggestion and/or opinion about it, is that since we are dealing with an admitted post mass extinction event, we need to actually have some level of connection to that event which presents the environmental antagonism of the mod as a coherent thread of the challenges the game presents.

 

Now everyone is aware that zombies are overdone and I applaud Epoch's move to try to get away from zombies as the world threat antagonist, but the replacement of them with barely substantiated, quasi-paranormal things is somewhat confusing....is this the tail end of the history where the last few survivors are picking their way through the detritus of humanities former glory to survive, or is this some kind of weird episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer: World At War Edition?

 

Simple facts are I've seen it said that the devs do not wish to identify the actual extinction event source for Epoch but instead they want to make that a bit more ambiguous, but the problem with that is...you don't know why you're supposed to be afraid of the world other than....there might be people with guns out there...which by itself can be a bit scary but lets face it most of us, at least in the United States, live in that world every day already...its not very scary most of the time.

 

That aside, and to get to the meat of my suggestion, I feel that Epoch can best serve a non-zombie based apocalypse to its adherents by assuming a world wide viral or bacterial epidemic was the primary source for the extinction of most of the population.

 

Now how does that make the world an antagonist without introducing zombies (because obviously all world wide viral epidemics evolve into zombie out breaks....at least according to most pulp fiction)? Well its pretty simple, viral and bacterial epidemics can burn themselves out without a host population, but there are many types of virus and bacterium that can actually go dormant until suitable host biologies become present.

 

So what you do is you create a system of transfer vectors, via airborne, food source and water source based transmissions, even infecting animals like sheep and dogs and any other non-human entity you can add to the environment without breaking step with the theme.

 

So then on any given Epoch server you have several different pockets of vector transmission occurring, and these outbreaks of the world killing virus can be mobile, following along with animals or people that are infected...but not, of course, completely terminal with the infection yet, exposing other areas of the game map to the transmission, while other areas that now have no suitable host biology to infect go dormant and less active.

 

This then turns animals into threats, it also requires you to be even more careful with your exposure to other individuals, even your friends, if you don't know where they've been, because any one of them could bring the infection back to you.

 

Then of course perhaps after the infection takes its course and a human player "dies" from it without treatment, you can then have the game spawn a sapper or something to represent the final viral form of that previous individual...until that sapper of course explodes and thats that.

 

Overall making your threat intangible, but ever present and always a danger, is almost better than even zombies...because you can fight a virus or a bacteria, especially in  more settled Epoch scenarios where bases are being built, you could set up window sealing and air filtering systems as part of the crafting system, you could set up systems for clean prep of foods and purification of water intakes. You could set up a system in of which medical diagnostics could reveal individual infections early on and the proper ingestion of the right medications or the correct innoculations could prevent the individual from becoming communicable and/or dying outright, if you have the right supplies to do so.

 

But in the end you have the endless and mostly invisible specter of disease to always watch out for. And anyone, even the people you don't shoot on sight, could be a threat to you, even without you knowing it...depending on which way the wind is blowing.

 

Lets face it, the paranoia and fear that DayZ inspired in its original mod version is really what made it as good as it was, but zombies are done to death, but disease...not so much, and disease can be just as scary as zombies...even more scary, with enough thought and effort put into it.

 

Anyways just some thoughts off the top of my head, this is in no way me telling the dev team, et all...that they need to do things my way....its simply just a suggestion that I feel could make Epoch more tense and rewarding and challenging, as compared to its current direction which....admittedly, this early on in the alpha, the direction of the design is a bit hard to discern past the basic...loot stuff/build stuff mechanics in place.

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how about players who could be resistant to a disease and you could take samples of blood to build a vaccine then mas produce it. always have 1 player on the server who is immune to at least one virus.

 

I agree with this, random salt for immunity on spawn so that player could be valuable as a source of antibodies would also be a neat mechanic.

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I'm not sure what they intend on doing but as it is right now I'm not feeling much of a threat from the antagonist.

 

It's definitely lacking in that department and I'm pretty sure they will get to them eventually.

