Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Cowbell said:

So is a game made basically just like wow but with the addition of quested zones like Sebilis thrown in something that would appease both crowds? Or perhaps making grouping a more viable option than it is in WoW. Currently it is better to solo than to group in order to complete quests and level.

I still don"t quite understand why you can"t have both types of games. WoW would be more fun for me that way. And no this has nothing to do with nostalgia.

It"s not about changing the formula from why WoW works. For me, it would just be about adding to it a little bit.

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This is pretty much what I want, and yes I think you can have both types.

Essentially it could go like this:

Solo content = mostly green quest rewards and drops
Overland Group Content = blue quest rewards and drops
Instanced and Non-Instanced dungeons = blue to epic drops and rewards

Simple enough. Basically what WoW has, but just expand on it. The rewards you get leveling up solo in WoW are honestly pretty awful, but they"re good enough for you to keep going. Ideally you could tune the quests to have rewards that aren"t quite as awful as some in WoW (seriously, some of those items NO class would use), but the idea is that they aren"t great.

If said player decides they want to go for some better items, they would have multiple options instead of JUST instancing like in WoW. I think this would make the 1 to Cap leveling game alot more fun.
I personally don"t even do the low level instances anymore if I level a WoW char. The rewards just aren"t worth the time invested to get from one end of the dungeon to another. If I could run to one of those Scourge infested cities in WPL and group with some guys for a really good chance at some blues, however, I would probably do that. Laid back, somewhat social. I can leave whenever I want without screwing them over like I would if we were in an instance.

Give instanced and non-instanced major dungeons even better loot than the group content, since they would require more time invested to see the dungeon through, and I think you have a solid formula that appeases all types of players.

Draegan said:

I think I solved it. Intelligent dungeon design.

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Score !!

Draegan said:

It"s all in the trash. So Curt, when your designers are creating dungeon, make sure you implement dynamic mob population. Sometimes you get really easy trash in parts, sometimes it"s hard, and they are never in the same place and same type.

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Good call; but why limit it to just the trash mobs ? What are other folks feelings on the AO mission system ? Dynamic objectives, dungeons and bosses. Infinite replayability, limited only by the quality of the designers and the writers. Only as one option in the game, though. If nothing else it would be a huge win for levelling alts. Now imagine that, with a version of the FFXI class system - your character can be any class and can switch between them (not on the fly). Does anyone disagree that would be a massive hook ?

Draegan said:

Strip away the "social aspect" of running a single group dungeon around 5 other groups. That may or may not be a good thing in your opinion.

I think what it comes down to is people don"t want to bother clearing trash constantly to fight bosses. When you"re in a dungeon you can skip around and there is less time (or trash fighting) between bosses and loot potential.

Best designed non-raid dungeon in WOW is BRD. Large, expansive, multiple track and a ton of bosses and unrepeating trash cycles.

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I love BRD. As an aside they got the "key" to enter a dungeon aspect spot on. Not too hard and relatively easy to do in single groups. But it still felt like a significant achievement.

Maybe I"m unusual, but I love clearing the trash to fight bosses. As long as its in an instance. I feel I"m living the experience; I don"t have to worry about Ski"tzu Ninjalewter jumping ahead after we"ve done all the work and ganking a named. I don"t have to worry about RMT folk monopolizing the rewarding areas 24/7. Plus I love exploring.

The important thing here is that the combat HAS to be enjoyable. It keeps coming up, but FFXI"s combat system solves SO many issues plaguing MMORPGs. It solves the balance between solo and party conundrum. People want to party because if they don"t they can"t do the cool skill chains. People party not because they get more loot, but because the combat system is fun in and of itself.

With FFXI"s combat system the party is far more than the sum of the parts. The party is capable of so much more than the six individual skill sets in it - both in terms of XP and potential rewards, because the skill chains the party can do have significant effects. This in itself solves the whole balancing solo and party risk vrs reward.


Adapt and evolve FFXi"s class and combat systems
Adapt and evolve Anarchy Onlines mission generation system with dynamic instances

This goes a long way to solving the solo v party balance and risk vrs reward decisions.

It frees up your designers to create whatever other instanced and non instanced content your decide upon, knowing that, at the very least, there is longevity and playability for the game to fall back upon, with infinite replayability.

Balancing trash is a fine line to walk. You don"t want to just have 10 bosses in a row with nothing between, but you don"t need 25 of the same trash mobs/packs between each one either. A few is good to ensure you figure it out and can execute the strat to take them down. Lava packs in MC for example. They could have done with half the amount. You couldn"t zerg your way through more than 5 or 6 without wasting a ton of time and gold in repairs. You either could beat them reliably or you couldn"t. Another factor is making them useful. EQ and WoW both did this fairly well in places. Tradeskill mats and the rare zone-specific epic drop or class set item or quested class item components.

