Let me start by saying that I've been playing MMO's since the days when Ultima Online was actually a Risk vs. Reward game. Where you could be evil ... legitimately evil and have there be consequences for your actions. I've played more then a few MMO's since that day and invariably, I've been disappointed by all of them. The business model of those games has always been to NOT upset anyone by the possible content allowed within the game.

PLEASE DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE. Make a game that will upset, unsettle, annoy, anger, irritate, frustrate, reward, and enrapture its players. Make them work for the reward by doing something OTHER then mashing 3 buttons for 25 seconds. Please do not carebear this game. You will ruin the content. This is about the wastelands after the apocalypse. It's full of ghouls and mutants and raiders and bandits and radiation and armed factions acting with benevolence or brutal utilitarianism. This is NOT a game that should appeal to everyone. Please keep those whiny pansies who will complain about the content away from the game so it doesnt ruin the game for the rest of us who will pay and play MORE then them.

mm, I agree. But just do it carefully Make it too hardcoe and it will get boring xD It's a dangerous balance

some thoughts:

arguably, the goal of pv13 is to create a game where the fallout universe is brought alive in massively multiplayer way, where players experience the fallout world as is presented to them, but also adopt roles that help bring the world alive: players, their choices and actions, their roles and development arc, all fit within the context of 'fallout' and make the world all the more fully realized.

still, this is a product of a company in the business of generating revenues and making a profit. as such, their product necessarily must appeal to a broad enough audience to ensure the studio can stay in the business of making games. words like 'accessibility', 'playability', these are important.

another important factor is the difference between a single player game and a multiplayer game. the dev team won't (and shouldn't) be so faithful to the dark/gritty nature of the single player fallout world that they end up making a game with few safeguards to the fun of the player experience. a single player game, focused exclusively on the experience of just one player, can afford to represent a world of utter lawlessness, darkness, grit, etc., as the experience of the single player has been carefully placed at the center of this world. a massively multiplayer game, taking into account the experiences of (hopefully) millions of players, necessarily walks a bit of a finer line to ensure that the overall game remains fun to pretty much anyone and everyone who plays it.

All the way

Fallout has always been an advlt content game which is one of the reasons I loved playing it so much as a teen. It should offend; virtual six with anyone... for money/drugs. It should be rated as high up the ratings charts as possible and banned from Australia.

Hah. Poor Australians.

banned from Australia

Fury of a thousand suns.

I've never understood our approach to rating. They were fine with limbs being brutally removed with a ripper, but as soon as they introduced Morphine they became "Whoah, oh no, we don't want that shit here, sorry."

I would love to see a serious death penalty in game. You want to make Super Mutants scary? Make sure you know you're going to lose your items and possibly some of your skills when you see a pack of them hurtling towards you from across the wasteland. That will make them absolutely terrifying.

All those old MMOs with serious death penalties were...I dunno. More thrilling. Your heart began to beat like a drum machine when you were running through wilderness, with a scrap of health and no idea where you were.

I won't ever get use to the perma death suggestion, but you're right about the thrills that entail. Running through a god-forsaken land, holding a knife in your hand while your leg has been broken by multiple shots, no way to escape as buildings collapse finally. All types of mutants coming towards you, your end in sight...that is what marks a good thrilling game.

Indeed, there has to be a balance here, you make it too hardcoe and you'll end up with empty servers. Generally people play games to be heroes, nobody likes to loose and no one likes to get beat up on all the time.

Perma-death is like communism, its a good idea in theory but its about a practical as a chocolate tea pot.

lol @ this


and yeah very good post... im rather new to the ol' mmo scene but have played a variety of games from oldies to newbies and the one thing which annoyed me more than anything were carebears.... bash a few buttons and hey presto their wallets/cashbags/points w/e flashes up and they have no risk, no danger, in playing its care free, agreed a game should be fun, but this is a very very valid point imo.



Fallout is about the struggle of the barren wastelands and should reflect in the gameplay, a fun struggle

I agree 120% that we need Game, even The Game, with capitals, we have lost all that golden time's ones.
Everyone went cheesy and easy, no death penalties, no exp lost. in LOTRO I even introduced such a thing as Death-Lift -wanna move faster then jump from high cliff or sink into lava or poison-lake - and voilaa! there ya are in next safe-spot and even ya armor don't get penalty after such deaths. That 10 min lower HP by few % isnt nothing meaningful.
Yea I remember what is loosing Ya corpse and all ya eq in some dangerous place, or heeeh craziest when I get killed in Plane of Sky, and lost my lvl and even get ported back up before I dont refill my lvl 47 Whatta adrenaline was running thru Emerald Jungle at low levels, times of risk and pure adrenaline.
Only one thing I don like is FFA PvP - now a days there isnt more fair play as old times. That wow-type gankers jumping on ya solo adventuring only when they see they are at least 3 vs 1 counter, baah.
I like grouping or sometimes duoing and exploring new places, but sometimes I'm bored of ppl, and I wanna wander around solo, with my own thoughts, wanna sit down on high peaks and just look around, or need to leave comp for some time. And not wanna log off due some youngsters jumping on ya and ganking.
When letting such way into game result is some end-game-runners max lvled gankers and no more ppl.

UO is the best MMO ever. In my opinon, no-one has ever come close to what UO made possible. If gamesas wants to actually make something that stands out from the rest, they should have a good, hard and long look at UO.

Agree, this game has to have something that sets it apart from all other MMO's. Maybe that will be the first MMO with an "AO" rating.
Hell yeah, sixual services for caps, meds, info, protection, whatever. Trade anything for anything.