 

 

The infection thing was also done in A2 already.  If you stayed infected long enough you would turn into a zed.

 

Since the zed thing was done the only thing I can think of would be some sort of machines/creation that was made to kill survivors to wipe them from the face of the earth.

 

This can be anything from creatures that are big/slow to creatures that are small/fast and vice versa.

 

It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

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I'm not sure what they intend on doing but as it is right now I'm not feeling much of a threat from the antagonist.

 

It's definitely lacking in that department and I'm pretty sure they will get to them eventually.

 

 

The infection thing was also done in A2 already.  If you stayed infected long enough you would turn into a zed.

 

Since the zed thing was done the only thing I can think of would be some sort of machines/creation that was made to kill survivors to wipe them from the face of the earth.

 

This can be anything from creatures that are big/slow to creatures that are small/fast and vice versa.

 

It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

 

I posted an idea hear, love to see it, not safe anywhere would be ace!

 

 

Well said thanks for the feedback! Keep in mind we are only at 25% feature complete and have much more to come.

 

25% you say, I like this!

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I understand where you come from, I really do. And once over I was a vehement opponent to the bloody Rock Monster, but I've chilled now and can see the positives in having ridiculously bizarre antagonists.

 

Since the introduction of the clone idea (well done whoever thought that part of the story up), we can pretty much write our own back story for our own servers; for example we could say it's a Total Recall situation where you've paid big monies to remotely control your clones in whatever environment (server) you chose. 

 

If the devs create all manner of antagonists (same applies to vehicles), whether they be futuristic, realistic, prehistoric, mystic, or fucking giant, walking rock monsters; the community owners can chose which trip to offer its customers by selecting certain antagonists to roam their servers.

 

So you could have some communities running a prehistoric Epoch, while others run realistic or medieval Epoch. You get the picture? They'd all be EPoch, but they'd all have a uniqueness. 

 

Now being as we're based around the Greek islands, how-about some Greek mythology antagonists?

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Well said thanks for the feedback! Keep in mind we are only at 25% feature complete and have much more to come.

 

Sounds good, I'm more than accepting of the current alpha state. Just would like to see Epoch develop out to being on its own level, because in all fairness you guys did answer the survival equation that the original DayZ mod did not answer, and DayZ went on to be its own game and you guys ended up providing the base code for almost 70% of the servers that are still running it....kind of unfair, because Epoch actually finished the mod that Dean started...at least in my opinion.

 

So for A3 I'm just hoping to see Epoch really flesh out into something big on its own, that can capture the same level of grim/dark and neurosis that came along with long sessions of DayZ/DayZ Epoch. You all definitely deserve to really break out, because in all fairness if it hadn't been for Epoch, DayZ wouldn't have turned up as good as it did.

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I understand where you come from, I really do. And once over I was a vehement opponent to the bloody Rock Monster, but I've chilled now and can see the positives in having ridiculously bizarre antagonists.

 

Since the introduction of the clone idea (well done whoever thought that part of the story up), we can pretty much write our own back story for our own servers; for example we could say it's a Total Recall situation where you've paid big monies to remotely control your clones in whatever environment (server) you chose. 

 

If the devs create all manner of antagonists (same applies to vehicles), whether they be futuristic, realistic, prehistoric, mystic, or fucking giant, walking rock monsters; the community owners can chose which trip to offer its customers by selecting certain antagonists to roam their servers.

 

So you could have some communities running a prehistoric Epoch, while others run realistic or medieval Epoch. You get the picture? They'd all be EPoch, but they'd all have a uniqueness. 

 

Now being as we're based around the Greek islands, how-about some Greek mythology antagonists?

 

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. Having adaptable content is an interesting idea and I don't think I've ever seen it done, but just because something hasn't been done doesn't always specifically mean its a good idea either. We've never, for example, had a live human being actually ride a nuclear bomb to see what would happen if we did that...cause its simply not a good idea and the veritable science that might be gained from such an endeavor would be largely not worth the ethical cost.

