A (Re)game design of Priston Tale - MAKE PRISTON GREAT AGAIN

[mikh4chu]

Priston tale its a game that has maked part of our lives, in gold old school days of spicy RPG gameplay.

This isn’t a post about adding new shiny high level items or whatsoever. It’s about reviving a great game that has gifted us with so much FUN
An old school server? Hell, no! I wouldn’t play this same game as it is today. But a redesign of its mechanics, with the same tools underused by Yedang itself.

Which is the core mechanic of Priston Tale in current form?
Power creep, natural from a Asian RPG from the late 90's (launched in 2001, but developed since 1996'ish).

What is Power Creep sir mikh4chu?
Is the mechanic of grind in order to get new items that make the older ones useless, for being weaker

But I love Priston, what’s the problem with Power Creep?
Oh well, it’s fun to level our characters, grinding monster’s down. But the problem is that it gives no margin for CHOICE. What do I mean? Well... you actually don’t choose which items to use, you just use the stronger one, and games are about thinking and decision making.

The whole point of this Redesign is to give to the player the power of CHOICE.
Well, if you only have to use the stronger items. To do so, you apply the necessary stats for it, and the rest in your main stat. And smash the same button for the obviously stronger skill. What choice did actually you make?

But sir mikh4chu this is Priston Tale!
Well, what if existed items of the same level that are equally strong, but with different stats for different builds? Being able to choose which build path you want! Crit or atk speed focused, and so on!

What if you actually could use the hell out of the many skills that the game offers, in a optimal way? Being able to decide which one to use in certain situations!

What if you could ACTUALLY CHOOSE THE WEAPON FOR YOUR BUILD? A sword fighter, or an claw pike, in a viable way!

Would the game be less funny? I don't think so!

But do we do this, mr mikh4chu?? Question mark ??
Well, I have a list!

1. I have problems with the mana usage in Priston: In early levels you get a new skill, use it twice and your mana is over! Damn! Leveling up is mostly basic hits. Early skills should only spent RES.
2. Weapon limitations: Skills should be usable with much more weapons (and I think that Priston Engine allows it), in a way that you can decide for different weapons choices that are viable.
3. Items shouldn’t be linear stronger and stronger – First that should exist a list of max level items that are equally strong and viable, but with different stats. And, items shouldn’t get obsolete as soon a higher level appears depending on your build.
4. Mixes are better than Aging! In Aging you don’t decide anything, you just do it and get stronger. Mixes have the possibility if choosing which stats you want! So its necessary to create a bunch more of mixes possibility’s for the different builds.

… and much more. This isn’t a carefully made design concept document, just something I am writing with the stuff that comes in my mind right now. But you guys kind of get the point, right?

SO, WHAT DID YOU GUYS THINK ABOUT IT? HATE IT? LOVE IT? NAH? LET ME KNOW
And also I want to know: with current Priston Server and Client it is possible to: Edit skills damage, weapon, countdown, costs; Items stats and levels and add new mixes?
There is some limitation about giving a weapon speed that is beyond 11 or lower than 5, for example? Also let me know!!

peaceeeeeeeee

 

[jeanpm]

So, I'll give my point of view here.

I'm a PT player since 2007, and the things I miss on this game are the difficulty to get nice items and the visible difference of the most ranked up characters.

Sure that the PT community have a lot of different opinions about what is really FUNNY for them.

All ideas you gave seems to be very nice and enjoyable for me, about your ideas for engine modifications here's what I have to say:

In 2013 on this forum were released the PT's SOURCE CODE.
So it means that with this source on Internet's hands, we can make EVERYTHING.
So... What did the community do around 2013~2020?
What I can remember is:
Wartale (I think Sandurr had the source since the beggining, together with Sjoerd from UniquePT), you can see that now they have Mounts, which is a great idea.
FortressPT (very customized version of PT with a lot of improvements, you can see it on Youtube etc)
New maps
New Items
A guy trying to export the models to another engine called Unity (since 2019)
A guy tried to export the models to Unreal Engine and did not continue it since 2017
Some BR servers did a lot of innovations like MonsterPK, with new UI, tier 5 etc.
Chinese Priston Tale have a system of wings!!!!!! And a nice combat PVP system.

So, you can see that a lot of PT coders did a lot of innovations, but the point is that no one of them tried to re-make the whole thing.

It's a lot of code, shuffled because the korean coders didn't make it really organized, and maybe would require a team of 10 people working for months to do a really nice job.

And we have the problem of the laws, so have to use another name (like Wartale had to).

And we have another problem of how expensive would it cost, and if the project would have profit.



So my conclusion is

All these ideas are really nice, but so many people would get involved to re-build the game, Priston Tale 2 is an attempt, Laxe Lore was another attempt. Weren't profitable projects.

Maybe we'll see some another innovations, a lot of them and mainly on Wartale, and some others PT from China and Brazil. That's it.

 

[mikh4chu]

jeanpm, thanks for taking some of your time for reply! And sharing what amused you in Priston.
The very fact of sharing point of views and discussing about this is already pretty cool for me.

And sincerly, this forum impresses me more and more, due to fact of people with such knologde about tech and history of the game, like you.

I dind't had idea about the existence of the projects that you mentioned, Wartale and Fortress PT. And it's mind blowing the effort that they have put in the game, and the results they got, I am totaly amused.

I confess that I am a bit lazy now about my own project. But I am very happy to discover about those.

Thank you!

~But I still want to know the opnion of more people. Just beacuse a love to read stuff that this community offers and talking about this game, its just so cool

 

[Phatkone]

they are all good ideas, it always bothered me that whilst every class had its strong and weak points, 99% of players went pikeman or mage because they were (and lets be honest here) the best.

