Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling
- Thread starter Lord Thanos_foh
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Isnt that the truth. I went from a Necro in EQ for 6 years, to a tank in VG. You have to pay 100 percent attention. Its alot different. It took me a bit before i got adjusted to main tanking. Its definately fun and you have to be tons more alert. No more sitting in the back playing xbox while killing mobs.Ngruk said:
More than anything, this is the fun part of MMOs. The excitement of doing something new and accomplishing it for the first time where everyone is kind of a novice.
But it also highlights something that is probably the crux of the problems in "end-game" MMO design. You generally have a whole range of players, skill, time,etc. How do you balance content so more relaxed gamers have things will actually challenge them and actually be achieveable, without the bleeding edge "DKP minus" guys blowing through everything in a fraction of the time, getting bored, then quitting?
One of the frustrations with WOW at least in BC was that new content was almost always too hard for the average casual player. Except for the top raiding guilds it was incredibly hard keeping people motivated to farm, and "peak" their characters for every encounter.
From a business perspective, you can"t have the top players getting bored and quitting, yet you also don"t want the casual players getting frustrated either. Maybe the solution is that content needs to be delivered much more quickly. New zones and new raids every month or two, rather than having to wait 6-7 months for new things to do. I know I"d stay subscribed if I knew every month I could do something completely new.
I think it"s mainly because in wow, you"re spoon fed content all the way up to and including lvl 70. But as soon as you step foot into the raid game you lose and you wipe and you have lots of repair costs and consumable costs and since you"re not soloing you have loots that you can"t even use drop and it seems less worth your time to do it. Basically all the way to 70 you get to be a selfish little prick doing things that only benefit you, then all the sudden when you start raiding the individual advancements and individual accomplishments die off or at least drop dramatically and it seems less worthwhile.Fayvren said:
Zehnpai
Molten Core Raider
- 399
- 1,245
The initial barrier to raiding was two-fold. One, Gruul and Magtheridon were pure assbeat in their initial incarnation and they were direct successors to Saphhiron/Kel"Thuzad levels of raiding and not Karazhan Prince raiding.
Secondly, your average guild tried raiding with 3 ret paladins, a handful of frost mages and some BM hunters as DPS with a fury warrior who slapped on a shield to try to tank.
Problem one has been alleviated. Blizzard has promised to make sure each new expansion has a slightly more new-guild-friendly raiding curve. Problem two however has not been addressed and I doubt Blizzard will do anything about. Raid/class composition now matters far more then it did previously.
Secondly, your average guild tried raiding with 3 ret paladins, a handful of frost mages and some BM hunters as DPS with a fury warrior who slapped on a shield to try to tank.
Problem one has been alleviated. Blizzard has promised to make sure each new expansion has a slightly more new-guild-friendly raiding curve. Problem two however has not been addressed and I doubt Blizzard will do anything about. Raid/class composition now matters far more then it did previously.
Wow has done some good things, but wow shouldn"t be your goal take the good discard the bad. The trick is knowing which is which and is why some of the things you"ve said are a bit concerning.Ngruk said:
You have to know where you"ve been to get to where you wanna go. All the things you listed are important but to say their experience or lack of knowledge of end game raiding isn"t important seems a bit naive? If they were not clearing the content in a reasonable amount of time how do they know how the encounter really worked?Ngruk said:
I don"t think anyone will argue a persons talent based on experience but with a lack of experience or someone around with that experience to "guide" them how many mistakes will they make along with all those good ideas?Ngruk said:
I"m an admitted fanboi so i"ll try your game regardless but some comments here show a lack of long term thinking or internal naivety that you guys know everything you need to know. Getting knowledge from outside sources and the idea of talented people pulling from the experience of a seasoned veteran should not be dismissed so easily. Hell I would even consider buy accounts that are up to par and sitting your guys down in a sunwell guild. Pretty sure they will be shocked at the difference between that and their za runs. This is a pretty cost effective way to get your guys some personal experience. By no means will they be an expert after a few weeks but it might open their eyes a bit.
Sorry to hear about the shoulder, thanks for all you did for the bean on and off the field.
