Game mechanic questions

[Roninman]

Since Beta is over and dont have to speculate about things anymore, someone already playing this game could lighten up things about it.
Some of this i already know, but some others propably wont.

1. Characters - Seems to be 1 on server, which means no alts and nothing?
2. Class - No class its skill based. How fast is skill progression and how it basicly work inside game?
3. Looting - Full loot and how it works inside game. You can loot immediately someone dies, how much you can carry, does encumbrance affect your movement speed, bank (safe one?), how fast is looting?
4. Crafting - Since full looting rules, how viable is crafting in terms of making equipment? What things can be made except weapons & armour?
5. Grouping - Group size? Raid group size? Do you see your group on minimap or UI ?
6. PVP - How does alignment/murder rules work? You can group with players and kill + loot them from your own group but what penalties do you suffer? What happens if you do it in your city?
7. City - Do you build your own ones or capture existing ones? How does it work?
8. Guilds - Is it viable to make guild of all races or is better to stick with 1-2 races only? Is there alliance system?
9. World - How big it really is? Seen map but in terms of exploration
10. Weather - How is it?
11. Ships - Are they in?
12. Siege equipment - Are they in?
13. Computer specs - How good game runs on mediocore computer?
14. Combat - How fast it is? If 2 melee characters on equal skills/equipment slash eachothers? Is combat in few seconds or minute over?
15. Mounts - Can everyone ride anything, can mounts die, are they crafted or bought, can they attack
16. Sandbox - Is game really a "sandbox" game (UO, EVE, old SWG)?
17 . Server - Does it stay up or lagging
18. Bugs - Any major ones existing or is game playable?

if someone would answer thx, others also can put some questions more if someone answer them

[Stormhold]

Since Beta is over and dont have to speculate about things anymore, someone already playing this game could lighten up things about it.
Some of this i already know, but some others propably wont.

1. Characters - Seems to be 1 on server, which means no alts and nothing?
2. Class - No class its skill based. How fast is skill progression and how it basicly work inside game?
3. Looting - Full loot and how it works inside game. You can loot immediately someone dies, how much you can carry, does encumbrance affect your movement speed, bank (safe one?), how fast is looting?
4. Crafting - Since full looting rules, how viable is crafting in terms of making equipment? What things can be made except weapons & armour?
5. Grouping - Group size? Raid group size? Do you see your group on minimap or UI ?
6. PVP - How does alignment/murder rules work? You can group with players and kill + loot them from your own group but what penalties do you suffer? What happens if you do it in your city?
7. City - Do you build your own ones or capture existing ones? How does it work?
8. Guilds - Is it viable to make guild of all races or is better to stick with 1-2 races only? Is there alliance system?
9. World - How big it really is? Seen map but in terms of exploration
10. Weather - How is it?
11. Ships - Are they in?
12. Siege equipment - Are they in?
13. Computer specs - How good game runs on mediocore computer?
14. Combat - How fast it is? If 2 melee characters on equal skills/equipment slash eachothers? Is combat in few seconds or minute over?
15. Mounts - Can everyone ride anything, can mounts die, are they crafted or bought, can they attack
16. Sandbox - Is game really a "sandbox" game (UO, EVE, old SWG)?
17 . Server - Does it stay up or lagging
18. Bugs - Any major ones existing or is game playable?

if someone would answer thx, others also can put some questions more if someone answer them