Kids should be able to get killed. But there should be EXTREME risks and rewards for doing such Extreme acts. If you do Kill a child where someone can see, You are branded a child murder and basically kill on site for most of the human NPC's and a HUGE reward for your capture or head is awarded to the person or clan who brings in your hide.

Of Course maybe this is the only way to prove yourself to the Children of the Apocalypse and open up a totally new area of the game and play type forever turning you to evil and the enslavement of the "good" humans in the Wasteland.

fvck the squeamish politicians in Australia and Germany. Whatever gamesas loses in potential revenue in those places will more than be made up in other non totalitarian places by the 70 % of Gamers who are now advlts ( in other words over 18 or 19) who will flock to such a savage and free world.

Basically if this game is carebear it's gonna svck and people will get board of it and it will fail anyway no matter the rating and no matter how much "market share" and "revenue potential" is opened up by having it played all over the world.

Think about it gamesas... You can't BUY that kind of publicity, look at Rockstar and it's games.. they got thousands of free hours of advertisemants from all the church groups, t.v. looking for ratings, and sweaty politicians trying to show their "family values" by trying to ban games.

I remember when I played games like GTA 3 and Postal 2... I seeked these games out since I heard how "naughty" they were and all the hype. I played them, I bought them, I loved playing them and I looked back and wondered what all the fuss was about?

On a side note, if there are mayors and that kind in the game they should all be two faced , greedy, involved in nefarious plots that would sacrifice the common man for their own needs plots... remember we want gritty realism in this game... MMO's... MMO's never change...

I couldn't agree more! Death penalty is important! You should lose something when you get killed in PvP, even if just a small amount of gold that you have on you. Make it personal! Get angry when you die so you try to have it not happen again! If I don't like somebody, when I kill them I want it to be a punishment. I want them to lose something! If guilds have a rivalry, it shouldn't be pansy shit. They should be able to have their city destroyed and their money taken! I really hope they take this more hardcoe path instead of the pansy path where everything is very safe. I agree 100% with you man!

US politicians have been trying to do similar things to what Australian and German politicians have stopped?/been doing (GTA for instance was a game that had a few attempts on it's life and was for a time used to attack video gaming). The game you describe could easily be the first game to be completely banned in the US -- I doubt gamesas would want to lose the US market.

If this game has AO rating how could it get banned?

It's an internet game ... look at the net ... free porm... free bestiality... shock site showing graphic accidents... brains ...blood... dismemberment. The gub'ment allows advltS to view all this so why would an advlt rated game get banned? MMO's... MMO's never change...

All of those things are not considered mainstream and is thus not really ban-able. A game that advertises and is considered part of the mainstream culture (even if it is a subculture of the mainstream) could much more easily be banned -- the taboo on talking about it is simply non-existing, where as the taboo on talking about bestiality, shock sites, brains, blood and dismemberment (actual, not fictitious) is very much so real. But "why" is not important. Is it likely that a game, as described, could be banned in the US? Given recent events, I wouldn't want to invest several million USD in it. Chances are simply too great that it will be banned.

(just to make things clear: I would love to play the game though)

I think a ban would not be the problem... what I think would be the problem is stores like Wal-mart, Kmart, and all the DVD CD and electronic / game stores would not carry it since an AO rating basically means "porm" and those places don't sell porm.

*Sigh* MMO's... MMO's never change...

With good advertisemant that would be a small problem -- downloading over torrents would reduce delivery cost dramatically anyway.

Sorry Taxman, I would have to disagree. Being a veteran MMO player myself, yes those games were new and exciting but the EQ1 xp penalties wore on people, and I EQ2 it lasted maybe 3 months until they removed them... WoW was getting their subscribers. And UO, I played it and was nice to be first at max level so I may GANK new potential players to the point they quit. See where I going with this? Today now a successful MMO needs a larger playerbase and the players that love UO or EQ1 will not be enough. Need areas for new player to explore solo and small group with some effectiveness in learning the game and their new roles (classes). Maybe some zones where PvP are allows with more risk also more rewards for other players. And perhaps a Player vs Monster Play like in LOTRO so some players can roll a Mutant and other svck creatures to gain Wasteland territories while not upsetting the "Care Bear" players? And include safe or neutral settlements for Trade skilling/Commerce and instant Housing ( I like what they did for housing in FO3 ).

Maybe, just maybe, these ruthless players want to Gank at every turn and corner at every unwaking second, maybe One Open-Ended PvP Server and see just how "full to capacity" it truely gets. it could be a 2x XP PvP server for incentive?

Really gamesas has the opportunity to explore all these venues...

I think there is an attitude amongst gamers when debating how hardcoe / carebear a game ought to be, at least in regards to PvP deaths, where everyone just automatically assumes it needs to be one way or the other. One of the fantastic things about EQ (coming from someone who played on the FFA PvP server), was that we had our little world and the carebears had theirs. I agree there should be a basic death penalty for when people die (I'm a fan of needing retrieve corpses, personally) but, as has been brought up, this is a game that needs to have a degree of appeal to more than just us pseudo-masochists who enjoy games with a little harshness in them. An MMO designed with only the hardcoe gamer in mind isn't going to make it. But, this doesn't mean that hardcoe gamers shouldn't have their place in this game. If there is any game that hardcoe gamers deserve to have their time to shine in, it is here. There seems a pretty simple answer, at least in my mind: different servers with different loot rules and different penalties for PvP deaths. Make the penalty for PvE deaths a basic run of the mill thing (xp loss, some gear damage, corpses) and then just add the threat of PvP deaths with serious loot repercussions on a server or two for those who want it. EQ managed it years ago and if gamesas would spend just a little time giving the PvP crowd what they want, they could easily steal not only casual gamers, but perhaps huge portions of the PvP crowd.