Not too much, but enough to make it a decent skill/gear check while giving them a purpose and the rare "oooh ahh" potential.

Ngruk said:

Yes, yes, and yes.

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Reminds me of 15 years ago, at Alcatel. People were busy preparing for an ISO9001 "Software Quality" audit. So, when they picked a couple people as guinea pigs for when the real auditors came, they - of course - had to pick me.

The tester asked me "What"s Quality in software?"
My answer: "It is a state of mind"

(guy was flabbergasted. He expected me to talk about methodologies, peer reviewing, or documentation - notably the latter, which is what ISO9001 focuses on - but not "a state of mind". So they carefully hid me in a broom closet when the audit staff passed by our offices - just in case)

That"s true in the end. You can put out all the methods and formalisms you want, in the end, quality software is produced by people who have quality in their minds.

Derailed into a Combat Discussion. Erased.

Ngruk said:

I am unsure if I agree or disagree. I guess I would ask this, if WoW didn"t have that much solo content pre-70, would it have had as many players? The answer is no, but how much of a no?

If WoW content was spun around to be group content rather than solo content in the same quantity, how different would the audience size be? Would it be 10% less? 90% less?

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I think part of that would be based on your class design. If classes are limited to a single role they do well then there would be a significant difference in the number of players because the number of groups available will be limited by the amount of Tanks & Healers playing the game. And in a group game where you can"t find a group, welp that leads to frustrated players who quit.

But if classes are designed such they can do reasonable well in 2 or 3 roles (not at one time, would require something like WoW"s respec"ing just not as expensive to do) then is would be reasonable that any group of 5 people could at least make a viable group.

Another thing that could be done is to let a group "rent-a-tank" or "rent-a-healer" NPC that could be controlled as a pet of the group leader. With some simple AI and an easy to understand pet interface for the player to use, a NPC should be a viable alternative to using a player in the desired role.

Campa said:

Another thing that could be done is to let a group "rent-a-tank" or "rent-a-healer" NPC that could be controlled as a pet of the group leader. With some simple AI and an easy to understand pet interface for the player to use, a NPC should be a viable alternative to using a player in the desired role.

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It"s a good idea, but it"s hard to balance.

Ukerric said:

Reminds me of 15 years ago, at Alcatel. People were busy preparing for an ISO9001 "Software Quality" audit. So, when they picked a couple people as guinea pigs for when the real auditors came, they - of course - had to pick me.

The tester asked me "What"s Quality in software?"
My answer: "It is a state of mind"

(guy was flabbergasted. He expected me to talk about methodologies, peer reviewing, or documentation - notably the latter, which is what ISO9001 focuses on - but not "a state of mind". So they carefully hid me in a broom closet when the audit staff passed by our offices - just in case)

That"s true in the end. You can put out all the methods and formalisms you want, in the end, quality software is produced by people who have quality in their minds.

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Uh,

Isn"t the "state of mind" one that meticulously and intelligently organizes and implements the various methods and formalisms at your disposal?

Thus, wouldn"t the expansion of their question be "yeah, no shit, what state of mind produces quality and how do you enable it?"


Thinking altruistically, I"m pretty sure that anyone who cares about their work has the mindset that they"re trying to do it well. A failure that occurs because someone doesn"t have a "quality-driven state of mind" (laugh) would have to be the easiest thing to weed out.

Does someone applying for the job arrive drunk, comment on the receptionists tits, interrupt the boss and shit his pants?

No, the breakdown occurs when everyone has their Vision and gets stuck on it, resources get screwed up, people start chasing idealisms, too many "quality minded people" making conflicting decisions, way too much audience/focus feedback without anyone dropping any sort of real gavels...

...those are the enemies of quality.

You can load up 18-wheelers full of people with quality on their minds, without all that shit in place and well-run you"ll just end up with a bunch of people who all have their own, unique, right answer.

And yes, WoW does the best job of any MMO regarding catering to all of the gamer archetypes, all levels of skill, all levels of interest in micro-management, and all levels of time commitment at every point in the game.

When faced with a binary "which one of these?" the answer is always "both."

~Instancing AND open-world PVE
~Controlled group AND pug PVP
~Large scale AND small scale
~solo levelling AND group levelling

and my sore spot, which I think WoW has the most room for improvement
~progression via solo/smallgroup AND progression via raiding

There is absolutely no reason why a solo/small group questline cannot essentially take as much time or effort as raiding, if it was protracted as much as possible, and it would provide an option to levelling and dungeon progression that doesn"t require so many other people on the scatterplot to hit the numbers and be online at once.