1. Correct.
2. In beta it was quite slow. They did increase the gains on all combat skills though, but what I hear is that magic still encourages grinding it in air due to new spells being useless until you grind them. It's kind of Ultima Online system, except that you have plenty of skills that have prerequirements. Spells and special attacks are some of those, but as a more skill-not-ability example that more health-skill requires a certain amount of health.
3. You can loot immediately when your enemy is dead. They'll fall on the ground to yell for help and you can wait or decapacitate them. After that it's Ultima Online drag & drop. It isn't easy to get your bag full - you'll be banking the stuff before that happens. I didn't see ANYTHING in the whole game affecting movement speed (except speed hacks and sprinting naturally). Banks are safe, nowadays I hear they even have guard towers next to about all banks, which is really sad.
4. Potions, enchants, pretty much all the general stuff. It's a very simple and boring crafting system, but crafted gear is very viable nevertheless.
5. Can see group on minimap, no clue on maximum size.
6. -100 to 100 reputation, below 0 towers will shoot you. You gain reputation from ganking reds/racial enemies and lose from killing racial friends/own race. Really easily exploitable by removing a friend from guild for a moment and ganking him next to a bindstone for a while.
7. You capture clan stones, someone might or might have not built stuff to it, but if someone has, it has been a player.
8. No alliance system that I know of. Races don't matter to anything except of course a mahirim doesn't gain special protection in human lands nor gets to teleport to human lands just because he is in a human guild. If you have a big and active city holding guild, I don't think it really matters how many races you have.
9. Not as big as those Kalimdor vs Agon pictures make it seem to be, but yes, quite big. Also, very empty.
10. I didn't really see much of weather.
11. I heard someone tested those on beta. They're pretty hard to get and relatively useless afaik.
12. No clue.
13. Should run decently with shadows off. Depends on what's mediocre I guess.
14. It is quite slow paced. Atleast was with the low to medium skills and gear. Since combat is very simple (not many different things to do really, relatively comparable to UO in that matter) I'd like it to be faster too. Combat with many buttons doing different things can be slow.
15. Everyone can ride anything. They are crafted. They can die. They are expensiveish. Apart from that, pretty much like in UO. So the mount is like a motorbike.
16. Yes, but the sand is dry and most of your tools are broken. Not that awful lack of working and fun toys compared to original UO, but it's 2009 ffs. Far from EVE in terms of interesting sandbox with lots of things to do.
17. Don't know about release, beta was pretty good apart from server going a down a lot, but that comes with beta.
18. There's a relatively common speed hack. Mostly people use it to sprint without losing stamina since that makes it hard to spot I hear.

[Roninman]

Thx

Comments on what you answered.

1. Finally there is main character only and no alts to escape to. No classes of course help this
2. No class gameplay eliminates early needed class distribution and encourages players to try things. Hope this skill progression gets looked after little after release.
3. When enemy falls to group and is incapacitaded, is just push of button to kill them? How fast is looting on dead players? If it takes just second or two, in battles loot change handa too fast on my opinion.
4. On crafting more. There are durabilities on items? How fast it takes sword to worn out and will it become permanently broken? If this is case then crafting is really viable if dropped items are not too good.
5. Grouping no comment
6. Alignment system will prolly be tweaked little later on
7. What "bonus" will player city give? Just something to brag on?
8. Hopefully some kind of alliance system will make it to game then at some point
9. Good thing is quite big. In terms of beeing empty is wellcome change to me, too many games have landscapes literally full covered with all kinds of orcs and wolves
10. Weather no comment
11. Ships hopefully later after landbased game is looked after
12. Siege equipment not really necessary no i think
13. Hopefully game runs and looks ok on little older machines too, more players that way
14. Combat seems ok to me, dont really need 3 action bars full of things to press
15. Sounds real good that mounts are crafted and can be killed. They can be stolen too?
16. Enough sandbox to me, hopefully better soon
17. Heard server is capped at 10,000 players now?
18. Bugs will always exist, hopefully nastier ones will disappear

[Chromer one]

Thx

Comments on what you answered.

1. Finally there is main character only and no alts to escape to. No classes of course help this
2. No class gameplay eliminates early needed class distribution and encourages players to try things. Hope this skill progression gets looked after little after release.
3. When enemy falls to group and is incapacitaded, is just push of button to kill them? How fast is looting on dead players? If it takes just second or two, in battles loot change handa too fast on my opinion.
-looting is dragn drop so in big loot you loot long time.. I like it cause its realistic.

