Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Don"t get me wrong, I personally am all for one or the other, not both. Especially not when imbalances in one aspect of the game cause game changing nerfs in the unrelated portion. This does not pertain to games where the primary focus is one or the other and use different systems for both contained therein. I"m mostly refering to games that try to leave one system in place and hybridize it up to fit both playstyles while keeping the seesaw effect in full force. The problem is, from a moneymaking standpoint, the game that incorporates both to at least a moderate degree of success will make more money than a game that does one extremely poorly and the other very well. The midrange market is, unless I completely missed my WoW-Footnote, the biggest and most profitable group to attempt to garner attention from.

In the pvp aspect of WoW, twinking -does- dominate all the non-capped brackets. The best geared person is using sub max level with max level enhancements equipment that is capped for his level group. A new player will not be able to compete with that, especially with the way that WoW"s gameplay focuses on burst and survivability. Increasing both by a much larger aspect severely hampers even the "skilled" pvper from having much of a chance without a great deal of luck due to the twink"s... well, twinkness.

The super geared twink is not going to have such an extreme advantage in pve, due to the inherent ease of the solo leveling system in the game. Due to the design of the game, twinking -does- effect PVP even though it is done from a pve standpoint. That"s a flaw in the design of the game, not in the possibility of a game that allows limited twinking that doesn"t adversely affect other spheres of gameplay. Simply separating stats into 2 distinct categories prohibits a great deal of pvp twinking, especially if certain levels of pvp-styled gear have a prerequisite of X-amount of kills or rating or however success is measured in that specific game"s pvp system. The overwhelming bank account wouldn"t adversely affect the ability to twink in the slightest if the systems are truly separate but comparable.

It"s plausible I suppose that someone will create a PVP only game or a PVE only game, but due to WoW"s success (which is definitely a yardstick in this kind of topic) I really don"t see many, if any, major companies throwing money behind a game that instantly cuts it"s potential playerbase and money flow in half. Even Curt can"t be thinking that, though he"s funding the game.

It"s really pretty simple.

Twinking for PvE fun in a game that promotes or at least allows single player soloing is fun. Hell man, it"s a great deal of fun and by keeping it expensive (mostly self-regulating in any economy) and interesting (which it is) you create another sub-game for your lifers and a mini-game for your casuals. Do that.

Twinking in a PvP setting is a cancer. It"s fun, it"s interesting but you will wreck any "ladder" if you allow it and non-twinks are screwed in terms of competing. I liked RPs, I liked AAs, I am less fond of min-maxed level 10s. As a note, I have and do twink for WoW BGs because it is fun. Fun for me, not so much for the new guy with 1/10th my HP.

Oh yeah, and a flashback to an earlier thing. You wanted to talk instancing and the like a bit. My best bet on that score is to talk to Salvatore and think internal coherence and suspension of disbelief. It"s not that we need to have it, it"s just that a game that incorporates that too will do well. There are mechanical needs but please try and keep it hidden a bit please. I honestly think it will serve you well (see long rant back some pages).

Best of luck though in general. Stay off the narcotics and hire real people and we"ll only complain ... ah shit, we"ll complain anyhow.

Rezz said:

It"s plausible I suppose that someone will create a PVP only game or a PVE only game, but due to WoW"s success (which is definitely a yardstick in this kind of topic) I really don"t see many, if any, major companies throwing money behind a game that instantly cuts it"s potential playerbase and money flow in half. Even Curt can"t be thinking that, though he"s funding the game.

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You may be right, but as dumb as it sounds I don"t think its the PvP that makes PvP popular in WoW. Its that it provides GOOD item rewards and thats its accessible, its easy and its within clearly defined boundaries. ie its like Team Fortress 2 within the game, with good rewards.

I don"t think PvP a la DaoC, or what we are expecting in WAR, will be anywhere near as big a hook in future MMORPGs as the WoW system is. For mass market success it will need to be in arenas or battleground with points systems that give significant item rewards ie pretty much everything that WoW uses.


As an aside, I don"t think going for fully "realistic" graphics is going to win a worldwide mass market. I HATED WoW graphics when it was back in beta. Absolutely hated them. But they"re fun. When I think about picking up an MMORPG I"ve played before, for a few months, in most cases the graphic styles are more of a turn off than a win (I don"t mean detail, I mean the style).

These days, I want to have fun while playing. And the graphical style of WoW is a big factor for me. Considering all the MMORPGs on offer, WoW is the only graphic style that adds to my desire to want to play it some more. Maybe its because WoW is the only game that is immediately accessible and fun, so I am associating that graphical style with having fun ?

Rezz said:

And if you have both?

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It hurts.

Rezz said:

. . . It"s plausible I suppose that someone will create a PVP only game or a PVE only game, . . .

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That"s generally what they do do. WoW is basically the exception and I would classify it more as a pvp game than a pve game for discussion purposes.

Maxxius said:

I would classify it more as a pvp game than a pve game for discussion purposes.

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That"s a joke right?

Azrayne said:

That"s a joke right?

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I"d be curious to see the % of players that take part in pvp vs raiding in WoW. There in lies your answer personaly I think it lies more towards Pvp since its easier to gear up that way. Well atleast less like working a RL job waiting on raid schedules etc you can pretty much do it anytime you want.

Senen said:

I"d be curious to see the % of players that take part in pvp vs raiding in WoW.

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If you"re trying to determine whether a game is more PvP or PvE focused - why would you compare theentiretyof their PvP versus asegmentof their PvE?

