2 years later... the almost sad state of MMOs in the new era

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Daidraco

Daidraco

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Hence the trade offs gained, versus the ones that were lost in the beginning. You just dont see game design like that anymore because little Timmy wants to play the pretty wood elf but not feel like he made a bad choice when he meets the Ogre with frontal stun immunity. Or the Troll with Regen, etc. Some trade offs being not so obvious, such as your faction across the world. Though.. I was always a little confused how certain races that had never ventured out from there home continents had already established faction in a positive or negative way.
 
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Daidraco

Daidraco

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Sadre Spinegnawer said:
Any meaningful new mmo has to9 figure out a way to foil multiboxing. It drives away audience.

I like the skill paths > class idea ukerris mentioned above and if designed well, sure, it would be a fine way to go.

What still remains the challenge in the pve model, is how to design content.

What kind of irks me, is encounter mechanics can get ridiclously complicated but people just adapt, and that is where the fun curve really goes down because an encounter can turn into a strictly scripted series of raid actions, and for some, like me, that is where I get bored.

So the key, imo, would be to design content that gets more complex as the game evolves, but where the encounter becomes adaptive and starts to fuck with how it is dealing with the raid past certain parameters.

I'm not inventing the wheel. But I am asking, why the fuck can't design AI's that are less predictable after a few runs. You know, like being able to time Rampage? That is just a nerf, there is no reason they could not code more complicated triggers for effects like that.

The ideal would be that no website would be able to give you hard and solid strats, because the encounter reacts and can be tweaked on the fly by the devs. Not to make them more difficult, necessarily, but just different -- that makes people have to play on their toes and not just run through a script.

There should be as little script as possible for encounters the higher up in the game they go.
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I feel like you think your idea is different, but this is simply a bit more advanced Mythic Dungeon affix system that WoW has. Mobs run earlier, have different attitudes, etc. I too, would like to see it expanded upon.
 
Ukerric

Ukerric

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sadris said:
What's nevrax?
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Makers of the Ryzom MMORPG. We started in 2000, but I left fall 2001 (for the rush to make Internet registars and sell domain names). The engine development was a mess, but the devs and I were all raiding on EQ (different servers tough), so we knew what we were talking about (we were pretty much the only ones who had ever played MMOs, the lead game designer didn't like MMOs and the only multiplayer game he liked was Starsiege Tribes, so I was constantly trying to feed him game design notes for every aspect of every significant MMO at the time - UO, EQ, AC, T4C, Planeshift, etc...).
 
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Synj

Synj

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BoozeCube said:
Game designers shouldn't be designing games around blind people. I know it's unfortunate but jesus fuck why does every demo think everything should be catered to them. It's like the people who complain about MMORPG's are time investment games and since they are 45 years old now with a job that takes up 50-60 hours a week and a shitty wife that's now fat with 2-3 garbage children they have to spend time with that the game should be designed to be played in 15 minute increments every other Wednesday between 7-8pm. No fuck that retarded bullshit.
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I'm 44, I work 36 hours/week (thanks 12 hour shifts!), my wife is in great shape and has a banging body (she's 37 which helps) and my kids are great. I don't have anything to add but I just wanted that out there for the record.

TJT said:
The design change to night not meaning shit was always something that irked me. You have developer's saying that, "night time making it hard to see is a denial of service" and fags here telling everyone that, "it doesn't matter everyone gets darkvision or similar eventually and night means nothing then."

Sure, and a lot of people played Dark Elfs with natural ultravision or iksar with natural Serpent Sight too. But for everyone of them you had a human, barbarian, whatever who struggled with seeing shit in the dark in the early game and 20 years later they always remember the Blackburrow tunnel or Kithicor Forest or whatever. Even though they invevitably got lighting items later. Even having a lightstone in your inventory to see stuff better.

It just makes the game feel more alive. Having day and night cycles that mean nothing in your supposedly living breathing world is just lame.
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I used to commonly play DE or Iksar and in no small part I appreciated the night vision aspect. The cons being I kos everywhere and that was back when that seemed to matter. I like the idea of light radius improving with enhanced (aka magic) sources or improved HUD/feedback info based on your light source. I think improved to-hits or maybe perception rolls could be affected by light/magic sight.

The only other thing I would say is that if you have something like racial night vision, those without it should have some other advantage because that seems like a relatively big one.
 
sadris

sadris

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Ukerric said:
Makers of the Ryzom MMORPG. We started in 2000, but I left fall 2001 (for the rush to make Internet registars and sell domain names). The engine development was a mess, but the devs and I were all raiding on EQ (different servers tough), so we knew what we were talking about (we were pretty much the only ones who had ever played MMOs, the lead game designer didn't like MMOs and the only multiplayer game he liked was Starsiege Tribes, so I was constantly trying to feed him game design notes for every aspect of every significant MMO at the time - UO, EQ, AC, T4C, Planeshift, etc...).
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Thanks. I named my bank alt nevrax in 2004 and I couldn't remember why.
 
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Neranja

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Ukerric said:
One of the things you could work with is the dual Path-Skill system underlying the Legend of Randidly Ghosthound litrpg webnovel.
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I don't really like the genre, but now I have to read another of those because the mechanis sound interesting. Thanks, I guess.
 
Ukerric

Ukerric

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Neranja said:
I don't really like the genre, but now I have to read another of those because the mechanis sound interesting. Thanks, I guess.
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The series is big (850+ chapters) and unfortunately the author tends to ignore his own mechanics and go on complete stories arc that bypass all of these. If you like the mechanics, read the first two "tomes", and stop when he's summoned to another world.

