Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling
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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!
Azrayne
Irenicus did nothing wrong
- 2,161
- 786
I think the biggest thing with obtaining skills isn"t so much picking one particular route as it is putting some variety into it.
In my ideal system you would have class hubs with trainers and so forth, which you can access (a mage tower for mages, a rogues den, necromancer coven, warriors training centre, etc). From here you can purchase your basic skills. You can also access a resource (it can be a trainer, a library, whatever) which will guide you in your quest for greater power. So once I hit a certain level I might find out that there is a tribe of monsters living in a certain zone who"s casters have the ability to conjure powerful elementals. So I can go to their zone, do a nice quest chain for them (preferably relevant to them teaching me the spell, and not just a random quest with it tacked onto the end), and they teach me how to summon elementals.
Or the trainer/library/whatever can tell me there"s a rumour that a powerful boss in a certain dungeon who"s spent his lifetime researching teleportation. So I go to this dungeon and as I"m there I come across pages from one of his books, drop off mobs, find them on the ground, whatever. Once I have all 10 pages or whatever I combine them together into a tome that I can use to learn how to teleport.
They don"t need to be as complex, don"t need a 2 hour quest chain for every new AoE or nuke. Some of them can just be one off drops, or require me to search out a trainer in an obscure location, or world drops, or crafted. The idea is to add some more immersion to character progression, stimulate the ingame economy, create a setup of class specific content and encourage players to explore out into different parts of the gameworld. While simultaneously through the trainer/class hub giving players the information they need to seek out their new skills so they don"t have to resort to resource websites.
It also helps differentiate between characters and increase replayability, since each class will have it"s own set of quest chains for it"s new major abilities as class specific content. Great for the roleplayers.
I think there"s just a lot of untapped potential when it comes to obtaining skills. I think the genre took a huge step back when we went from EQ"s scrolls to WoW"s trainers. Trainers kill a huge amount of class identity and sense of progression, going up to an interchangeable NPC, clicking a button, losing some gold and gaining a skill is so boring, it feels like a bit of a cop out.
In my ideal system you would have class hubs with trainers and so forth, which you can access (a mage tower for mages, a rogues den, necromancer coven, warriors training centre, etc). From here you can purchase your basic skills. You can also access a resource (it can be a trainer, a library, whatever) which will guide you in your quest for greater power. So once I hit a certain level I might find out that there is a tribe of monsters living in a certain zone who"s casters have the ability to conjure powerful elementals. So I can go to their zone, do a nice quest chain for them (preferably relevant to them teaching me the spell, and not just a random quest with it tacked onto the end), and they teach me how to summon elementals.
Or the trainer/library/whatever can tell me there"s a rumour that a powerful boss in a certain dungeon who"s spent his lifetime researching teleportation. So I go to this dungeon and as I"m there I come across pages from one of his books, drop off mobs, find them on the ground, whatever. Once I have all 10 pages or whatever I combine them together into a tome that I can use to learn how to teleport.
They don"t need to be as complex, don"t need a 2 hour quest chain for every new AoE or nuke. Some of them can just be one off drops, or require me to search out a trainer in an obscure location, or world drops, or crafted. The idea is to add some more immersion to character progression, stimulate the ingame economy, create a setup of class specific content and encourage players to explore out into different parts of the gameworld. While simultaneously through the trainer/class hub giving players the information they need to seek out their new skills so they don"t have to resort to resource websites.
It also helps differentiate between characters and increase replayability, since each class will have it"s own set of quest chains for it"s new major abilities as class specific content. Great for the roleplayers.
I think there"s just a lot of untapped potential when it comes to obtaining skills. I think the genre took a huge step back when we went from EQ"s scrolls to WoW"s trainers. Trainers kill a huge amount of class identity and sense of progression, going up to an interchangeable NPC, clicking a button, losing some gold and gaining a skill is so boring, it feels like a bit of a cop out.
