Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

I somewhat agree with Vhex with the job system, when I roll an alt, which happens often, I"d like to have the choice of making a new char entirely, for various reason(got tired of me looking like a giant cow, want different racials, whatever else), or simply get the same char with a different class. I find it annoying that when I"m switching mains, I have to change my name(or pay to get my former main name changed). People know me as Pyros(or whatever I had to choose because the name was taken), and when I reroll a different char for the guild or whatever reason, people don"t recognize me anymore because I"m no longer Pyros, but Aki or Eien or whatever. With time, they learn the new name, but most people who know me from a long time still call me Pyros. The newer people would call me by my current char"s name, unless I"m an officer then they get used to calling me Pyros too because everyone else does.

Overall though, it creates a kind of schyzophrenia concept, where I"m still the same player, and not roleplaying, I have different names. It"s all fine if I actually wanted to change roles and stuff, but I should get the choice, without having to delete my former main I spent so many hours on, or paying a game service fee to get the name back.

While it definitely doesn"t fit wow"s lore, it could fit a new mmo lore if you made the lore around it, and not assbackwards made the gameplay fit around the lore. You can definitely learn how to use a shield and a sword after having been an archer for years, and surprisingly enough, you don"t forget how to shoot arrows. Now, we can assume you need some kind of special item that you can"t carry which forces you to go back to town to change jobs/classes. But if you don"t like the idea of having one char that does everything, well damn you can just make an alt. From a technical point of view, it"d probably save a bunch of server memory too, by only having one char with a shared bank instead of having multiple char with multiple banks. Make the bank size relative to your combined levels too.


As for the loot discussion, I don"t really care myself. Raiding becomes boring after the first few times anyway, loot or not. I can still need one piece of loot from every boss, it won"t make all the crap up to illidan fun. The fights are boring once you outgear them, and they only become a time bump on your way to better items. Yeah I could gear up all my alts at the same time, but it wouldn"t make the dungeons less boring. It"d only make it more efficient.

James said:

Swapping people in and out *is* fun, if you"re talking about entire raid nights. No one likes to have a 100% attendance requirement, whether you"re raiding 2 days a week or 5 days a week. The only way to mitigate that requirement, while still maintaining progression, is to have *more people*. 25% of your 25 man raid is 6-7 players, 25% of your 50 man raid is 12-13 players. Which one allows you to cover the bases with every class?

And yes, saying less people = tighter knit is fairly retarded, because it doesn"t. I know everyone that chooses to log on, I know everyone"s voice that I"ve raided with, I know their personalities. The only reason you think you"ll get "lost in the crowd" within a higher population is because you"ve never been in the crowd in the first place.

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You"re fucking batshit insane. I hate being sat on fights because "oh fuck, we only need 5 healers for this, sorry asshole." That shit -sucked-. I raid because I want to raid, not because I want to have my ass sitting outside the raid zone. What fucking planet are you from?

You have the data on this "respect and prefer" business? Is it subscription numbers? Again you"re winning at presenting opinion as fact. I never said anything about "getting lost in the crowd," I said flat-fucking-out I prefer to have less people on my roster and I"m far from the only one. And I"d sure as hell rather be giving loot to one of those people"s "alts" while they"re playing their main than swap in someone else.

Believe it or not, in my guild, most people want their full-time spot. They don"t want to have to rotate out to fulfill the needs of some second-stringer, they just want to occasionally be able to miss a raid, and for the most part they all can. Even I missed a couple of raids last week...that makes four in the last year I think...

The problem this solves is the one where your core players can"t get gear for another class while playing their main. If you want to gear up an alt you have to carry them, unless the player has put in a shitton of work gearing up the alt. Do you see? This makes itless workfor people who like to level alts. They don"t have to BG grind and instance grind and low-raid PUG grind (oh, right, it wouldn"t be a pug in a 500-person seventeen-raid-group guild), they can come on their main and pick up loot for their alt.

But like I said, you are right in your own mind, your preferred guild method is THE ONE AND ONLY TRUTH. Forgive me for arguing.

Zehn, try to keep up now. I"m not talking about sitting players on a fight because you only need so many healers, I"m talking about letting people off for the night because their role is covered and they absolutely do not need to be there.

James said:

It"s not about prevention, it"s about requirement

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Except that it won"t. And your solution to "loot rots" is bring so many people it can"t possibly rot. Yeah, there"s a valid fucking solution. Just what a group of 10 people want to be told. "LOL SHOULD HAVE RECRUITED 80 PEOPLE DICKBAGS!"

James said:

Zehn, try to keep up now. I"m not talking about sitting players on a fight because you only need so many healers, I"m talking about letting people off for the night because their role is covered and they absolutely do not need to be there.

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Same. Fucking. Thing.

"Okay we need to sit healers for more dps."

"Okay we need more dps, what healers want to volunteer to sit?"

