Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Ngruk said:

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and "cool"

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I don"t really have any one feature, but I will speak to my thoughts on what a next gen MMO needs to do:

Steal everything good from other games.

Look at EQ for things they did right (quite a few): Their chat system is far, far more advanced than any other game that"s been released and it"s an ancient product. Serverwide channels are amazing and build communities.

Likewise steal their LFG system, and Anon please. I don"t want to show up in who.

Bring back Epic class quests that involve the hardest dungeons in each expansion. Progressive levels of gear at each stage that weaves a coherent narrative and gives you a very, very good item. Let it grow t1-t2-t3 depending on your ability to raid each successive level of content.

Look at Vanguard for some class design things. They did stuff well(Blood Mages are money as fuck, and Bards are fundamentally neat).

Look at LOTRO and steal their titles. Seriously. Titles get people excited and keep them busy experiencing old content. Generic titles, epic titles

Look at WoW and take their User Experience and duplicate it. Allow the same level of UI functionality and customisation. WoW"s arguably greatest impact on the MMO landscape will be the legacy of its addons: they"ve fundamentally altered the nature of the game and in a very good way. It puts the power in the player"s hands, and gets them involved intimately in shaping their gameplay experience. Item links, auction house, flight masters, etc. Take it.

Most importantly, steal these things effectively. Don"t half ass it. War"s UI is an abomination because they started to copy WoW"s UI and got bored about half way through. It"s unrepentant shit and that doesn"t fly. There"s still been no push for the level of control and flexibility the EQ chat system allowed, or their LFG commands.

Additionally, look to the future. Things like Wardb, Wowarmory, this is the shape of things to come. "Web 2.0" is a shitty buzzword but it"s applicable in this case.. Build that integration between game and web. Let people do messaging from AIM into your playerbase, work with AOL or yahoo to integrate. Consider a facebook app, work on the social networking angle. Word of mouth is key and building that player buzz and allowing people to show off is huge.

95% of playing an MMO is about having a chance to wave your dick around. Focus on giving people opportunities to do that and you"ll have a successful game. There"s a reason shoulderpads get bigger and bigger.

Ngruk said:

Question.

To anyone that has played more than one MMO or has played one MMO for a few years.

If you knew an MMO was coming out in a genre you were interested in, what would be the following:

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and "cool"
2) What one thing that hasn"t been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

Click to expand...

1) Without question, the combat system. The majority of the time you will spend in the game will be while you are in combat. The combat system needs to be intuitive enough for new players to quickly grasp the system, complex enough to allow the skills of expert players to be displayed and fun enough to stand the test of time.

2) A reputation/diplomacy system that involves more than just killing X amount of mobs or repeating the same quests over and over.

Ngruk said:

Question.

To anyone that has played more than one MMO or has played one MMO for a few years.

If you knew an MMO was coming out in a genre you were interested in, what would be the following:

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and "cool"
2) What one thing that hasn"t been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

Click to expand...

Rather than game balance / content issues, simple features that if they are absent ensure that I won"t even bother playing the game.

These seem minor and are mostly a given, but here is a small list:

1. A perfectly responsibe UI. A lot of games have some minor lag/imperfect animation etc - basically play Vanguard and WoW and notice the difference. I want a game that responds perfectly.

2. Perfectly implemented ALT-TABBING. If the game lags when I alt tab, I won"t even try it. Sorry, absolutely gamebreaking. If you cannot get alt-tabbing to work, I will use innerspace or another wrapper to get that functionality.

3. A very customizable but already functional UI. I don"t expect the perfect UI, but I expect the basic UI to be more than good enough from 1 to whatever max level before raiding.

That"s it. Content / balance / fun are of course crucial, but if those things are not present at launch, I don"t care how good the game is, I won"t try it.

I will add that one thing that makes a game beatiful to me is not the amazing eyepopping graphics, but the atmosphere and the art direction. The night elf newbie zone for Warcraft is incredible and feels straight out of lord of the rings. I saw the concept art you produced and it looks incredible and exactly what I like, if you can get it translated in a game well I will be very impressed

Ngruk said:

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and "cool"

Click to expand...

It"s kind of hard to answer. Because I"d rather have multiple core basic features working, not just 1

2) What one thing that hasn"t been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

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Player housing. A housing that integrates well with gameplay, and contributes meaningfully to it. Almost every modern MMO integrated player housing after the fact, which means it wasn"t an integral part of the gameplay - it wasn"t there at launch, so it was completely irrelevant. (or it was at launch, and completely irrelevant: see Anarchy Online)

DAoC copied UO"s housing purpose by making it a conduit for player NPC vendors, but that model has passed away: no one wants to spend all its time running around to find the right vendor. Even EQ2"s model of player vendors fails - except for extremely pricey stuff, people will not run to your house to buy from you, they"re going to pay the broker.

