Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Alternatively, you could just implement a system where normally soulbound items could be traded between characters on the same account, an "heirloom" so to speak. Maybe only tag certain items as able to be transferred so that it"s not too over the top. I"d rather see something like that instead of the job system, which does have its merits but does not belong in every MMO.

I"ve been asking for method triggered loot for a while. The chess example is closest to how I feel it ought to work. The manner in which you bring your opponent down would trigger different or more loot. If you do it the hardest way possible you get access to the best equipment. Killing ezmode Illidan you might get a 2% chance at a warglaive, whereas killing hardmode Illidan gets you a 100% chance at warglaive. The differences might be in making use of different elements of the fight or enlisting the aid of scripted allies.

I"d really like this to be a comprehensive system that is in place for all kills ever, but with substantially more interactivity and top-end rewards off of bosses. Just farming mats for tradeskill combines is fucking dull with little choice to improve your odds. Having this in place so I can get 2 and 3x as many mats per kill if I achieve some threshold of precision or kill it in a specific manner would be a useful time-saver for those that elect to understand that aspect of the game.

In all cases skill replacing chance is superior.

I totally agree with the triggered loot and how getting gear upgrades is a huge fun factor, at least for me.

I don"t really agree with the job system, I think it has a lot of downsides, or it at least doesn"t fit in every MMO like Grave said. I think the "heirloom" or enhanced tradability of items to alts/guild members would be a far better way to do it. It gets right to the problem without adding all the fluff.

Rather than merely guild restricted it ought to be achievement restricted so you can"t just guild scrubs to sell them loot and boot them. By that I mean Illidan loot would only be tradeable to people that have participated in an Illidan kill.

Still, I prefer a job system. Rather, I prefer a more open ended class stucture where just changing gear would qualify you to perform a seperate role proficiently, but that"s less likely to happen while we"re all still stuck to the class system.

Zehn - Vhex said:

Oh yeah, the bosses are more fun when I can bring my alts to the raid to soak up rot loot, but it"s a detriment to the raid and just pisses people off.

But, if I could bring my paladin and loot shit on my paladin so that when I go to my races capital city to a special training facility and change my class to druid...well...maybe I won"t be so pissed at the 9th feral druid staff that dropped.

Here"s some quick and dirty math: Let"s assume 25 raiders, every raider has at least 4 alts they want 1 piece of loot off a boss for. The boss drops 5 items. Without the job system, you"d be done with the boss in 5 kills and from then on, it"s a snore fest. Or worse yet, you employ random loot and after the 10th kill you still have 4 raiders left who want items for their mains. After the 27th kill you"re still going back for shit from a later boss but you"re bringing along 7 alts, slowing down the raid and pissing everyone off.

With the job system? It"ll take 25 kills to get everything and on top of that, nothing rots, nobody is bringing a shitty alt to loot shit. It"s fucking fantastic. And that"s if you have a purely static group of 25 raiders. Even better, let"s say you get a new member. You can gear the shit out of him in one run rather then having to do 7 BT runs and pray to god you get enough loot for him to not be a liability in sunwell.

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Sometimes you do come off as bitter and cranky, but that is pretty money. People invest tons of time in your game, they can have altitis while avoiding lots of the tedium in rerolling, and guilds can gear members with an eye for possible job changes as needed during transition times/expansions/FotM shifts in balance. And you can still avoid the downsides of multiclassing, though I like multiclassing.

But you also end up feeling less unique as your own class, because everybody is everything. Especially among the hardcores, you would have people who literally level every class and can be called upon at any time. This seems nice if you only think about those times when soandso didn"t log on for the raid and you really needed another healer, but would it really be good for the game as a whole? These people would be valued over other people who have less time to commit to the game and maybe don"t even want to play other classes.

I would much rather have my character just be a Rogue. It doesn"t make sense to me that I can just switch to something completely different like a druid or wizard on a whim. It"s very "gamey".