 

Having Epoch be this kind of random table top apocalypse simulation where admins can choose whatever antagonists they feel fits their theme...I think it waters down Epoch's potential to make a large coherent impression of its own. A generic "ala carte" server package where people can add a dash of satanists and finish off with a dessert of mutant unicorns just seems....like a waste of developmental effort.

 

And the reason I say that is already evident in the A2 mod community and its DayZ variants, most server PBO's that have been successful settled into a pretty predictable range of functionality offered. Getting people to play on a server that wasn't 24/7 daylight, that didn't have self blood bagging a million vehicles and whatever else was near to impossible, whats more people that adapted/bought/stole PBO's with single currency solutions had a huge advantage over servers that didn't adopt that and you ended up with large focal disparity.

 

So giving server admins the ability to say "My server only runs para military police forces as antagonists" while someone else says "my server runs mutant rainbow ponies as antagonists"....seems like a waste of development cycles because somewhere in the middle between those two is where the player demand is going to be found and having all those extra assets will be pointless because if you want to run a populated server, it doesn't matter if you want paramilitary police force antagonists.....because the players want mutant rainbow ponies and if your server doesn't have them you'll be paying for an empty server.

 

Simple facts are, antagonists, in my opinion, are a core feature of a game, having an adaptable antagonist resource serves little to no purpose because the general public will end up deciding which antagonists they like and they'll only play on servers that use that configuration.

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Simple facts are, antagonists, in my opinion, are a core feature of a game, having an adaptable antagonist resource serves little to no purpose because the general public will end up deciding which antagonists they like and they'll only play on servers that use that configuration.

 

Lol.

 

Sorry couldn't resist.

 

What's hot and what's not is yet to be decided. We can deliberate, estimate and masturbate over the possible outcome of the game till the cows cum home, but nothing will become fact until we have the statistics to back the facts up.

 

Now I really do disagree with your predictions because, I think that the more to chose from, the better. 

 

The whole mystical genre of gaming is huge, you only need to look at WoW and others like it. Now I'm not suggesting Epoch competes with those games, I'm just saying a little time developing elves and gobblins for example, may just open up a few more doors for EPoch. No fucker needs to put them on their server, but those that do will attract enough neckbeards to run a nice, mystical Epoch community, IMO. Now don't get me wrong, I'm NOT suggesting the devs create a Game of Thrones version or anything, I'm merely bashing out examples or analogies on 'what could happen'.

 

I'm an MGT patron of two years, but I've found myself playing on GFSgaming.com of late, because they're running raptors on Panthera A3. I wanted a bit of Jurassic EPoch, as do many others, so we went and gave it a try. Why can't the same work for robots and aliens for the sci-fi geeks?

 

I really don't see the problem in the devs gradually offering us more models to chose from once the more important things have been tried and tested?

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Lol.

 

Sorry couldn't resist.

 

What's hot and what's not is yet to be decided. We can deliberate, estimate and masturbate over the possible outcome of the game till the cows cum home, but nothing will become fact until we have the statistics to back the facts up.

 

Now I really do disagree with your predictions because, I think that the more to chose from, the better. 

 

The whole mystical genre of gaming is huge, you only need to look at WoW and others like it. Now I'm not suggesting Epoch competes with those games, I'm just saying a little time developing elves and gobblins for example, may just open up a few more doors for EPoch. No fucker needs to put them on their server, but those that do will attract enough neckbeards to run a nice, mystical Epoch community, IMO. Now don't get me wrong, I'm NOT suggesting the devs create a Game of Thrones version or anything, I'm merely bashing out examples or analogies on 'what could happen'.

 

I'm an MGT patron of two years, but I've found myself playing on GFSgaming.com of late, because they're running raptors on Panthera A3. I wanted a bit of Jurassic EPoch, as do many others, so we went and gave it a try. Why can't the same work for robots and aliens for the sci-fi geeks?

 

I really don't see the problem in the devs gradually offering us more models to chose from once the more important things have been tried and tested?

 

Again in all fairness I'm not saying that its particularly bad for the developers to try it out, I just don't feel that a dilution of the core experience at the developmental level actually serves a purpose.