LOTRO managed to do one thing well, which was sharable storage, but that was not original; it"s a straight lift of the old Turbine AC1"s housing (various sized-houses, hooks, storage chest; except for the floor shapes, it"s almost exactly the same).

The only game that approached meaningful housing is ATitD, notably the later telling (3rd). The whole concept of camp was a natural fit to the game, and creating houses (as a kludge to avoid graphical clutter) was a big thing.

So, yes. Housing, and some thing that contributes meaningfully to the player experience, and integrates well with its characters:
- Expandable storage (instead of a bank. Your "bank" access your house"s general purpose chests)
- Customized "roleplay" storage (weapon racks, armor displays, bookcases, potion cabinets...)
- Gate anchor (allowing quick trips)
- Tradeskill/craft integration (you can"t forge an epic item unless you have a correctly customized forge on the ground floor. I mean, those public forges are so awfully maintained, it"s a disgrace)
- Socialisation (example: a Mage can open a portal to his current location, but only from the front of his house. Guild members can have an incentive to build a guild "quarter" of housing close to the mage"s to be able to port quickly to home, and hop into the portal)

and a couple more stuff. Instead of being completely irrelevant, "properly managed" housing should significantly enhance your character"s capacities.

Note that I"m against "player towns", like AoC"s. They promote complete segregation of your guild from all other players - meaning you cease to interact with them. I"m all for "player-populated cities" instead. I"ll take WoW as an example: imagine Stormwind, but where every single building in the city is potentially an appartment/rentable (you need of course heavy instancing of the appartments interiors - or you end up with EQ2"s housing model which inflates your city to enormous sizes). You have quarters (your guild decided to set up shop in the west canals, so most guild members are concentrated there, because the guild has rented the Blue Inn as its HQ, and you get a significant rent reduction by being close), people run back and forth across the city naturally (instead of being forced there by virtue of carefully avoiding any trainer or AH).

The rest is left to the armchair designer"s imaginations, including how to use pricing controls as a way to spread population over the city, instead of everyone taking the room just over the AH.

It is pretty damn funny that EQ still has the best chat AND LFG system. Two of the most important features of an MMO and they haven"t improved in 6-8 years? They don"t even need to be improved from EQ, just copied, yet nobody does this.

For me..

1) Cool, varied dungeons with interesting loot. If its gonna be cookie-cutter rooms and caves where one dungeon has the same loot as the next don"t bother.

2) The old dream of a game world that players can see their effect on. I can understand this being technologically challenging, but anything would be cool.

Ngruk said:

Question.

To anyone that has played more than one MMO or has played one MMO for a few years.

If you knew an MMO was coming out in a genre you were interested in, what would be the following:

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and "cool"
2) What one thing that hasn"t been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

Click to expand...

1) The ability to level from 1-Max level fluidly, without being a pain in the ass and forced to grind.

2) Different rule sets for pve and pvp, having the same rule set does nothing but limit your creativity and constantly causes problems.

1) User interface. Needs to be very easy to move around and adjust most settings through right clicking instead of digging up the options buried deep inside the menu. EQ2 for example.

2) More defined and unique roles for each class instead of generic classes. Having 4 scout classes like in EQ2 was not a good idea in my own opinion.

About uniqueness ( More than just class flavor ), instead of all casters doing damage with different graphic spells and names, each class could have it"s own purpose and mechanic.

For example, no energy/power/mana for Psioncist, they get concentration bubbles which get used up mental abilities which must be maintained by the psioncist. Their focus would be crowd control and the such, so not a dps class. The wizard gets a mana bar and needs to cast for nukes, dps class and little of anything else. Better than having all caster be dps with the same energy/mana bar with slight reduction in dps for those with slightly more utility, I.e. Nothing more than flavor.

Ngruk said:

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and "cool"

2) What one thing that hasn"t been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

Click to expand...

1. Combat responsiveness and their animations. Flawless and perfect. See WAR and LOTRO for what could happen if it"s not.

2. Itemization from level 1 to Max Level. The other is the leveling curve.

I"ll expand on the leveling curve. It should be smooth. Never at one point should you feel like you"re grinding. See WAR right now. At a certain point you stop playing the game and start doing Scenarios over and over. Bad. See LOTRO at release with the lack of quests at the high 30"s. See AOC at around 50. Don"t get locked into the idea of making a character level range so you force him to do your content. There should be more content than necessary to get you through all your level ranges so you never slow down in your quest driven story or however you"re driving your characters.