It may make no sense from a lore/roleplay standpoint, "LOL thanks doc, I feel all better now, and look I"m no longer a god-fearing paladin but a servent of a dark demonic power warlock!"

But from a gameplay standpoint? Can"t be beat. No more re-grinding rep. No more "Oops we don"t have a tank, guess we can"t raid tonight" because Chuck has been grabbing rot tank loot and can swap classes and be the tank tonight.

Heirlooms isn"t a bad idea either. Only problem with that is you"re still juggeling alts. It becomes a logistics issue. What if you have an item you want to use across 3 classes? You have to keep remembering to mail it to yourself/dump into a shared bank/whatever. Then you have other things like mounts, flavor items, etc...etc...

Plus there"s other game mechanics as well to deal with. Faction grinding, keying for zones, etc...

Much easier to just tie it all to one character. If you want to roll alts nothing stopping you.

Anyways...

I was going to bitch about how they need to start adding ways to skip bosses once you"ve beaten them a significant number of times, but the glue on my pedal is dry and I can go back to playing rock band now.

PS: rock band mmo plzkthx.

War of the Bands MMO plzkthx. I want to destroy you all with my techno.

I lied:

Grave said:

But you also end u....

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Bullshit. People will ultimately gravitate to a class that suits them best. I"m a far better paladin then I ever was a priest. My entire guild will tell you that much.

When I play a DPS class, I find I enjoy playing the mage more then hunter/rogue/warlock. If I were asked to bring a DPS class to the raid because we have enough healers/tanks, I would want to be my mage.

Personal preference will still play a -very- important role. As it stands now I can be a healer, tank or dps with a switch of a talent spec and yet I don"t feel my gameplay cheapened any. Versatility is a -very- good thing.

As an example I"ll just point to Team Fortress. You can play any class you want and hell, if the team needs a medic, I"ll play a medic. But I"ve logged more time as an engineer as any other class. By a long shot. Likewise my friend tends to play a sniper but will swap to pyro if the situation calls for it.

Besides...

These people would be valued over other people who have less time to commit to the game and maybe don"t even want to play other classes.

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They already are. You can"t let your fear of what the hardcore will do keep you from implementing what is otherwise an amazingly healthy aspect for gameplay.

And even then, so what? If a guy is willing to put in 12 hours a day he"s already going to be more sought after by end game guilds then you with your 3 hours a night gameplay.

The ultimate determining factor will still be whether or not he"s a chucklehead. This isn"t old WoW/EQ, you can"t have liabilities in your raid anymore.

You"re a rogue? That"s fine, great, you"re an excellent rogue. There"s still 24 other people in the raid and you don"t have to call it a night because Tim didn"t show up and he"s your only feral druid. By now I could have collected more then enough feral tank loot to swap classes and do some tanking on my feral druid. You can still be your rogue.

t doesn"t make sense to me that I can just switch to something completely different like a druid or wizard

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That"s a piss poor argument and you know it. This is a fantasy game, we can go "presto chango" and be done with it if we like. I mean my Paladin twink (yes I know I"m a masochist) right now is carrying roughly 200 skins of water, about 3 dozen potions, 200 unidentied plant parts, 7 breastplates, 5 belts, 2 swords, 4 staves, nearly ~300ish pieces of moss, several cultures of fungi, 26 bog lord tendrils and a vertiable shitload of primal essence of life.

And not only am I carrying all this shit, I"m swimming, jumping, fighting monsters amongst other things.

Yeah, that makes sense.

It"s a fantasy game. As such, reality has to take a back seat to gameplay sometimes.

Besides, there"s already 2000 other rogues out there. You"re not unique.

A few things you could do with the Heirloom system in regard to Faction :

1 - Purchasable account-bound items that you can use/turn in that give large amounts of faction. These are only buyable if you are at X level of faction (Bonus : Money sink)
2 - A fraction of all faction gained is given to all other characters on the account.
3 - Quests doable by alts only if the main character is X faction with those NPCs. For example, if a main is Revered with the Loincloth Tribe, an alt could do a series of quests to bring him to Revered automatically when finished.

