Pyksel
Rasterizing . . .
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I really like his thought process on this and hope that these principles can be adhered to throughout their entire design process.
Camelot Unchained MMO
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Brad came back and was Game Designer on VG when he came back.
They moved him to eq 3 Next while ago.
That is why for the 6th Anninversary of VG he was listed instead of developer as Co Creator of VG.
Also silus is on VG dont hate him but dont like him either he frankly maybe good coder but he his pota content and many things in VG, and eq 2 Itemizations was 1 the things that killed raiding in both vg and eq 2 they were shit.
Smokejumper aka Polejumper only thing he brings to the table is SOEmote in other words nothing he his Smeds tool he drove eq 2 into the ground, last heard he was Senior Producer for eq 3 which is fucking scary.
As much as people Hate or love Brad, when Brads Head is on straight he dont have to worry about budget running it, all he has more creativity in 1 fucking finger then those 2 above.
Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
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After writing this up I realized its kinda off-topic since its mostly replying to a more general part of the discussion. So here's a TLDR in advance: A PvP game shouldnt have levels that come with stat advantages. Equal footing for all characters is the entry point, then you can pile on the unfairness on the battlefield.
Like I said some pages ago I believe the "rush to endgame" is an attitude thats leading MMORPGs in a wrong direction, and the last decade so ingrained it in the player base that the only way to get rid of it is to take away the levels. You can do that your way (no levels at all, just gear), its an interesting approach. Personally I do prefer the EVE system of no levels at all. If a game must use levels, make them effectively endless (D2 went that way with the diminishing returns, nobody went 99 by honest means). UO did skills very different (although that had its own bag of troubles), Planetside uses levels to show how much xp you gained in total but its a pointless statistic otherwise that merely unlocks some titles and rank insignias. You cant take more hits or hit easier just because of your battle rank. The defense/offense boosts that EQ and all its clones included in the level formula are a shortcut to guiding people through PvE, but all games after EQ tried to have PvP and there the level boosts are usually causing problems.
So for this game, a PvP game, no levels like the exist in EQ/WoW/etc is the way to go. GW puts players on equal footing as far as levels go and reserves the levels for PvE (and even there makes them mostly cosmetic with up- and downscaling). Why have them if you go to such lengths to not use them?
You didnt answer my question. But to answer yours, the scenario had levels because alot of people love them and expect them (and WoW had them, so they're good). It was just a question to better understand what you want, its not actually a scenario I want to be used as game foundation.
Like I said some pages ago I believe the "rush to endgame" is an attitude thats leading MMORPGs in a wrong direction, and the last decade so ingrained it in the player base that the only way to get rid of it is to take away the levels. You can do that your way (no levels at all, just gear), its an interesting approach. Personally I do prefer the EVE system of no levels at all. If a game must use levels, make them effectively endless (D2 went that way with the diminishing returns, nobody went 99 by honest means). UO did skills very different (although that had its own bag of troubles), Planetside uses levels to show how much xp you gained in total but its a pointless statistic otherwise that merely unlocks some titles and rank insignias. You cant take more hits or hit easier just because of your battle rank. The defense/offense boosts that EQ and all its clones included in the level formula are a shortcut to guiding people through PvE, but all games after EQ tried to have PvP and there the level boosts are usually causing problems.
So for this game, a PvP game, no levels like the exist in EQ/WoW/etc is the way to go. GW puts players on equal footing as far as levels go and reserves the levels for PvE (and even there makes them mostly cosmetic with up- and downscaling). Why have them if you go to such lengths to not use them?
The complaints about level come earlier and more because leveling comes first, that's all. People are tired of the gear grind just as much as they are tired of the level grind. In your example, if your new game launches with 10 tiers of gear where you need to advance through them tier by tier instead of jumping from 1 to 4, 4 to7 and then 7 to 10, people would complain as loudly. "People" (gotta put that in quotation marks here) just want to epeen their stats up as fast as possible, and dont you dare to make them play the game for it more then absolutely necessary. Or do you disagree with that impression (not saying you are like that, but "people" are)? Isnt WoW a longterm sucess because it allows people to be caught up from zero within a few weeks? To players expecting that kinda game any long gear advancement chain is too much, no matter how well designed and involving it is. So yea your game would be more popular for a month.
I agree that too much hand holding can be bad for a game. Too many quality of life features can water a game down to the point that it just becomes boring.