A player should think to himself, "Oh Boy I"m level X already and I havn"t even seen/done that stuff yet and I"m already passed it!" In order to do this you either have to have enough content for your leveling curve or your leveling curve needs to accommodate your content.

The moment you hear someone say, "We need to slow players down HERE before they get to THIS." You"re job isn"t done yet, delay your game.

It also goes beyond saying that your game works. Your skills and abilities work as intended regardless of balance. If the tooltip says it does 200 damage, it does 200 damage all the time. Talents, masterys or whatever you implement should work.

1. A fluid combat system that feels responsive and is not a spam fest (a la EQ2). Have a core set of abilities you always use but another set of situational abilities that aren"t being spammed every fight. I would also set in stone what kind of game you want, PvE or PvP. No game has done both equally well in the games I"ve played. WoW"s pvp is just plain stupid, the game is mainly built around PvE with a piecemeal pvp system added in after the fact. And they"ve had trouble balancing pvp since the combat was built around PvE to begin with.

2. This is only my personal opinion, but no game has yet to have a good non-instanced dungeon model. WoW didn"t even attempt it and just went for instancing across the board. I"d like to see non-instanced dungeons that don"t have camping/training/leapfrogging/mob-stealing in them but still retain a healthy competition. I think it"s time the genre evolved from instancing into something else more community oriented but without the old problems.

Ngruk said:

Question.

To anyone that has played more than one MMO or has played one MMO for a few years.

If you knew an MMO was coming out in a genre you were interested in, what would be the following:

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and "cool"
2) What one thing that hasn"t been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

Click to expand...

1. Combat.

Personally, if it doesn"t "feel" right a few minutes into playing my first character that there is a game killer, no matter how polished or awesome the rest of game may well be I won"t experience it if I am frustrated by the combat.


2. UI

Easy to use but powerful customization right out of the box. I don"t want to wait for the MOD community to step up to the plate or have to search multiple forums to find out what user hacks I can make to give me options and the flexibility that should already be there. VG"s and War"s movable and scalable UI elements are a great addition but both failed in other areas of customization, I want a complete UI customization solution.

Some fantastic responses. The 2 I think I have from this discussion are:

1) A completely thorough and robust "social" networking system. I want to be able to communicate, chat, mail, in game out of game, all of it, with anyone anywhere with nothing more than a click or two before entering "chat". Be it a fully integrated VO system or actual in game chat, let me do the thing you want me to, within the framework of an incredibly USER FRIENDLY interaction system. Not only that, but don"t make me "search" for the methods and means to do this, make it easy for me and make it as user friendly as anything else you will ever put in your game, more so if you can. I want that one stop one/two click amazon.com experience to be the most I need to do to ever find/talk/interact with my friends, or my potential friends.

2) Make me feel heroic on day 1, minute 1, until I am done playing the game. There are quests, there is gear, there is some semblance of story that can at times make me feel, look, heroic. But damn, I want to be a hero all the time right? By heroic I mean make my actions and choices MATTER in a way other people can see. Not only visually, but damn if I do something "heroic" in a heroic world should people know that beyond the folks in my group? Killing rats with a rusty short sword to get money and experience so I canstartto become heroic is not it, not even close. Aren"t you creating a world thatneedsa hero? Aren"t you creating a world calling for millions of heroes? That doesn"t work if only a few of us can ever get that feeling. Well it does for the few but the rest of us "are not worthy" to the few.

The challenge to me is what people define as "Heroic", and finding the most common ground there. Hey, that"s going to be my next question.
1) Has any game ever made you feel like your character was really heroic?
2) If yes, what game? Why? Was it an acquired thing or was the game designed to make you feel that from start.
3) Does being heroic need to be exclusive to you? Do you feel heroic if everyone else can be where you are, or look like you?

As I typed this I thought of City Of Heroes. I played very little but laughed at that whole thought. If every player in the game is a "hero", well, how does that work?

Heroic doesn"t really work in an MMO. I"ve felt heroic in games like NWN, Baldur"s Gate, KOTOR etc. In an MMO? Not really, unless you were that unique snowflake in EQ or any MUDs that I played. In WOW? No.

It"s hard to define Heroic in an open world where things are static and repeatable.

The only time I"ve felt heroic were end game raids, and this was shared throughout the guild.