I think mech was the only class that had two build styles, tank and automech.

but if ground up redesign is your plan, then you really need to clean up and fix the code so you have a good base to work on. the source is too messy and full of holes and flaws.

ok great, lets do that? welllll while at it, why not re-do it so that it can be used on any system, make the server run as a process that auto starts, add DB support for other DBs (mongo, oracle, mysql etc) because it would be far cheap and easier to run it on ubuntu than on windows (less resource intensive etc)

im all for a full rebuild using the PT graphics interface and characters etc but it really needs to be a whole new game by that point.

i want to do it in C#, but getting the time to do it is hard, too much to do and not enough free time.

also notice the servers that make the most progress dont share (because why would you want to give away all your hard work thats making you money?) those who try collaborate just fail because people dont contribute but want in so they have the source.

i know of one or two others who share my idea, and i think we will work together on this but we all have lives, we are all busy.

it would be nice to see it to fruition though, (particularly before the end of 32bit time)

 

[mikh4chu]

The first point you've mentioned. About bad balance between classes: YES. TOTALLY AGREE
The class balance is problematic not ONLY because a matter of strengths between then, but problems related to the division of jobs in the game.

Due of how potions work, filling the entire health, healers aren’t necessary, and the game have a healer (sacer)

Because actually what matter is DPS (kill faster, more EXP) there isn’t a necessity for a tank in fact.

Because of how items work (basically almost every class can use the same armors) its hard to actually create meaningful differences between them. What is solvable, for example, in to making better armor accessible only for those who in fact build tank focused stats; and a better usage of the spec item mechanic.

What I want to know:::: PLEASE
It is necessary to change so much about the source code to: Edit skills levels, weapon requirements, damage, and countdown ??

Items specs and stats. I DO NOT WANT TO REMAKE THE CODE, but make it better with the tools that it already offers.

About the money involved... Yeah, I had no idea of how much money people spent in private servers, here my opinion:

Its absolute disgusting to make profit of an private server. It is piracy and a private server should only serve the purpose of forcing the main server to be better, or to provide fun. Pay to win server should not exist, as no pay to win game should.


This server would not have any profit intents; this is due the fact I aint no "priston server guy", but a game designer that sees games as an art and entertainment.

 

[Phatkone]

i agree about pay to win being poop.
i mean having a donation shop to help with the costs of running the server, but if it starts getting to be a noticeable profit then the money should be re-invested in the server (expand to more server hosts, better hosts etc)

in my mind though, the donation shop should not give players an unfair advantage, i.e. shouldnt be able to buy items that are impossible to get in game, imho just to help fast track things (i.e. quest items or crystals) things you can easily hunt in game.

 

[bobbman]

I don't want to over promise and under deliver, but I'm back. :laugh:

IDK who here remembers me, but I'm kind of broke and wondering if anybody's got the hommie hookup on some hosting.

If not, that's cool. I'll still figure something out and I'm sure the community will benefit either way. :laugh:

 

[Phatkone]

ovh are reasonably priced.
which server did you run bobbman?
I see you released ViPT client into here back in '06.

 

[connorboy]

You must be registered to see links

We are in beta and i would like to see ur suggestions

 

[Phatkone]

You must be registered to see links

We are in beta and i would like to see ur suggestions

What does this have to do with the post connorboy?

 

[connorboy]

What does this have to do with the post connorboy?

Because i would like to hear his suggestions on how i could change my game he has good ideas what's not relevant with that ?

 

[Phatkone]

Because i would like to hear his suggestions on how i could change my game he has good ideas what's not relevant with that ?

Oh right, never mind me, i thought you were just plugging your server wherever (not a stab at you, but people do it a lot.... )

What base did you build your server off connorboy?

 

[connorboy]

Oh right, never mind me, i thought you were just plugging your server wherever (not a stab at you, but people do it a lot.... )

What base did you build your server off connorboy?

Sorry i didn't mean it in that way just wanna make it unique and I'm no dev it's all spaghetti to me hahaha i just tell them the direction to go but our devs i believe they started from scratch and made it into their own custom code that's how it's so easy for us to add anything we want took them years though that's why we have been offline for awhile

 

[bozodasilva]

Well.. i'm working on something like a full retexture of the game, but since i have zero help so far, the project is kinda stuck, since i don't want to make a cheap retexturization like we can see here and there, my project is in the same line as the RE4 HD Project by Albert as it comes in level of details.

If someone wanna give some help with the project, send pm.

 

[prozinhubr]

I really think PT needed full on PvP and PK system, I remember playing a very old server called XtremePK where you could just CTRL + click a player and kill him, no more complaining about kill stealing, you simply kill the fucker. Added so much to the game.

 

[SunnyZ]

I really think PT needed full on PvP and PK system, I remember playing a very old server called XtremePK where you could just CTRL + click a player and kill him, no more complaining about kill stealing, you simply kill the fucker. Added so much to the game.

It already has that, just enable it in the servers hotuk.

//Player Kill Settings

//Creates log file for deaths by player kill.
//*PK_LOG

//Enables Player KillAbility in all maps, no exp loss
//*ENABLE_PK 34
*ENABLE_PK

//Enables player kill on all maps (0 = no kill. 1 = kill)
*PK_FIELD_ALL 1

//Enables player kill on specific maps (can be numbered one after the other 16 2 3 5 9 10 etc
*PK_FIELD 0 1 2 4 5 6 7 8 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 46 48 49