Not having a class quest since 40 is ridiculous. I"m saddened by the fact that a touted feature has been so readily abandoned.
Caliane
Avatar of War Slayer
- 15,318
- 11,606
Yeah, I"m going to have to agree.FoghornDeadhorn said:
Fireball 1-15 is lame. But its also really easy to understand, as well as keep track of upgrades.
If theres only 3-4 versions sure you could get away with Fire, Fira, Firaga, or Blaze, Blazemore, Blazemost.
One of the weaknesses of a War constant upgrade is each level is minor, and easy to overlook.
Which is made humorous with the mmo-like direction spell/skill use has taken in AD&D 4.0. Once per attack/fight/day very closely mimics your mmo spell cooldowns. No combat ability flat out fails, they simply don"t work as well if you flub your roll.Ukerric said:
I"m sure this is a much more lucrative direction to move, as has been time tested by the likes of Blizzard. At least since its a pen and paper game, if this level of pussification isn"t your thing, you can still play an older edition.
Azrayne
Irenicus did nothing wrong
- 2,161
- 786
Speaking as someone whos sole experience with D&D is through the RPG adaptions (BG & IWD series, PS:T, ToEE, Pools of Radiance, etc) I always found the memorization system incredibly asinine. The whole idea of having to memories a set quantity of spells every day always seemed really bizarre from a lore point of view and cumbersome from a gameplay point of view. Maybe there"s something about tabletop RPGing that makes it work really well in that context, but I never understood it personally.
The idea was that, out of the 3000 possible spell options you *could* have, multiplied by the number of times your stats/level let you cast them a day; you had to make hard choices and/or accept limitations.
Do you waste one of your precious spells for the day on something which may or may not be useful (a very specific damage type, or a limited utility spell). Like say some form of water breathing. If your adventure is set on a ship or in a sunken temple, its a no brainer. But what if you"re just on the coast? Underground? etc.
There was also the whole Husbanding spell use mechanic. Is this fight big enough/important enough/late in the day enough for me to blow *everything* on it?
Sometimes you guess wrong and drown or end up poking things for 1d4-3 damage. And it sucks, but it was all about choices *you* made, and living with the consequences.
And sometimes, glorious times, that one wasted spell slot on something goofy and stupid gets you out of jail and single handedly saves the adventure.
It all comes back to: Does your fun come in pure, undiluted strength, such that you become addicted to it and *that* level becomes the baseline of Blah; requiring ever higher amounts of excess to get your rocks off? Or do you take the whole experience, good times AND bad times, and perhaps Earn your fun?
Hint: while damn near every human WANTS option 1, very few of us are wired such to not be effected by the stated drawbacks.
Do you waste one of your precious spells for the day on something which may or may not be useful (a very specific damage type, or a limited utility spell). Like say some form of water breathing. If your adventure is set on a ship or in a sunken temple, its a no brainer. But what if you"re just on the coast? Underground? etc.
There was also the whole Husbanding spell use mechanic. Is this fight big enough/important enough/late in the day enough for me to blow *everything* on it?
Sometimes you guess wrong and drown or end up poking things for 1d4-3 damage. And it sucks, but it was all about choices *you* made, and living with the consequences.
And sometimes, glorious times, that one wasted spell slot on something goofy and stupid gets you out of jail and single handedly saves the adventure.
It all comes back to: Does your fun come in pure, undiluted strength, such that you become addicted to it and *that* level becomes the baseline of Blah; requiring ever higher amounts of excess to get your rocks off? Or do you take the whole experience, good times AND bad times, and perhaps Earn your fun?
Hint: while damn near every human WANTS option 1, very few of us are wired such to not be effected by the stated drawbacks.
This would be great. It would add a definite feeling of meaning to the quests you are doing, rather than just grinding out stuff for exp.Azrayne said:
And I agree, just going to a trainer and throwing some gold at them is kind of lame all things considered.