Just wanted to throw in a tidbit about "Heroic" version instances, since we were discussing instances before and it"s probably a guarantee that your game will have at least some instances. The idea of another difficulty level for an instance with better loot is obviously a good one, however, I would like to see it done a little better.

My idea is that rather than have carbon copies of the instance mobs simply jacked up in difficulty, the population and situation inside actually changes based on the fact that you cleared thenormalinstance. Now, obviously you can re-do these instances as much as you want, so some suspension of disbelief is required, but that"s just part of these games. Still, I don"t see why there couldn"t be some feeling that you actually impacted the world and changed something. Heroic instancing is an easy way to achieve this.

To give an example, let"s say you"re in a normal difficulty instance where a group of cultists are trying to bring forth a creature from another plane of existence. Simple enough, the normal instance involves killing mostly these humanoids, maybe some minor demons or whatever you choose to put in there. Boss is the cult leader, timed boss where you must kill waves of his guards as he is trying to complete the summoning ritual, etc etc. You kill him and he utters the last word of the summoning spell, but apparently nothing happens.

You continue on this quest chain and eventually find through some means that the creaturedidmake it into our plane. It is now raising the corpses of the fallen cultists you had slain, as well as working towards expanding the link between planes so that others of its kind can come through.

Boom. Making it this far in the quest unlocks your access to the harder difficulty dungeon. The layout can be the same, all art assets reused, hell, the undead versions of the cultists could even be basically the same. All you would have to do is up the difficulty and change the bosses.

You could argue that the WoW method is better because it gives more content for even less effort than what I"ve described. My counter to that is, the majority of players spend most of their time in these instances. There are countless WoW players who never raid beyond Karazhan, if they even do that, but they will do 5-mans all day long. If players are going to spend this much time in your instances, why not put some extra effort into giving them some varied experiences?

miber said:

If you"re trying to determine whether a game is more PvP or PvE focused - why would you compare theentiretyof their PvP versus asegmentof their PvE?

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Reason I stated that is most players don"t consider anything prior to Raiding the Real content. And since everyone has to PVE to advance to the cap thats a mute point so take it from the perspective of everyone is lvl capped what percent of those people take part in the PVP or the PVE for Raids. As I previously stated I think PVP is the main focus of the game for the majority of the player base. Unfortunately for the specific answer your looking for there would need to be a way to lvl up thru PVP in WoW which to my knowledge doesn"t exist.

Actually most players (casuals) don"t raid, so I doubt they consider what activities they DO pursue to be non-real content.

Nah...most don"t raid. A very large number of them haven"t finished the 5 man content let alone heroic content.

Yes, percentage wise, more have raided than in other games but it is still a minority.

Azrayne said:

That"s a joke right?

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Of course it isn"t. Half the servers are pvp servers. The other servers are carebear pvp games. You honestly think WOW would have anywhere near the subs it does if it was a completely pve game? Plus you miss the whole point of the topic regarding twinking. You can"t argue PVE twinking is ok and PVP twinking isnt and then call WOW a PVE game.

Utnayan said:

Sure they raid. They are just behind the content curve and usually hit those areas after mudflation kicks in.

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How many are doing MC now or AQ? ;p

Senen said:

I"d be curious to see the % of players that take part in pvp vs raiding in WoW. There in lies your answer personaly I think it lies more towards Pvp since its easier to gear up that way.

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It may be higher in WoW since it is a viable way of gearing up, but it"s fairly well documented that only about 15% of players are really interested in pvp (even in primarily pvp focused games).

Senen said:

And since everyone has to PVE to advance to the cap thats a mute point

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I don"t think so. The fact that everyone must PvE definitely makes the game more PvE-based, in my opinion. PvP-based advancement is pretty rare in the genre, so I would give it some leniency, though.

But it"s not just about leveling up (or raiding). It"s also about quests and instances. I haven"t played WoW in a while, but back when I did, even on a PvP server there were plenty of people who rarely participated in PvP, and would just do instance runs or whatever.

splok said:

It may be higher in WoW since it is a viable way of gearing up, but it"s fairly well documented that only about 15% of players are really interested in pvp (even in primarily pvp focused games).

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So well documented that you"d have no issue providing a few sources on that, right?

splok said:

It may be higher in WoW since it is a viable way of gearing up, but it"s fairly well documented that only about 15% of players are really interested in pvp (even in primarily pvp focused games).

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Thats the documentation I"d like to see specificaly in relation to WoW. Not some made up statistic something where the majority of the games player base has actualy answered a poll reguarding this. Which I doubt has happend only other statistic that could be somewhat reliable is take all the accnts and check to see how many have entered any of the PVP BF zones vs Raid zones. Even then this is still not very accurate considering that wouldn"t include the regular pvp servers were its full time.

splok said:

It may be higher in WoW since it is a viable way of gearing up, but it"s fairly well documented that only about 15% of players are really interested in pvp (even in primarily pvp focused games).

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Ouch, that"s gonna hurt on this board. Unless you can site someone with direct access to Blizzard and subscriber information I don"t think you can come anywhere close to validating that one.

I don"t know how many servers in WoW are PvP, I hear half, if you conclude (which I don"t think you can) that every server on both sides is maxxed out population wise it would put the PvP number at 50% no?

I think 50% is high, but that is absolute speculation with no back up...

Over half of the US servers are PvP. If you assume that everyone on a PvP server does some PvP then consider how many people on PvE servers do arena and battlegrounds, it"s easy to conclude that more than half of WoW players participate in PvP.