4. On crafting more. There are durabilities on items? How fast it takes sword to worn out and will it become permanently broken? If this is case then crafting is really viable if dropped items are not too good.
Well used my staff 2 days and it went broken had to buy new one.
5. Grouping no comment
-Grouping takes more effort cause visibility is limited unless mounted and all spells and attacks are mouse aimed so it takes a bit skill to be efficient.
6. Alignment system will prolly be tweaked little later on
7. What "bonus" will player city give? Just something to brag on?
8. Hopefully some kind of alliance system will make it to game then at some point
-Isn´t there yet.. i think the game has some politic features allready.
9. Good thing is quite big. In terms of beeing empty is wellcome change to me, too many games have landscapes literally full covered with all kinds of orcs and wolves
works for me too. one needs to find the enemies and the kill them gives some adventuring feeling.
10. Weather no comment
-At night you cant see much and its easy to gank people ;)
11. Ships hopefully later after landbased game is looked after
12. Siege equipment not really necessary no i think
13. Hopefully game runs and looks ok on little older machines too, more players that way
14. Combat seems ok to me, dont really need 3 action bars full of things to press
15. Sounds real good that mounts are crafted and can be killed. They can be stolen too?
Easily stolen.. when dismounted anyone can take it and ride to glory ;)
and it takes about 6 secs to unsummon after dismounted.
16. Enough sandbox to me, hopefully better soon
17. Heard server is capped at 10,000 players now?
Bit lag at starter towns further theres enaf ppl but not too crowded.
18. Bugs will always exist, hopefully nastier ones will disappear

[Stormhold]

2. No class gameplay eliminates early needed class distribution and encourages players to try things. Hope this skill progression gets looked after little after release.

From beta I pretty much got the impression that it encourages everyone to be more or less the same. Magic alone didn't seem good enough (especially at start you need melee unless you are sadomasochistic). Magic/archery alone could work at high enough skill levels, but you want to have backup for running out of reagents and melee/archery and magic have an awesome combo since magic doesn't consume stamina and melee/archery don't consume mana. Everyone with any common sense will have some magic (mana to stamina was a must have in beta, but it's pretty early in the grindfest) and most will probably be melee+magic specialized in one or two spell schools+possibly archery.

3. When enemy falls to group and is incapacitaded, is just push of button to kill them? How fast is looting on dead players? If it takes just second or two, in battles loot change handa too fast on my opinion.

Yeah. Ultima Online. Personally I didn't really like the seathe weapon - press F - drag and drop system. Drag & drop is ok (just btw EVE has drag & drop, just with possibility to select many items at once.), the hassle to open corpse is too much.

7. What "bonus" will player city give? Just something to brag on?

I heard player cities are the only source of rarer materials with their own buildable crafting nodes. No clue if that is true. Apart from that the same bonuses that apply to EVE stations apply pretty much. Spawn point and crafting facilities with some safety. I'm saddened by the WoWism of the world. One global bank and no storage in any place except bank and your backpack. Ultima Online had it very well with personal houses and forcing people to storage stuff in them with small (but global) bank

9. Good thing is quite big. In terms of beeing empty is wellcome change to me, too many games have landscapes literally full covered with all kinds of orcs and wolves

I thought so at first too, but it is TOO empty. Many cities have very few npcs (like 5 npcs per starter city). That isn't a huge issue, but in late beta finding ruins/village/whatever was nearly always very dissapointing as half the places were empty. I saw absolutely no wildlife either. As a funny thing we explored a huge empty village/mine thingie and after like 15 minutes found a portal that took us to a dungeon that actually had hard mobs. We used the buggy AI and killed some and avoided the rest and found the bugged ramp to the end treasure. The ramp was there, but you'd fall through it. Woah. That was kinda epic though, we even killed some idiots twice in the dungeon ;P

14. Combat seems ok to me, dont really need 3 action bars full of things to press

Sure, you don't need 3 action bars, but atleast with the low to medium skills I had it was far too simple.

15. Sounds real good that mounts are crafted and can be killed. They can be stolen too?

Yeah. When you summon mount or hop from the mount anyone can steal it (unless it has been fixed, but that was in late beta). I'd guess you can technically kill someone on a mount without harming the mount, but it's not gonna be easy.