The important thing for developers to remember about reputation is that, in general, it is boring as hell to work on. Rep should be something that is acquired naturally. Tranquillian is a good example of this. The faction is a bonus and it adds to the overall enjoyment of leveling and allows you to buy decent gear.

Furthermore, there should be methods to expedite the gain of rep at the cost of something else. Lets take SSO. When Kael is defeated, give the option of loot OR a faction turn in. If everyone passes on all loot, all players can loot his head for a +1000 rep turn-in. You could also add additional, optional bosses that drop no loot but give bonus rep.

Valid points, Zehn. There are plenty of plus sides to the job system from a gameplay point of view, we don"t necessarily disagree there. Still, my year or so time in FFXI left me feeling somewhat wary towards it.

It"s a decision that absolutely changes the rest of your game. Players becomeexpectedto have multiple jobs leveled, even if they gravitate towards a certain one like you said and play it more often, they will feel forced to level other jobs - not only to make their character feel more complete, but also because it"s demanded of them by their guild. I saw countless friends burn out on FFXI because they felt like they had to have X job leveled up to a certain level when they"d really just rather play their Red Mage. Don"t ask me why people cant just look at the other jobs as "alts" that they only do if they want to, but trust me, they don"t.

It just makes it a completely different type of game and there"s no escaping it. You can"t tell people it"s okay to play one class in a game where there"s very little downside to leveling another one on their character. I just don"t think it"s the right way to fix the few issues you"ve brought up.

As for not having the right classes for a raid, this could instead be answered by broader options through talent specs (or whatever equivalent an upcoming game chooses to have) or hybrids which can actually do more than one role without respeccing, maybe just by swapping gear.
The loot issue could be handled with the method mentioned before, etc.

I agree with Grave on the job system. It just lends itself to MORE grinding rather than less.

For any guild thats "hardcore" you will required to have a tank job and a healer job leveled up along with your main job. Now you will be forced to heal or tank when you really don"t want too etc.

There are pros and cons and each side has valid points, but I prefer not to have a job system.

There could be a system that rewards class purity (HITLER JOKE). If you just do one job/class you will be better than people with multiple jobs. That would at least give a reason to not have every job under the sun.

The ultimate status symbols was the loot we got from Ventari, during the first and only kill of him on the server >;D

Many monks cried the day I looted the only robe that would ever exist on the server until they started to compact them all.

Grave said:

Especially among the hardcores, you would have people who literally level every class and can be called upon at any time.

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From the latest FFXI Census, only 6,600 characters matched that criteria out of the hundreds of thousands of characters. And FFXI actually promotes such leveling by giving Maat"s cap. Also a job system need not involve the concept of sub-jobs in the same manner as FFXI does. Each job can be independent and more like the concept of an alt.

Finally, hardcore players can always be counted on to do insane things that can be detrimental to any gaming experience. If belonging to a hardcore guild requires leveling X classes in order to participate that ultimately becomes a personal decision. If a player hesitates at the effort, then I guess he"s not hardcore enough for that guild. There will be many others that accommodate a sane play style. Yet the the job system benefits everyone (hardcore and casual) by allowing a mechanism to eliminating rep grinds, quest repetition and redundant character upgrades (mount/bank/etc).

Tananthalas said:

Stuff

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There are many other fights that require just more than "throw tank with lots of AC and HP in front of a mob". Raid content done well, and progression chokepoints requiring damage ATs stops that bullshit. Like say, Vaelestraz.

Ngruk said:

Couple things. I played a little Magic, and once I got into some competing situations I felt that game was so far from RPS it was laughable.

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Hmm. Let"s try this again, because this is important for any game --well any good multiplayer game. Rock-Paper-Scissors isn"t just a game you play with your fist it"s also a methodology for balancing a multiplayer game.