I think the best way is to make everyone feel heroic as a whole, as a community. WAR did this with baby steps and havn"t been able to get people to work together yet. But if you can get the community as a whole (defined by your game mechanics and features) to work towards something, you will make everyone feel heroic.

Ngruk said:

Question.

To anyone that has played more than one MMO or has played one MMO for a few years.

If you knew an MMO was coming out in a genre you were interested in, what would be the following:

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and "cool"
2) What one thing that hasn"t been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

Click to expand...

1> I am going to have to agree with some of the other posters: Combat System.

One other individual pointed out the interface and I think this is one of the integral parts of it. The ability to map out every key (to include all mouse buttons, the mouse wheel, etc..) is very important and yet sad that it needs to even be mentioned at all.

One of the biggest gripes in WAR right now is how you can chase someone around in combat, be pushed back by collision and yet STILL be considered too far away from your target. Responsiveness and having your abilities actually do everything they are supposed to do are some of what I think should almost go without saying but yet seem to be overlooked a lot.



2> Itemization
I am going to use Diablo here as a basis of comparison and a starting point. Blizzard really did something right here and I see few people utilizing the success of how this game did its drops. Static items with known stats (aka legendary and set items) as well as randomly generated (within certain guidelines) items and sets. WoW copied this to good effect and then expanded upon it later on. However I really would like to see a system with even more depth.

One area that this could really be fleshed out in is in a crafting environment. I was rather excited in the description of the crafting that had been talked about for Vanguard before the release, and after release the actual implementation fell FAR short of expectations.

They had talked about rare and very rare recipes that had a global timer. (aka crafter A discovers/finds/creates a recipe called Sword of the Ancients. Now that someone has discovered it, that recipe is taken out of circulation for the entire server for 3 weeks real time. The recipe has <random # of uses. say 1 to 5>. The sword then has random abilities(which will be different when the next crafter discovers/looks/creates it). The recipe calls for world drops and other crafted items X, Y and Z to complete the item. Once the last charge is used, the recipe itself is used up.

Its that kind of in-depth itemization that I personally love. (not to mention the awful disappointment of upgrading your gear two or three times and never seeing a graphical change)

Draegan said:

Heroic doesn"t really work in an MMO. I"ve felt heroic in games like NWN, Baldur"s Gate, KOTOR etc. In an MMO? Not really, unless you were that unique snowflake in EQ or any MUDs that I played. In WOW? No.

It"s hard to define Heroic in an open world where things are static and repeatable.

The only time I"ve felt heroic were end game raids, and this was shared throughout the guild.

I think the best way is to make everyone feel heroic as a whole, as a community. WAR did this with baby steps and havn"t been able to get people to work together yet. But if you can get the community as a whole (defined by your game mechanics and features) to work towards something, you will make everyone feel heroic.

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I cannot, off the top of my head, remember what the mmo was, but there was one that had community projects. For example, there was a bridge that took a TON of resources from all the different crafting fields: Lumber from a carpenter in mass quantities, rocks from the quarry etc.., Over the course of a few weeks as random people would contribute their resources to the community project you could watch the bridge get built. After it was completed there was new content you could then walk across the bridge to get to. I always thought it was a cool idea to get people working together.

Ngruk said:

The challenge to me is what people define as "Heroic", and finding the most common ground there. Hey, that"s going to be my next question.
1) Has any game ever made you feel like your character was really heroic?
2) If yes, what game? Why? Was it an acquired thing or was the game designed to make you feel that from start.
3) Does being heroic need to be exclusive to you? Do you feel heroic if everyone else can be where you are, or look like you?

As I typed this I thought of City Of Heroes. I played very little but laughed at that whole thought. If every player in the game is a "hero", well, how does that work?

Click to expand...

As much as I hate bringing up the EQ analogy, here it goes. The closest to "heroic" I felt was when, as a warrior, I knew that any mistake on my part meant my party/raid was toast. Nothing else has quite captured that sense of "responsibility" (and power) that this provided. It"s a somewhat masochistic in nature too, that if you do screw up you are first to get blamed (well that and healers). However, this feeling was quickly squashed by EQ"s mudflation--to the point that when WoW came out I purposely rolled hunter so that I would never be directly responsible for that again (no more main tanks for me, or so I thought).

Realistically I don"t think this feeling can or maybe even should be replicated. EQ"s system, for better or worse is a halcyon reminder of the "good old days." And this reminiscence falls apart in the new generation of games (Vanguard, EQ2).