Same.

Fucking.

Thing.

...

Zehn. You"re retarded.

Remember, Zehn, if every guild only had more players their personnel problems would be solved because everyone could just take the night off when they felt like it.

Anyways, since this has become a semantics/personal preference argument I suggest we move on before I start comparing you to Makata in retaliation and you don"t deserve that no matter how whackjob you sound.

Anyways...

Morpheme = GTA mmo Curt? Pretty please?!?

Yeah, but if every guild could have players WITH FOUR CHARACTERS EACH everything would be much better! The job system is retarded, and whatever problem you think it solves, it doesn"t. Now in your 10 man, 4xclass characters, when one person goes missing you"re REALLY fucked.

Not really. It"s not like you can be all 4 classes at the same time. And even then it"s still a matter of something to do. I mean I have a 5 level 70"s personally, 2 in BT+ quality gear and I"ve brought my priest instead of my paladin on a handful of occasions.

Does this mean everyone in my guild is required to have 2 characters available? No.

Again, this is all around solving 2 issues. 1 being that random loot is terrible but being able to pick your loot means the content will become useless faster. So the job/heirloom system is one good way to fix that.

Bringing 100 people doesn"t solve shit. You"re either forced to sit o...I mean, voluntarily take the night off right that is, this is your faggot fairy land afterall. or alternatively you just form A and B and C teams and you might as well just be 3 25 man guilds.

The second being that my Paladin no longer needs loot from anything but SWP but I prefer playing him. (Your fantasy about how everyone would be requierd to have 4 jobs levels is pure bullshit btw. People will naturally gravitate towards the class that suits them best.) I do however enjoy playing alts during off times for shits and grins. My paladin sure as shit doesn"t need badges. I"m honor/arena point capped with nothing to spend it on. It would be nice if I could buy shit for my rogue alt that I tool around on from time to time.

How does "Join a guild with 100 people in it" fix that problem?

The only difference between Jobs and rolling Alts is the loot that rots. I think the Job system is retarded. It"s the BoE/BoP system that pisses you off.

I hate playing multiple characters/alts/rolls in a guild. I pick what I want to do with my character and go with it. I hate playing multiple toons. But that"s just me.

Zehn - Vhex said:

2) You"re falling back on roleplay arguments which have no merit in a mechanics discussion. You"re Ukerrik the rouge.

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Fine, if you call me a roUGe, I"ll call you Zhen! Eh!

Actually, it"s really a roleplay argument. Let"s compare an alt system with a shared bank (in which bound items can be put), and a job system. What"s the difference? Answer: the character name. That"s all. As I said, in a modern PvE game, you need to restart so much of the internal stat of the character for a new class levelling, you might as well call it a different character, and be done.

Unless you go to the "bam insta respec" argument, in which new classes wouldn"t have to level up, which most people agree feel silly.

Ukerric said:

Unless you go to the "bam insta respec" argument, in which new classes wouldn"t have to level up, which most people agree feel silly.

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Oh, if you remember some of my old arm-chair dev musings (since no one at Nevrax was really interested in my ideas, for all the good that it did to them), I have exactly that. The ultimate "loot-oriented MMO".

You have exactly three intrinsic characteristics. Your race, your name and your level. Period. You do not have any class, ability, stat per level, etc. You want to tank? Equip a shield, which enables you to use the Block competence, wear a headgear with an horrible mask, which allows you to Taunt, use gauntlets of avoidance, which lower incoming damage, etc. Want to heal? Pick your amulet of direct heal, your Hot ring, you mana circlet. Levelling a "role" (job) means you acquire a good set of gear that fits the role. If you don"t have a good synergy between all your gear, you"re a pitiful wizard. Got the right combos? You"re #1 at the makata meter in your raid.

Pity it"s a bit too radical for most games. And no, I didn"t propose that for Ryzom

Zehn - Vhex said:

How does "Join a guild with 100 people in it" fix that problem?

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Ok, work with me here now.

The reality of guilds is that you"re going to have a mix of players available to play with. Be it a 10 man guild or 100 man guild, you"re never going to get 100% of everyone on the exact same schedule and exact same playstyle. You"re going to have your 100%ers that you can count on to be there 7 days a week, night or day, at the top of their game. You"re also going to have your 50%ers, that even if they are pretty fucking good, they just can"t show up all the time. So while you may not recruit against that 100%er, you sure as hell are going to look for someone to shore up the the spots where if someone isn"t online, you can"t raid. More people available for those spots means more people can take more nights off, and there"s rarely a problem that a kindergarten fucking solution can"t solve, "OK Johnny gets in this night but the next time you two fight over a spot Timmy gets it!" Standard guild recruiting practices, in guilds that live in reality instead of fucking lala land. This is to address your concern(s) of not having the right players online -- if you have more players, there will be someone online.