Anyway, it is impossible to balance any game be it board, MMO or anything else except by making everyone on all sides have the exact same abilities (take for example chess or go). Now this doesn"t play very well in MMOs (or CCGs) because people want to have different abilities and build different decks.

The solution is to use RPS mechanics -- that is you can design the healer so it always beats the tank who always beats the dps class who always beats the healer. Same thing with CCGs you can design cards so that deck X beats deck Y beats deck Z which beats deck X.

There is no deck uber >> that beats all other decks. Or class uber >> all other classes.

The nice ripple up effect of using RPS mechanics is that it results in balanced group encounters -- as Mkopec1 pointed out earlier:

Mkopec1 said:

Because a PvP game should never be balanced around 1vs1. It should be balanced around group vs group and multi group vs multi group. And this is where the whole RPS comes into play.

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Well GvG has never been balanced either. Being that solo content is the largest draw for the majority of the MMO population making solo PvP enjoyable would be wise. BGs do this in a roundabout way by allowing you to randomly join groups for 90% uptime PvP. One of the larger issues with world PvP is the donwtime between death and more action. WoW has no better handle on that aspect, but it"s nearly irrelevant in a scenario including BGs.

In every PvP game to date numbers mean more than anything else. Cooperation and defined spec groups are a distant secondary to tossing waves of people at your opponent. Making any number > 1 being the balance point only lends to this problem as people feel they MUST bring numbers and so bring as many as they can.

Balance 1v1 and then allow crazy synergy to scale power upwards with minimal body count increase and you might have something interesting for world PvP. Otherwise numbers will rule and you"ll have to artificially cap population for a given fight. This is best done via PvP zones such as BGs inhabit.

Tananthalas said:

I"m not going to quote you Zehn,

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I tend to be long winded. <3

Anyways...

Think it through again. All the problems you mentioned already exist. Not only that, but the job system alleviates, not elevates these issues.

Loot distribution becomes incredibly simplified, especially if you use a DKP system to award loot. A mob usually has at most one, maybe two tank items anyways and most encounters require that everyone has good gear. This isn"t early EQ where all you needed was a well geared tank and it was win time. Fights these day require DPS classes to be equipped to the gills to beat soft-enrage timers, healers need to be able to keep up with mobs putting out thousands of raid wide dps.

And if a tank does leave the guild, you"re not fucked because Timmy has been banking rot loot and can cover as tank until you recruit someone else.

As for EQ2"s loot won"t drop if nobody needs it scenario, there is a -lot- of shit I can use that I sure as shit don"t want.

And if some pug cleric won"t join unless you let him loot some piece of gear, fuck him. Job system means greater chance somebody else has a cleric. Besides, I do that shit now on my Paladin. Somebody wanted me to tank for their scrub heroic MGT. I said only if I get white chocobo if it drops. He agreed. With job system he might have been able to tell me to go fuck my greedy ass.

And it wasn"t "kill x boss in under y amount of time" specifically. I -hate- random loot with a passion. Mostly because in two years we managed to only ever get one thunerfury and that was well after naxx had been out for like 2 months. By contrast there were guilds out there that had 4~6 of them. Guilds that we were better then. How is that fair?

Getting a Thunderfury to drop should have required that you kill Geddon and Garr within 20 seconds of eachother or something.

I mean that"s essentialy how bear mounts are handled now and it works great.

Obviously the challenge should be equal to the reward. Beating the ZA timer is relatively easy so you get a flavor mount. Beating chess event without losing pieces in under 2 minutes is difficult and you get a decent staff that ports you back to karazhan. One thought I had was that you make Akama an optional boss in Black Temple. If you skip him he joins the fight at the end on Illidan"s side and you have to deal with him + the adds he heads off to prevent from joining the fight.

If you manage to beat the fight which is now ridiculously harder then normally, at the end you redeem Akama and he presents you with warglaives as a reward.

Anyways...

Like I said, people being dicks about loot will always happen. If you remove the added tension that comes with loot that may never actually drop again due to shitty RNG"s...well then, fuck the RNG.