There is hands down no doubt that the solo content and ease of levelling has allowed wow to get away with their patching/expansion schedule. I am decidedly anti-alt and even I have the different flavors of character I"ll play for a few minutes here or there.

With the new levelling changes to speed it up, it is even more clear in the "take it all in now and continue to finish a zone" versus "you"ve levelled, move to the next zone." Because you basically level past the relevance of the zone you"re in halfway through it. That leaves epic quests unfinished, and dungeon crawls unnecessary. Which is a great option when you"re on your Nth character trying to just get to outlands or 70.


People who cling to one or the other side on any of these topics are just spouting their preferences. Both can coexist together, be fruitful and in the end (most importantly) promote more subscriptions.

The people who require sitting around LFG and all of that? Easy sell, they"re martyrs for slow gameplay. It"s securing the person who has maybe a few hours tops here and there and completely unpredictable schedules that yield the largest value out of their subscription dollar due to their lack of impact on the various footprints on your hardware.

Someone touched on it last page, btw great reads on some of these posts, but duo"ing or boxing. Do you do it? Like it? Hate it? Game play style or cheating?

I will turn away red-faced to admit I was 4 boxing in EQ2, leveled up 4 toons after my main maxed out, to max level.

Thing was, and I didn"t realize it until I tried it in WoW, EQ2 really allowed you to do it rather easily. I am not sure if WoW meant to prohibit it or not, but I tried 2 boxing in WoW and it was a nightmare.

Do a lot of people do it? Is it to level toons or see content you can"t solo?

Horse said:

Uh,

Isn"t the "state of mind" one that meticulously and intelligently organizes and implements the various methods and formalisms at your disposal?

Thus, wouldn"t the expansion of their question be "yeah, no shit, what state of mind produces quality and how do you enable it?"


Thinking altruistically, I"m pretty sure that anyone who cares about their work has the mindset that they"re trying to do it well. A failure that occurs because someone doesn"t have a "quality-driven state of mind" (laugh) would have to be the easiest thing to weed out.

Does someone applying for the job arrive drunk, comment on the receptionists tits, interrupt the boss and shit his pants?

No, the breakdown occurs when everyone has their Vision and gets stuck on it, resources get screwed up, people start chasing idealisms, too many "quality minded people" making conflicting decisions, way too much audience/focus feedback without anyone dropping any sort of real gavels...

...those are the enemies of quality.

You can load up 18-wheelers full of people with quality on their minds, without all that shit in place and well-run you"ll just end up with a bunch of people who all have their own, unique, right answer.

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Exactly. This is why you need a person whose position is responsible for Quality.


Also agree about the "mindset and people thinking they are right" part. It comes down to being "teachable" no matter how old or accomplished you are. Always wanting to improve, to learn and being open to the fact that you"re not always right. And, even when you are right, theres still something you can learn form the person or situation you are involved with.

It is all about options Curt. As long as 2-boxing etc doesnt detract from others enjoyment....

I have never 2-boxed before but I have played both WoW and EQ2. What makes WoW 2 boxing so much worse than EQ2 ?

Ngruk said:

Someone touched on it last page, btw great reads on some of these posts, but duo"ing or boxing. Do you do it? Like it? Hate it? Game play style or cheating?

I will turn away red-faced to admit I was 4 boxing in EQ2, leveled up 4 toons after my main maxed out, to max level.

Thing was, and I didn"t realize it until I tried it in WoW, EQ2 really allowed you to do it rather easily. I am not sure if WoW meant to prohibit it or not, but I tried 2 boxing in WoW and it was a nightmare.

Do a lot of people do it? Is it to level toons or see content you can"t solo?

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I loved boxing in EQ because well, I did it! And it gave me the ability to not need to wait for hours on end to try and find a group to get anything done. I was my own group(granted not as efficent as a full group of individuals but good enough to make time online not pointless).

That being said however, I think a game should be entertaining enough such that boxing either isn"t desired or it"s just too plain difficult to make worthwhile.

WoW did do a decent job with this for most serious encounters. Only thing I could imagine boxing being viable for in WoW is running around with a healer during solo so you never have downtime, or maybe if you outgeared an instance you could play two roles. The game is just too damn mobile, attentive and reactionary that a boxing person will almost never be as good as two real people(who dont suck).

Campa said:

Another thing that could be done is to let a group "rent-a-tank" or "rent-a-healer" NPC that could be controlled as a pet of the group leader. With some simple AI and an easy to understand pet interface for the player to use, a NPC should be a viable alternative to using a player in the desired role.