I agree. On Day 1 of WoW this really turned me off. I have since come to terms with it, knowing that WoW is far from an RP-based game. The truth is, 90% of WoW players could probably give a shit less what their spells are called, as long as it produces the required level of "pew pew".Northerner said:
That being said, I suppose it just depends on the context of the game. A spell ranking system of 1-15 like WoWs would have been shoddy in an RP-heavy game.
If your game concerns itself with immersion (which WoW clearly dosen"t) then having auxiliary RP features such as creatively named (and obtained) spells, abilities, and to some extent items only improves that goal. I always liked the RP direction, so my hope is that the 38S project has emphasis on it. Don"t get me wrong, I love WoW, but "Jaina"s Immolating Blast" as an alternate name for Fireball Rank 3 wouldn"t make much sense with the WoW approach.
One thing that I really liked about Vanguard playing Psionicist was the idea of Gasalts. What they basically were is a big rock stuck in the ground with a magic rune on it and when you clicked on it, you would get a certain spell if you met the level requirements.
What I really liked about it was they scattered them all over the world and you had to travel and quest to find out the locations of them.
If you were lazy you could just skip them as they weren"t class defining skills but "extra" skills that did something a little different or maybe had a minor effect but if you took the time to find them all and get them all, you were better prepared, and thus more desirable, in a group.
I also remember play testing EQOA (Everquest online adventure) for the PS2 and one thing I liked about that game too was certain quest rewards were spells. I think it was a class quest around level 8 or so that got my mage root and I remember thinking how cool that was.
What I really liked about it was they scattered them all over the world and you had to travel and quest to find out the locations of them.
If you were lazy you could just skip them as they weren"t class defining skills but "extra" skills that did something a little different or maybe had a minor effect but if you took the time to find them all and get them all, you were better prepared, and thus more desirable, in a group.
I also remember play testing EQOA (Everquest online adventure) for the PS2 and one thing I liked about that game too was certain quest rewards were spells. I think it was a class quest around level 8 or so that got my mage root and I remember thinking how cool that was.
I can tell you what the point of not having each rank be named is. Can you tell me what the separate names is? What it adds to the game?Slayder said:
A better approach, by the way, would be to learn from Blizzard about ranks of spells (rather than going through all of that shit again) and just have the same spell with class quests to make it more powerful. Best of both worlds.
Well WAR has produced a few things that will be standard in future MMOs. I assume 38 is looking at them:
- public quests and PVP quests
- much better instanced PVP scenarios than WoW (and yes some bad ones)
- public groups/warbands that auto-advertise when you enter an area
- no mana (mana has gone the way of health packs in FPS)
- all classes on a refilling Action Point system (basically all are on the WoW Rogue system)
- Tactics
- Morales
WoW and WAR unbelievably still do not have a decent LFG interface. Still nothing I have seen compares to the EQ1/2 LFG LFG interface. Not sure how that could happen, when getting people together quickly and easily should be your primary job in designing an MMO.
Some things I"d like to see in the perfect combat system. IMHO these would all make balancing way easier.
- uniform stat contribution for all classes (i.e. all classes get X points of Dodge per Y points of Agility, no special exceptions). Applies to everything, Dodge, Hit, Crit, Resists, HPs, etc.
- uniform mechanics for base ability damage, with no difference between caster/melee. You can do that two ways: (1) main hand (wand, sword, whatever) determines base damage of ability for all classes, or (2) ability base damage is fixed, main hand only affects auto-attack (like in WAR).
- a % based resist system for all effects and damage. For example, your resist roll vs. a slow would reduce the slow by 50%. Resist roll vs. a stun would reduce the duration by 50%. 100% resists would be rare and so would 0%.
- Either all classes suffer push back or none of them do.
- No "in-combat" or "out-of-combat".
- No such thing as "procs only X times per Y seconds".
- Either all classes get auto attack, or none of them do. For casters Wand / Staff would be auto-ranged attack.