As to the second part. I think there should be some "work" to achieve hero status. Sure killing 3000 bats is boring and non-heroic but the option is worse. If everyone starts as a hero (CoH here) then what is it that separates them from each other. Though it contradicts my mudflation issue from point one, there has to be some sort of barometer that separates the "hardcore" from the "casual."BUTthere should be some sort of equality between "good" players and "bad" players (I.E. Just because you have T6 doesn?t necessarily mean you are better than someone in T1, just that you have spent more time on the game).

Ngruk said:

Some fantastic responses. The 2 I think I have from this discussion are:

1) A completely thorough and robust "social" networking system.

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Definitely agree. More than just an armory profile, I want to be able to add friends and have them see what I"m up to, what bosses I"ve downed and what gear I"ve recently looted. I want to be able to access this social networking site from my cell phone and see what my guild has planned and check my DKP. I want a fully functioning twitter-style feed that will broadcast to everyone on my friends list that I can use for both "looking for healer for dungeon run" or anything else that comes to mind.

Ngruk said:

The challenge to me is what people define as "Heroic", and finding the most common ground there. Hey, that"s going to be my next question.
1) Has any game ever made you feel like your character was really heroic?
2) If yes, what game? Why? Was it an acquired thing or was the game designed to make you feel that from start.
3) Does being heroic need to be exclusive to you? Do you feel heroic if everyone else can be where you are, or look like you?

As I typed this I thought of City Of Heroes. I played very little but laughed at that whole thought. If every player in the game is a "hero", well, how does that work?

Click to expand...

1., 2.) I felt heroic in EverQuest, but not until I was max level slaying dragons, giants and later Gods themselves. It definitely wasn"t there in the beginning when I was killing snakes and rats, but the openness of the world enticed me enough to want to gain power and hopefully someday become that hero. However, we"re talking about making the character feel like a hero from day one, which is a very good idea.

They key is simply the storyline. Let"s take two scenarios for example:

A.) You create a half-elf rogue and get dropped into the starting area for that race and take your quests to kill some marauding goblins that have been attacking a nearby village. This is what most MMOs right now give you.

B.) You create your half-elf rogue and learn that you"ve recently stolen a valuable artifact from the King"s own bedchambers, and now must escape from the castle without being captured, learning the ropes of gameplay along the way. During your attempted escape, shadowy creatures from another plane storm the castle, killing anyone who gets in their way. You soon realize that they seek the very artifact that you had just stolen. You thought it was only something pretty to scrap for a few coin, what could they want with it? Perhaps it would be best to consult with your long time friend who is much more knowledgeable in matters of the arcane. . . . - this would lead you to an NPC who would set you off on other quests and begin your adventuring out into the world.

Which one sounds more fun to you?

3.) To me, heroic does not mean you have to be the "Superman" of a specific universe, the only supreme hero that must save everyone. Being heroic to me is more akin to being a main character in something like a fantasy novel. There are all sorts of heroes running around the Forgotten Realms, but that doesn"t matter. Drizzt and Elminster are both obviously "heroes" of the Realms, and the fact that they are both doing things in the world does not detract from the other. Even in an MMO where other people are doing the exact same quests and adventures as me, I don"t care as long as when I experienced it myself I felt like a hero. Every human or half-elf rogue in the game can go through that same starting scenario I described above, and it doesn"t make it feel any less important and engaging to me. If players want to stand out from one another, it can be done in other ways such as gear or achievements like titles rather than the storyline itself.

Draegan said:

But if you can get the community as a whole (defined by your game mechanics and features) to work towards something, you will make everyone feel heroic.

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So maybe you mean something like a story, that had players involved directly in the outcome? And maybe that outcome had a tangible meaningful effect for the winners? And maybe a tangible meaningful butdifferenteffect for the losers?

Interesting.

Ngruk, by your original request I had the impression you were requesting people to give you not design-related features that the game has, but more technical details that were required before people considered even picking up the game.

I don"t really see how events like that would end up being any different from the AQ event, or on a smaller scale the scourge event before Naxx. Neither of those made me feel heroic personally, and I would imagine only those who got the Scarab Lord title did.

It"s easier to make people feel heroic on a smaller scale. Something as simple as sending the player solo into a crypt to take on a powerful Lich and his minions makes the player feel more heroic than if they were sent to kill 10 Razortusk Boars. Mini solo instances that are heavily scripted with dialogue and a storyline that connects to other quests in the world would be a great start.

Don"t get me wrong though, I"m not against GM events or worldwide community events at all. Quite the opposite. I simply disagree that it makes an individual player feel heroic.