However, there are some QoL features that now exist because the original idea was flawed and/or fucking retarded. One of the biggest is respecs. I don't agree with his take on that at all because it makes the assumption that the problem is on the players end. I'd fully support limited, or even no respecs if these games came even remotely close to being balanced. The truth is that they are going to fuck that area up just like everyone else. It is completely unacceptable for a player to invest weeks/months of their time into building a character only to find out that the designer eats crayons with his lunch and can't balance skill sets properly. That is where respecs became more then just a QoL feature. It is protection for players from incompetent designers. Keep in mind this is Mark we are talking about too. He helped design one of the most unbalanced cluster fucks this genre has ever seen. The ability to respec to counter his teams stupidity is pretty much a must for anyone who takes their pvp seriously.
I am all for giving people the benefit of the doubt (even if they don't really deserve it), but class balance is something no one has ever truly gotten right. It would be beyond naive to assume that they will be the ones to finally do it with this game. Bottom line being that if their goal is to make the game as obnoxious as possible because they think it gives them street cred with the "hardcore pvpers" then I think they are in for a nasty wake up call.
I thought I insinuated my answer. Essentially, I'd get rid of levels all-together and do something in the same spirit TSW did, but without grinding for skill points. Your example had everyone getting everything in 10 levels but still had 100 to go through or something similar. I thought that was silly.
Re: Catching Up - You can create systems for that, I didn't lay out any detailed plan or anything. You can create the game so all gear is tradeable or something similar as an easy solution. I don't know, there are probably a lot of different things you can do.
In any case, my hypothesis is I think people would have more fun doing dungeons for things rather dungeons for points(xp). The how often, and how many and how long questions get answered in development cycles.
Don't. Really care bout respecs one way or another..I guess it depends on the talent trees..wish they just go skill based which would avoid all that ala eve..not really a big fan of class based mmos. I rather level the avatar then level the class. He seems to be a quart low on bat shit as he's tone down the rhetoric. I believe he's doing the right thing id your market and go after it. As most pvp is just a bolt on to the pve games. Intetest to see how this turns out. Could epic success or epic in a dumpster fire way.
Yes, ideally I wish the game was built around skills and not classes. No need to respec when you can just work down 2-handed weapons and build up 1-handed if you wanted to change something. Was more enjoyable from a min/maxer point of view as well imo.
Class based mmo blow ass as only couple of the classes actually work creates fotm tred mills players with alts..
I find it funny that the biggest decsion you make in this mmo environment is at the class selection screen you either choose right or wrong if your wrong your next choice is to reroll or suffer awaiting dev love.
Since this is Marc I offer magnus shadow warriors swordmaster and white loins as pargons of wrong choice as oppsed to bright wizards slayers warrior priest and kobts as examples of winning the choice game.
Lithose
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First, I'm a little nervous when he talks about nixing the AH for player interaction. Don't get me wrong, I'd remove the AH in a sandbox or a sandbox/themepark game, too. I only skimmed, but it sounds like he wants people auctioning shit off. The reality is, that doesn't really build bonds, at all. What does it repetitive interaction, on a daily basis. And for that, you really need vendors. Now the primary motivation behind vendors isn't building a bond between the seller and player, it's building traffic through player controlled areas. But that traffic will build those bonds all on it's own, especially if the players in the cities need to keep the area safe for commerce.
One of the flaws with an AH is it directs traffics to hubs. Now, this is fine if you're a full on, modular theme park like WoW. But if you're planning to allow player housing, it sucks. You need the players to want to visit player towns and shops, and exploiting the economy to offer incentive is probably the best way to do that. However, relying on people always being on to sell shit? First off, that's only going to make it so people congregate in one area and spam their auctions, and second it's not going to form any lasting bonds because people do it with alts, or only for a little while before running off to play. Put vendors in the game, and you have a reason for people to traffic areas in the world, which is one of the biggest things a properly working crafting economy can do.
(Edit: he does talk about shops...But not sure if he means vendors, or having a player stand behind the counter at a shop. I hope he means vendors.)
Second is the no-respecs. Sorry, this is just bad design. There is a middle ground between WoW easy-spec, and respecs that require some thought and sacrifice to be able to do. A limited, time controlled, moderate costing respec is a great solution that allows for both player adaptation to developer changes AND still makes it so players can build "reputations" for specific specs.
Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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He doesn't say no respecs, just limited access to them. Until the game is actually released it's hard to say whether or not this is a bad idea.
Easy respecs are important in combo PvE / PvP games where the two require vastly different capabilities. Since this is just PvP game at this point then having limited access to respecs probably isn't that big a deal.