- All derived stats are vs. same level opponent. Crit, hit, resists, etc...
Some other stuff:
- very,very restricted use of the following: "class only" gear, level limit gear, BOE, BOP. Should be reserved for only the most epic items in the game, or where lore dictates.
- Damage/Healing meters built into the client.
- public quests and PVP quests
- much better instanced PVP scenarios than WoW (and yes some bad ones)
- public groups/warbands that auto-advertise when you enter an area
- no mana (mana has gone the way of health packs in FPS)
- all classes on a refilling Action Point system (basically all are on the WoW Rogue system)
- Tactics
- Morales
WoW and WAR unbelievably still do not have a decent LFG interface. Still nothing I have seen compares to the EQ1/2 LFG LFG interface. Not sure how that could happen, when getting people together quickly and easily should be your primary job in designing an MMO.
Some things I"d like to see in the perfect combat system. IMHO these would all make balancing way easier.
- uniform stat contribution for all classes (i.e. all classes get X points of Dodge per Y points of Agility, no special exceptions). Applies to everything, Dodge, Hit, Crit, Resists, HPs, etc.
- uniform mechanics for base ability damage, with no difference between caster/melee. You can do that two ways: (1) main hand (wand, sword, whatever) determines base damage of ability for all classes, or (2) ability base damage is fixed, main hand only affects auto-attack (like in WAR).
- a % based resist system for all effects and damage. For example, your resist roll vs. a slow would reduce the slow by 50%. Resist roll vs. a stun would reduce the duration by 50%. 100% resists would be rare and so would 0%.
- Either all classes suffer push back or none of them do.
- No "in-combat" or "out-of-combat".
- No such thing as "procs only X times per Y seconds".
- Either all classes get auto attack, or none of them do. For casters Wand / Staff would be auto-ranged attack.
- All derived stats are vs. same level opponent. Crit, hit, resists, etc...
Some other stuff:
- very,very restricted use of the following: "class only" gear, level limit gear, BOE, BOP. Should be reserved for only the most epic items in the game, or where lore dictates.
- Damage/Healing meters built into the client.
Daezuel
Potato del Grande
- 23,404
- 50,190
Who gives a shit about what the spells name is? What I was disappointed with in WoW"s system was more that rank one fireball looked the same as rank thirteen. That"s the big deal, I initially rolled a mage in WoW thinking I"d like get to level 60 and see all the cool spell effects in the game. LOL FLAMESTRIKE.
Yeah, I don"t care about names, but I do think spells should LOOK more powerful as you rank up with more impressive spell effects to make you feel more powerful. It"s all about the "wow that was badass" carrot on the stick imo. (as far as the whole progression of spells/abilities go, I care far more for balance and "fun" than any of that shit)
Yeah, I don"t care about names, but I do think spells should LOOK more powerful as you rank up with more impressive spell effects to make you feel more powerful. It"s all about the "wow that was badass" carrot on the stick imo. (as far as the whole progression of spells/abilities go, I care far more for balance and "fun" than any of that shit)
Zehnpai
Molten Core Raider
- 399
- 1,245
Well, ideally you"d have every spell and it"s various path upgrades come via class specific quests. That way when you do go with the job system, each new job does have new stuff to do.
Of course, keep in mind I advocate the abandoning of the traditional "Kill 300 boars, ding, grats 13!" method of character advancement and instead think all character advancement should be achievement/quest based.
I don"t mind the spell being called "Fireball." And replacing "Fireball" with "Shanty"s Big Flaming Hurled Thingy" doesn"t really shiver me timbers in a different manner at all really.
I mean, for your flavor spells, sure why not. But let"s be honest, do you really need to come up with a new name for Disintegrate? It"s badass enough as is. The only time it should get a new name is when it"s a new spell, not an upgrade to an old one. Shitty real life analogies are shitty but I don"t rename it "Zehn"s stupdendous physics defying whackout" when I learned how to throw a better curve ball.