It"s important to have an experienced raider creating your raid content for two reasons: perspective and history. If you were creating a superhero game, and needed to hire system designers, would you hire someone who had never played City of Heroes? No matter how smart someone might be, there are are many lessons that can only be acquired through first-hand experience.Ngruk said:
For example, I was trying to explain the problem of raid-stacking to a programmer. He had no idea that raiders will swap people out for every fight to achieve the most optimal composition. He has no idea how raiders think or operate. This guy comes from a heavy RPG background and has never raided before. He is certainly a very experienced designer, but if he were designing raid content, it would be a disaster.
Genjiro
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 5,218
- 5,066
Same thing happened with EQ2 and its poor raiding game, and overall game direction. They had people not only out of touch with raiding and what makes it challenging/fun, but also people out of touch with what their entire playerbase was interested in. This is why Desert of Flames was such a giant mess and nobody wanted to play it, and why tons of raiding guilds left (including mine).random said:
Get people with little raid experience designing raid content, and you get that kind of mess. It wasn"t until they actually hired people with a clue about high end content that the game picked back up. But by then, the damage was already done and once you lose those people you rarely if ever get them back. With the dynamic raid content Blizzard has put out, and maybe I"m just overly pessimistic, I can"t seeing people topping it as far as quality and interesting design goes, since they actually have people who know a) what people have done in the past and b) how to challenge them in new ways in the future since those guys were also high end raiders. The same old boring ass random_dragon tank and spank encounters won"t likely hold those who have raided extensively in WoW, no matter how great Joe Cool is who has no experience and thinks *in his mind* how great it is. That disconnect of fun to designer and fun to gamer has always been a big hurdle, and probably why WoW has been so widely popular because they have identified that better than others.
My only problem with WoW, and it always has been, is the kiddie bullshit. No, not the cartoony graphics, the lack of immersion in the game world. Its a mirror of pop culture, which makes me want to vomit. Paris hilton jokes, Mc hammer dances, all that shit just makes it fail to be an actual fantasy world that I enjoyed reading about growing up --Dragonlance, FR, WoT, the Eddings books etc, I"d like to play in a world that isn"t tied in every 10 feet to MTV.
James
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 2,804
- 7,056
Well, for different reasons. Launch day raids were mainly extensions of Velious raiding for the most part. Few neat tricks here or there like the Geddon bomb, but for the most part tank this, heal that, DPS the shit down, and watch out for X Area Effect. Trash respawns, loot allotment, trash rewards, all were nearly identical to Velious raiding. Then there was Onyxia, which was probably the single most badass raid encounter ever created in any game ever at that point. Ever. So even at worst you"re left with more of the (mostly) successful same, which isn"t a bad damn boat to be in -- but then they learned, designed, and implemented bigger and far better raids as time went on.Ngruk said:
Release day raid bitching was either about that More of the Same or (mostly) the bugs that were RAMPANT that should never have seen the light of day. Raid lockouts, impossible Ragnaros, little to no raid UI, and basically incomplete/unbalanced classses on the whole that should have been taken care of long before launch day. But for whatever reason they dropped the fattest load of shit on everyone two weeks before launch and let the bugs go live as they didn"t patch for THREE GODDAMN MONTHS afterwards. Still bitter? Noooo.
Anyway, Digo put it the best way. You just aren"t going to get the same caliber raiding design from a raiding newbie as you are a hardcore raider.
Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
- 17,086
- 13,609
Much in the way firms hire former-hackers to develop software protection, MMO developers might do well to hire a former-high end hardcore raider.
The same general thought applies: This guy used to do this for a "living". He knows how they think, what they might try, etc. It could do wonders. Out of the box thinkers, game mechanic exploiters.
Think back to how Verant was aghast at the fact monks were using FD to pull singles. Or burn-tankers in COH were reaping massive AE farming XP by pulling ultra-huge clumps. Or someone exploited LOS to kill some raid boss (take your pick of a MMO). Or some WoW guild stacked classes to make a raid boss ez mode (or just plain killable in the case of Muru I guess!).
What will a player do? What can I do to discourage that, but at the sametime not make the encounter broken? At what point does "complex" degenerate into frustration or tedium?
Important things to keep in mind.
edit: The main problem with early WoW raids, as has been stated, was the lack thereof, poor item design, and some untested encounters.
The same general thought applies: This guy used to do this for a "living". He knows how they think, what they might try, etc. It could do wonders. Out of the box thinkers, game mechanic exploiters.