So how does this solve loot rotting? It doesn"t, when the loot is fucking shitty and serves no purpose and you"re only there for a warglaive -or something similar-. Loot rot problems can be solved by not being goddamn retarded with your loot system, and making something a wee bit more competent than moonkin bracers dropping every other boss. I don"t care about your alt, the majority of the raid doesn"t care about your alt, and designing a system over gearing up your alt is asinine at best.

As far as people not having multiple level 70+ characters now, so why would they have multiple subjobs, well, that"s because (thank God) the system wasn"t designed around it. When you start throwing things out there that even begin to encourage things like having a second class (i.e. job system), you are then requiring people have more than one. It"s not some fantasy land, it"s the reality of the genre being min/max at heart, and people doing whatever it takes to get shit done. Even casuals would be forced down that path, should you encourage it. And if you don"t encourage it, what is the point?

Ukerric said:

Fine, if you call me a roUGe, I"ll call you Zhen! Eh!

Actually, it"s really a roleplay argument. Let"s compare an alt system with a shared bank (in which bound items can be put), and a job system. What"s the difference? Answer: the character name. That"s all. As I said, in a modern PvE game, you need to restart so much of the internal stat of the character for a new class levelling, you might as well call it a different character, and be done.

Unless you go to the "bam insta respec" argument, in which new classes wouldn"t have to level up, which most people agree feel silly.

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I am with Zehn on this.

It is not JUST a character name(though for me that is a HUGE part of it). It is also faction, quests, items, etc.

Some of you seem to glance over this but I really love having a single character, and if I get bored I can just try to level a different job, like FFXI or even Planescape: Torment for those of you that enjoy that game.

The biggest thing I am having trouble understanding is how this hurts anyone? I might be reading it wrong but people seem to have concerns about guilds...is that true? This won"t affect them at all. It"s not different than being a guild with my warrior and logging onto an equally geared alt healer or something. Only now instead of relogging, I just head to town or whatever and switch my job(spec in wow). One major difference being that ANYONE can do it! But you would still need gear/levels so it"s not a freebie. It"s really no different from an alt except I get to keep my online personality(which is very very important to me) and my effort in regards to factions and whatever other meta-skilsl exist in the game(tradeskills/professions/etc).

This system would not prevent someone from making an entirely new character so I guess I just don"t see the harm...sorry if I come off as stupid. I do agree WoW cannot just become this, but I thought we were talking about Curt"s new game? And yes there are problems with doing quest lines again so the second job isn"t a 100% grind, but if the game were designed with a job system from the start it should fit right in.

James said:

As far as people not having multiple level 70+ characters now, so why would they have multiple subjobs, well, that"s because (thank God) the system wasn"t designed around it. When you start throwing things out there that even begin to encourage things like having a second class (i.e. job system), you are then requiring people have more than one. It"s not some fantasy land, it"s the reality of the genre being min/max at heart, and people doing whatever it takes to get shit done. Even casuals would be forced down that path, should you encourage it. And if you don"t encourage it, what is the point?

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I disagree that it is forced. Is having an alt forced now? The benefit is that you get to keep your name/identity and any faction/tradeskill/etc that you"ve done on your main character. You cannot be both at once.

And I don"t think it solves any guild problems(not sure if Zehn said it did). You will still need an inflated roster for the reasons you state above. This again, is only the difference between me logging off a DPS for a healer if need be or something. Same concepts as alt"s here.

Anything that you can do with one character will soon become required. Guilds don"t ask you to roll alts unless you want too. Some guilds might require you to roll tank and healer jobs just like they require you to have X resists or a certain level of gear.

That or people with multiple jobs become more valuable and people who don"t like rolling alts, or extra classes will be seen as lazy.

Draegan said:

Anything that you can do with one character will soon become required. Guilds don"t ask you to roll alts unless you want too. Some guilds might require you to roll tank and healer jobs just like they require you to have X resists or a certain level of gear.

That or people with multiple jobs become more valuable and people who don"t like rolling alts, or extra classes will be seen as lazy.

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Again not trying to be devil"s advocate but could you please explain why? I see it as the exact same now as if a guild did not want to recruit but wanted an extra healer, they would ask you to reroll. How, just because you dont loose name/skills, would they ask you to reroll now?

In either event you either like the guild and do it, or move on...but it"s no different than an alt since you cannot be both classes at once. I fail to see how it would become required.

Draegan said:

Some guilds might require you to roll tank and healer jobs just like they require you to have X resists or a certain level of gear.

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This is already fairly prevalent with Protection Paladins/Holy Paladins. While your dedicated Holy paladin might not have a suitable tanking set, your dedicated Protection Paladin sure as hell will have a suitable holy set in 9 out of 10 cases. The Prot Paladin without one is worth considerably less to a raid than the one with -- and this in a system that actively discourages gearing up/playing two styles of the same character.