In the end, I think your players would appreciate slaying the arch-wizard who trained you as a child in your power-hungry mad search for the secrets he held on unlocking the ability to have your ice bolt ability also snare the target at the behest of your new master then killing 500 bear"s and turning in the collect bear asses quest and going to a trainer, paying 5 silver and going, "GRATS I AM NOW SMERT +1"
Of course, keep in mind I advocate the abandoning of the traditional "Kill 300 boars, ding, grats 13!" method of character advancement and instead think all character advancement should be achievement/quest based.
I don"t mind the spell being called "Fireball." And replacing "Fireball" with "Shanty"s Big Flaming Hurled Thingy" doesn"t really shiver me timbers in a different manner at all really.
I mean, for your flavor spells, sure why not. But let"s be honest, do you really need to come up with a new name for Disintegrate? It"s badass enough as is. The only time it should get a new name is when it"s a new spell, not an upgrade to an old one. Shitty real life analogies are shitty but I don"t rename it "Zehn"s stupdendous physics defying whackout" when I learned how to throw a better curve ball.
In the end, I think your players would appreciate slaying the arch-wizard who trained you as a child in your power-hungry mad search for the secrets he held on unlocking the ability to have your ice bolt ability also snare the target at the behest of your new master then killing 500 bear"s and turning in the collect bear asses quest and going to a trainer, paying 5 silver and going, "GRATS I AM NOW SMERT +1"
Zehnpai
Molten Core Raider
- 399
- 1,245
Oh yeah, Curt. Heart to heart on this one. Please for the love of god listen to the EQ necromancer and WoW druid community from the past 10 goddamn years. Should you have a class with a spell that changes what they look like and it"s an ability that is typically permanantly up...slap yourself for being a dick.FoghornDeadhorn said:
Nobody likes that shit past the first hour. I was sick to death by the first day that my necro -always- looked the same no matter what I had. Druids are sick to death of the same shit.
As part of the spell casting graphic? Sure, why not. But for the love of god, do not be that guy.
Lumi
Vyemm Raider
- 4,307
- 3,032
What I don"t get is why nobody can do the intelligence/wisdom stats correctly and well most stats in general. This is more important then most designers seem to think since really the game is mostly about your stats and how they affect your ability within the game world. Theres lots of ways that stats could be made more interesting.
In fact the only game that"s done it pretty well is Meridian 59
Skill caps and skill increases and amount of skills that can be learned should be directly based on intelligence. For instance an ogre warrior in EQ1 should not be able to have the same skill caps as say a human warrior with equal gear. This would also apply to general skills like swimming, bind wound etc so that sure while an ogre warrior might be stronger and have more health, but the human will be a bit more versatile by having improved stat caps and more versatility with offensive/defensive skills that the ogre couldn"t learn.
There should also be a pool of skills/abilities available to you that you can only learn a limited amount of but the more intelligence you have, the more abilities you can learn. This is how AA"s/disc"s should have been done in EQ. Instead of being able to obtain say every discipline and every AA, you should have been forced to make decisions between certain ones which adds much needed diversity.
In fact the only game that"s done it pretty well is Meridian 59
Skill caps and skill increases and amount of skills that can be learned should be directly based on intelligence. For instance an ogre warrior in EQ1 should not be able to have the same skill caps as say a human warrior with equal gear. This would also apply to general skills like swimming, bind wound etc so that sure while an ogre warrior might be stronger and have more health, but the human will be a bit more versatile by having improved stat caps and more versatility with offensive/defensive skills that the ogre couldn"t learn.
There should also be a pool of skills/abilities available to you that you can only learn a limited amount of but the more intelligence you have, the more abilities you can learn. This is how AA"s/disc"s should have been done in EQ. Instead of being able to obtain say every discipline and every AA, you should have been forced to make decisions between certain ones which adds much needed diversity.
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