Think back to how Verant was aghast at the fact monks were using FD to pull singles. Or burn-tankers in COH were reaping massive AE farming XP by pulling ultra-huge clumps. Or someone exploited LOS to kill some raid boss (take your pick of a MMO). Or some WoW guild stacked classes to make a raid boss ez mode (or just plain killable in the case of Muru I guess!).
What will a player do? What can I do to discourage that, but at the sametime not make the encounter broken? At what point does "complex" degenerate into frustration or tedium?
Important things to keep in mind.
edit: The main problem with early WoW raids, as has been stated, was the lack thereof, poor item design, and some untested encounters.
Correction, you kept mezzing the mobs he was about to DOT.Fythis said:
Angelico De"Monico
Necromancer
TZ
I don"t know if these guys are actually advocating having a hardcore raider design your content. But having one as a consultant to explain tedium vs engaging. More important the balancing act to keep the mechanical complexity required to keep raiders engaged and not make them bland or boring.
Genjiro is right, wow is a pop culture creation. It just also houses a relatively innovative raiding environment. Is it perfect? lmao, no but it does offer the closest thing raiders are looking for(imo). Raiders are a different breed and we offer content someone can choose within a game when they get bored of simple grouping or questing. Whether it be casual or hardcore raiding has become a staple portion of mmo"s to provide that next big challenge.
But when you"ve never been near the top or at it you don"t know how things like class comp, group switching, REAL healing assignments or a thousand other little things play into the players experience. All these examples are geared towards wow and your game will have it"s own mechanics and philosophies but the principle is the same. If your base mechanics are great for grouping or questing but will translate into some tedious or mundane when grouped with 15-30 of your closest ebuds well then this is where a lack of experience comes into play.Now substitute base mechanics in the previous sentence for any number of 100 things, ui,debuffs,reagent cost,death penalty, buff duration,trash timers etc...... Anyone of these things can hamper a raiders experience and in all cases there as simple things that could be implimented to ease the unnecessary burden on a raider and not effect the casual players experience. People who can see these pitfalls and warn you of them ahead of time would to me seem to be invaluable.
the real trick is doing all these things while keeping the gamer feeling like everything was not pre-planned for them.
Genjiro is right, wow is a pop culture creation. It just also houses a relatively innovative raiding environment. Is it perfect? lmao, no but it does offer the closest thing raiders are looking for(imo). Raiders are a different breed and we offer content someone can choose within a game when they get bored of simple grouping or questing. Whether it be casual or hardcore raiding has become a staple portion of mmo"s to provide that next big challenge.
But when you"ve never been near the top or at it you don"t know how things like class comp, group switching, REAL healing assignments or a thousand other little things play into the players experience. All these examples are geared towards wow and your game will have it"s own mechanics and philosophies but the principle is the same. If your base mechanics are great for grouping or questing but will translate into some tedious or mundane when grouped with 15-30 of your closest ebuds well then this is where a lack of experience comes into play.Now substitute base mechanics in the previous sentence for any number of 100 things, ui,debuffs,reagent cost,death penalty, buff duration,trash timers etc...... Anyone of these things can hamper a raiders experience and in all cases there as simple things that could be implimented to ease the unnecessary burden on a raider and not effect the casual players experience. People who can see these pitfalls and warn you of them ahead of time would to me seem to be invaluable.
the real trick is doing all these things while keeping the gamer feeling like everything was not pre-planned for them.
Agraza
Registered Hutt
- 6,890
- 521
I"ve been tanking now for 10 years, and I"m fucking tired of it. Designers refuse to make it fun and/or allow tanks to stack efficiently. It"s a cornerstone of grouping and raiding, and it consistently gets no love. For the amount of work you have to put into being a tank you just don"t get enough out of it. I"m playing an irresponsible ranged DPS these days and I love it. The only thing easier is botting a cleric for CH.kcxiv said:
I mean, I would barely even look at the screen and still rank 1st or 2nd in my group"s DPS, top 5 in my raid"s. This experience has only driven home the idea that ranged dps are retards worthy of pity, and that their role needs to be re-worked so that the good dps takes more skill to obtain.
That"s funny, it"s my feral druid that seems brainless compared to my shadow priest and lock back when he was affliction. Destro is another matter but nobody actually wants to be destro, we"re all forced into it.Agraza said:
I don"t think you really need to be very experienced to make "good" (and I think a lot of people are here are defining "good" as "difficult") raid content. The balancing of it would be pretty boring I imagine, just statistics.