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Guild Wars already did it; but what"s the difference between a group with NPCs and soloing?

I 2-boxed in EQ some but frankly, that was of necessity and not because I particularly enjoyed it. I also have boxed a little in WoW but only ever in a power-leveling sense and not for any real purpose. Given WoW systems I"d have to spend a great deal of money and effort to set something up that performed well and frankly, I don"t see the need in WoW. There isn"t really any content that I could access 2-boxed that I cannot already access solo or through easily found random groups anyhow. I guess it would make it easier to run alts for welfare but oh well.

I certainly don"t hate it conceptually and I"m actually a little fascinated by people that take it to extremes. Well, more by the technology than the actual results I must admit but it"s still an amusing sub-culture. As such I wouldn"t build in systems to prevent it specifically but I would be concerned to not have it become a necessity.

As a small caveat, I certainlydidbuffbot in DAoC constantly but in that system it was simply too fun to do so at first and later it was essentially needed (and hence a Very Bad Thing).

Ngruk said:

Someone touched on it last page, btw great reads on some of these posts, but duo"ing or boxing. Do you do it? Like it? Hate it? Game play style or cheating?

I will turn away red-faced to admit I was 4 boxing in EQ2, leveled up 4 toons after my main maxed out, to max level.

Thing was, and I didn"t realize it until I tried it in WoW, EQ2 really allowed you to do it rather easily. I am not sure if WoW meant to prohibit it or not, but I tried 2 boxing in WoW and it was a nightmare.

Do a lot of people do it? Is it to level toons or see content you can"t solo?

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Powerlevelling is one thing, but if you can actually do content on your main with two characters at once and be at all effective, there"s something wrong with your game.

Ngruk said:

Someone touched on it last page, btw great reads on some of these posts, but duo"ing or boxing. Do you do it? Like it? Hate it? Game play style or cheating?

I will turn away red-faced to admit I was 4 boxing in EQ2, leveled up 4 toons after my main maxed out, to max level.

Thing was, and I didn"t realize it until I tried it in WoW, EQ2 really allowed you to do it rather easily. I am not sure if WoW meant to prohibit it or not, but I tried 2 boxing in WoW and it was a nightmare.

Do a lot of people do it? Is it to level toons or see content you can"t solo?

Click to expand...

2 boxing is a result of group-oriented gaming being inaccessible to those who can"t or simply don"t want to group. Why put up with random people and split the loot when you can just do it yourself? It all just points to what WoW has reaffirmed, given the option and opportunity to do something alone, most people will.

Ngruk said:

Someone touched on it last page, btw great reads on some of these posts, but duo"ing or boxing. Do you do it? Like it? Hate it? Game play style or cheating?

I will turn away red-faced to admit I was 4 boxing in EQ2, leveled up 4 toons after my main maxed out, to max level.

Thing was, and I didn"t realize it until I tried it in WoW, EQ2 really allowed you to do it rather easily. I am not sure if WoW meant to prohibit it or not, but I tried 2 boxing in WoW and it was a nightmare.

Do a lot of people do it? Is it to level toons or see content you can"t solo?

Click to expand...

i never boxed, but a lot of my friends did in EQ and they were amazing at it. from what i"ve seen, people usually box to do content that they couldn"t do solo. i"m just speaking for EQ1, but my friend in my guild had a warrior, cleric and druid that he 3 boxed. he was his own mini group. he used the warrior to tank, the cleric to heal and buff and the druid to snare, buff and travel around. it was pretty fucking amazing to watch him do it. he was the MT for our guild (well, one of the MT"s), and his cleric was part of the heal chain and his druid would be in a separate group healing casters.
overall, i don"t see anything really wrong with boxing. and if people do have a problem with it i don"t see a way to prevent it.

also, this is a separate issue than boxing, but please don"t have BoE. i always hated BoE. i liked being able to give a twink my hand-me-downs or being able to sell old stuff in an AH. level caps for equipment is okay, but i hate BoE. i don"t know how other people feel about it.

BoE is a necessary evil that isn"t all that evil. It"s main purpose is to combat mudflation. Either you make items very rare or you make more items and have a way to take them out of the world. Obviously items will always enter the world a greater rate than they leave, but without BoE or some sort of system to take items out they remain in the world. This makes them lose value and eventually they become worthless. You can stem this temporarily by making them prohibitively rare but then you introduce other unfun elements such as camping, grinding, farming and more.. and in greater amounts than currently seen. In summary: probably should get used to BoP and BoE, because in the longterm it"s better for a healthy economy.