No AH is more problematic. Standing around in EC was never my idea of fun and frankly I hated it even when I had the time for it.
Easy respecs are important in combo PvE / PvP games where the two require vastly different capabilities. Since this is just PvP game at this point then having limited access to respecs probably isn't that big a deal.
No AH is more problematic. Standing around in EC was never my idea of fun and frankly I hated it even when I had the time for it.
Abefroman
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Catering to a vocal minority on message boards he lurks on is just fucking retarded. He needs to realize these people are like sports talk radio callers, they are useful entertainment not for actual ideas. Nothing wrong with making a niche game, in fact we could use more of them. I'm afraid he's going full retard.
Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
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I like the idea of no respecs because I like my character/build to have some permanence. I think not having respecs is impossible in WoW or any of its clones. So wether the feature makes sense in this game is still to be determined. No respecs for me is ok for something like EQ AAs or EVE skills where if they really remove one they can refund it, but you making wrong decisions only costs you the points you invested but you can always train more. It doesnt work in a system where the points are finite like WOW talent trees.
Anyway I did read past the first paragraph and he talks a good talk, but so did various other people on Utnayans list of rejects. Still unconvinced this will not crater and probably staying that way until a beta (so a couple of years?).
Edit: on the AH topic, I dont know if player housing is supposed to be a thing but players running shops would be a decent replacement for an AH if you make a game that aims for immersion. Wouldnt require you to be online but would be localized, that also allows for trading between regions etc. Now I'm not sure how much a game that is PvP only should aim for immersion in a game world on the trader side of things, but that is a different topic.
Anyway I did read past the first paragraph and he talks a good talk, but so did various other people on Utnayans list of rejects. Still unconvinced this will not crater and probably staying that way until a beta (so a couple of years?).
Edit: on the AH topic, I dont know if player housing is supposed to be a thing but players running shops would be a decent replacement for an AH if you make a game that aims for immersion. Wouldnt require you to be online but would be localized, that also allows for trading between regions etc. Now I'm not sure how much a game that is PvP only should aim for immersion in a game world on the trader side of things, but that is a different topic.
Lithose
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Well, if player shops have vendors, that's great. Economic movement through the world is a huge cornerstone of world PvP, and social interaction. One of the few ways to get players to go to towns is shops. This leads to attracting PK's, which leads to town guards--it creates a whole little cycle. And that's good. But yeah, if this is EC tunnel, fuck that noise. I didn't mean ONE long time friend slogging shit in EC, it wasn't social, it was mindless macroing while you were doing homework.
And as for respecs. I guess it depends what he means by limited. If he means time limited with a high cost? I believe that's good. If he means lifetime limited (Like you only get 3!..FOREVER!) then I think that's bad. Games change, they evolve and we can't always assume the developers will allow respecs. There has to be a way for a player to save the character he built his reputation around, if he really feels like his current spec is junk. Now, it can be high cost, and take time...that's fine, but limiting over a lifetime, bad idea.
In DAOC there were no respecs perse, you had to kill the the dragon. It took about 1-3 groups depending what realm you were on and wiping was easy. I think at most 2 respecs stones dropped and usually 24 people doing the encounter.
The AH in DAOC had a central hub 1 for each housing zone, where you could sell and buy. You could either buy it straight from the merchant hub (for a fee) or actually go to the crafters house and pick it up tax free.
I think he tipped his hand a bit here with this 'multi platform subscription'.
I don't understand the no respecs, even in DAOC respecs were easy to come by.. penalizing a player for building an inferior build will make him not want to play.
The old games were a much crueler world, I get that.. but 14 year old Young had a lot more play time than 29 year old Young does. I can't invest 30+ hours a week to a MMO anymore so I guess I fall into the category he is trying to avoid with this game ?
Cash shop? Really? Even if, I saw that, but really a cash shop? I have no problem with cash shops that get you a pretty mount that isn't any faster than the next guy, or a cool color dye. But there is definitely a fine line to walk with the rewards available.
I don't understand the no respecs, even in DAOC respecs were easy to come by.. penalizing a player for building an inferior build will make him not want to play.
The old games were a much crueler world, I get that.. but 14 year old Young had a lot more play time than 29 year old Young does. I can't invest 30+ hours a week to a MMO anymore so I guess I fall into the category he is trying to avoid with this game ?
QFT
Wasn't Mark Jacobs the guy at WAR who had a hard on for bright wizards and making them the best class of all time?