In fact, I think being an experienced raider may even hinder you creatively when trying to think outside the box. Look at AoC"s poor excuse for raid content, it"s all either tank and spank or WoW clone crap and none of it attempts to utilize any of the unique game mechanics the game offers. In fact they"ve been ruining it by introducing things like Crouch (ignores collision models) and nerfing active blocking.
In fact, I think being an experienced raider may even hinder you creatively when trying to think outside the box. Look at AoC"s poor excuse for raid content, it"s all either tank and spank or WoW clone crap and none of it attempts to utilize any of the unique game mechanics the game offers. In fact they"ve been ruining it by introducing things like Crouch (ignores collision models) and nerfing active blocking.
So, I cannot read back 258 pages of thread but any word on the direction 38 Studios is thinking about going on graphics?
Do you shoot for as realistic looking character models like EQ2 and AOC did, with huge numbers of modifications to create a unique avatar? Or do you go with WOW"s approach of more cartoonish character models with less personalization?
Do you aim to create a world that looks exactly like a real world as much as graphics can push it atm ala EQ2 and AOC? Or do you take the WOW approach and make the world much like the characters with a little less realism?
Personally, the biggest concern for me is that after playing AOC I cannot say all that realism did anything at all for me other then vastly lower my frame rate. The characters for all the slight modifications look exactly the same when you throw a hat and some armor on, the only thing that stood out on my character was the facial tatoo. Seems a waste to create such a finite character creation stage with respect to the looks as EQ2 and AOC did and that WOW kept it simple and it worked.
The world in AOC definately looks more realistic, the water is simply amazing in that game. And yet I have to say when you take into account not only the graphics but the actual architecture of the world WOW demolished AOC. They simply created more character in their zones and more areas of interest that really stood out. Such as the giant dam, huge waterfalls comming down from Felwood, the ruined temples in STV, ect.... WOW"s world was just chock full of cool places to see and explore. Not to mention the less linear travel ability in WOW, the forced linear travel of AOC is a BIG fail. At the end of the day the pretty graphics of AOC is wasted on me because there was very little I ever saw in the game that I found interesting or impressive.
Aquillonia or whatever that city was called certainly had better graphics, but the architecture of the city paled in comparison to the cities of WOW. A WOW designed city with the graphics of AOC? That would be something to see.
But if you have to choose one or the other the graphics are secondary to good world and character design in a game for me. WOW impressed me when I went to certain areas of the game. Heck, there are places in EQ1 to this day that impress me alot more then anything I saw in AOC, most of Kunark and the massive Iksar statues for example, now THAT expansion had character and great world design.
Do you shoot for as realistic looking character models like EQ2 and AOC did, with huge numbers of modifications to create a unique avatar? Or do you go with WOW"s approach of more cartoonish character models with less personalization?
Do you aim to create a world that looks exactly like a real world as much as graphics can push it atm ala EQ2 and AOC? Or do you take the WOW approach and make the world much like the characters with a little less realism?
Personally, the biggest concern for me is that after playing AOC I cannot say all that realism did anything at all for me other then vastly lower my frame rate. The characters for all the slight modifications look exactly the same when you throw a hat and some armor on, the only thing that stood out on my character was the facial tatoo. Seems a waste to create such a finite character creation stage with respect to the looks as EQ2 and AOC did and that WOW kept it simple and it worked.
The world in AOC definately looks more realistic, the water is simply amazing in that game. And yet I have to say when you take into account not only the graphics but the actual architecture of the world WOW demolished AOC. They simply created more character in their zones and more areas of interest that really stood out. Such as the giant dam, huge waterfalls comming down from Felwood, the ruined temples in STV, ect.... WOW"s world was just chock full of cool places to see and explore. Not to mention the less linear travel ability in WOW, the forced linear travel of AOC is a BIG fail. At the end of the day the pretty graphics of AOC is wasted on me because there was very little I ever saw in the game that I found interesting or impressive.
Aquillonia or whatever that city was called certainly had better graphics, but the architecture of the city paled in comparison to the cities of WOW. A WOW designed city with the graphics of AOC? That would be something to see.
But if you have to choose one or the other the graphics are secondary to good world and character design in a game for me. WOW impressed me when I went to certain areas of the game. Heck, there are places in EQ1 to this day that impress me alot more then anything I saw in AOC, most of Kunark and the massive Iksar statues for example, now THAT expansion had character and great world design.