There's also The New World, which uses a similar system and reads a bit better (the author explains exactly how he designed the system abuse that makes his main character an overpowered killer machine).
 
Neranja

Neranja

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Ukerric said:
the author tends to ignore his own mechanics and go on complete stories arc that bypass all of these
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And this is the main reason I don't really like the genre: Authors spending lots of effort into world building and making "systems", but then throwing it out the window once it suits them or the story they want to tell requires it. What's the point?
 
Ukerric

Ukerric

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Neranja said:
And this is the main reason I don't really like the genre: Authors spending lots of effort into world building and making "systems", but then throwing it out the window once it suits them or the story they want to tell requires it. What's the point?
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That's the author's version of "the lore serves the gameplay, it does not make the gameplay".
 
zzeris

zzeris

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These conversations are fun but pretty damn unrealistic today. Companies use the WoW system because there's an easily shown path of success and monetary benefit. Wow is just an improved version of EQ that focuses almost exclusively on easy access(more money). There are obvious negatives to this model but it would be incredibly hard to sell restricted access to the people paying to develop the game.

Beyond that, quests are used because developers have limited time and many people expect some form of quest system today, Honestly, bear asses, etc are just a further expansion of bone chips and various orc belt quests which were staples of early EQ. Instances are just an upgraded version of LDoN. Faction quests are a version of faction ones in EQ. Etc, etc, etc. WoW was based off EQ so many changes were done with customer input or because of expected customer support.

Skill systems are probably the hardest thing to balance in an MMO. I don't see a lot of changes to the same boring treadmill until something changes everything up. Hopefully VR will improve and help companies take the next step.
 
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Elidroth

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Mick said:
Smed is working on one for Amazon. I would also think that DBG is working on something to fend off Pantheon.
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Nobody at DBG is paying attention to Pantheon. DBG just cancelled another unannouced project and layed off a bunch more people. They have other issues to worry about besides Brad's passion project. In fact, I'd be willing to bet nobody looks at another company and drives their business from the perspective of competing with someone else's product. Every company/team I've ever worked on worked from the mindset of trying to make the best game they can. Period.
 
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Elidroth

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KCXIV said:
Amazon might be working on 2. I know a dev that works there and i talked to him about 2 weeks ago, im like that new world mmo looks pretty nice man. He goes, it does, but thats not the game im working on. lol im like well ok! haha
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New World is developed in Amazon Irvine.. Smed's thing hasn't been announced yet from what I'm told.
 
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Pharone

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Elidroth said:
Nobody at DBG is paying attention to Pantheon. DBG just cancelled another unannouced project and layed off a bunch more people. They have other issues to worry about besides Brad's passion project. In fact, I'd be willing to bet nobody looks at another company and drives their business from the perspective of competing with someone else's product. Every company/team I've ever worked on worked from the mindset of trying to make the best game they can. Period.
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Is that what happened to Roxxly? Nobody ever really said what happened.
 
Synj

Synj

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Elidroth said:
Nobody at DBG is paying attention to Pantheon. DBG just cancelled another unannouced project and layed off a bunch more people. They have other issues to worry about besides Brad's passion project. In fact, I'd be willing to bet nobody looks at another company and drives their business from the perspective of competing with someone else's product. Every company/team I've ever worked on worked from the mindset of trying to make the best game they can. Period.
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Please Disney Overlords buy the license and make 18 EQ trilogies so that I might grind once again! For Norrath!
 
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xzi

xzi

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Man, despite all the issues with WoW right now I kind of wish blizzard would take another crack at MMOs. Or if Overwatch actually did launch as titan, which you know would be baller because Tigole was heading it.

I think they worry too much about the general casual population (I mean it makes sense they want to retain those players), the game could have extreme casual goodies still. I remember some interview they were saying original the Overwatch bit was just a pvp type mode for the MMO and that would make a ton of sense to me, I bet it would still be just as popular.

I dunno, one of these companies needs to rise to the occasion and blow 300 million in dev time for my own selfish gains tbh
 
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xzi

xzi

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probably, nobody really knows. Speculation is late in its life Kaplan took over which probably makes sense considering he moved the entire thing to OW instead
 
BoozeCube

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xzi said:
Man, despite all the issues with WoW right now I kind of wish blizzard would take another crack at MMOs. Or if Overwatch actually did launch as titan, which you know would be baller because Tigole was heading it.

I think they worry too much about the general casual population (I mean it makes sense they want to retain those players), the game could have extreme casual goodies still. I remember some interview they were saying original the Overwatch bit was just a pvp type mode for the MMO and that would make a ton of sense to me, I bet it would still be just as popular.

I dunno, one of these companies needs to rise to the occasion and blow 300 million in dev time for my own selfish gains tbh
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I am not sure they would ever get to take another risk in gaming as Blizzard anymore. They have grown to big and all their games now much fit in the box of catering to the largest demographic possible all while making sure they can be mobile gaming friendly with enough micro-transactions to satisfy shareholders.

It honestly is a shame because good games draw audiences but that is much harder than just pumping out Call of Duty 34 with DLC and micro-transaction dress up skins. Even with Tigole and Furor they aren't the same people they used to be, or at least we don't get to see that same passion. While I think they could design an amazing game if left to their own devices I really doubt the higher ups would take that risk on the vision.
 
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