 

Again going back to core and factual examples. After a code base gets out into the wild, dilution and derivation are an inevitability. Its already happening now. But, If you take DayZ and break down every derivative that spun out of it in A2, the core features of DayZ are still core principles of every single derivative.

 

Building an entire mod around catering to derivatives means a game doesn't have its own identity. When people are talking about multi-player online zombie survival games...they're are almost 80% of the time directly referring to DayZ, not a derivative and not a different title. Why is that? Because DayZ's strong central core principle means that all DayZ derivatives are "DayZ" in the collective internet group think. There are plenty of variants, there are major branches like Epoch and Origins and Breaking Point and minor branches which are derivatives of the major branches...but in the collective group think, they are all "DayZ" and its because of the strong core central mechanics that they all revolve around the main branch from DayZ.

 

Epoch self-diluting seems....kind of self defeating because server admins are going to fuck it around anyways to make it do whatever it needs to do to keep their servers full and donations coming in because lets face it the people that put a buttload of effort into that kind of thing are in it for the donations and the money they can get from nerds and neckbeards that have expendable income....its a cottage industry, I'm not sure why the Epoch team should be concerned with creating assets for them....just create the strong base central core mechanics and...let the server admins actually do some work for their beer money...thats my opinion at least, and I am a former server admin.

 

Strong central mechanics are all a game or a great mod like Epoch needs, adding in fairy dragons "in case someone wants to use them" seems like a gigantic waste of time and effort for the Epoch team because...lets be fair, they'll never make a fraction in donations of what server admins will end up wrangling out of sweaty nerds, using the assets that they created. Just seems like a lot of effort and time put into designing a modular system that will be of very little direct benefit to the guys that actually made it.

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I'd just composed a detailed reply and lost it at the press of the button. FFS!

 

Synopsis..........

 

Epoch core is building and trading.

We've moved on from DayZ, there's no need for both Epochs to be interwoven.

Rocket is a wanker that waves his cock around while shouting "any zombie games are a ripoff of my DayZ" 

The current antagonists are of little threat.

The artists dig designing shit, although Kiory gets grumpy from time to time. They're also bloody excellent at it.

It's not just about the antagonists, they could make transport futuristic, like with the Tron bike idea.

We have different opinions, just as players have differing favorite genres.

 

 

Sorry about the botched reply, my gaming buddy is online and we're off to kill some Raptors. Come join us if you like.

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I'd really like to see it up to the server what the antagonists are. If a framework could be made to support that, it'd be great. Someone may want zombies, another may want werewolves, etc.

 

Kind of like making them dynamic to a degree..

 

 

It would allow flexibility.  Servers can choose what kind of antagonists they want and they can apply a skin to it.

 

 

The idea would be for them to make the characteristic engine of 3 to 5 different antagonists.  Each one would have different characteristics.

 

Ie:

 

Type 1: Slow, Extremely Hard to kill and if it hit you once it has a high probability of killing you.

Type 2: Bit faster, Hard to kill, requires two hits to kill a player

Type 3: Faster, Tuff to kill, kills player after 3 hits

etc...

 

Then they could make about 10 different skins for these characteristics.

 

 

Each server owner could choose what characteristic they would like and what skin it would have and apply them to be the antagonists of their server.

 

Sure would make for some unique server experiences.

 

Good idea!

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Kind of like making them dynamic to a degree..

It would allow flexibility. Servers can choose what kind of antagonists they want and they can apply a skin to it.

The idea would be for them to make the characteristic engine of 3 to 5 different antagonists. Each one would have different characteristics.

Then they could make about 10 different skins for these characteristics.

Good idea!

Oh yes please!

A skin for the sappers and a new audio file. Oh God yeah, this has to be done.

We could have the Jihadist skin, with the audio file, instead of groans of frustration, have a repeating cry of "Allah" and a final one at the moment of detonation which cries "Allah Ahkbar ".

Project Reality had suicide bombers, but they were played by the players, not Ai.

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