Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Fog said:

Just take away the carrot...

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I would say your argument is severely flawed, but I am not even sure I know what you are trying to say. It"s like this... I do not need to share a world with mouth breathing retards to experience quests and lore. I can pick up a book, I can play 100"s of different console games, or do what ever the fuck gives me "OMG, I"m in another world jollies".

So ya, remove the carrot from your MMO... that?s a great idea... what exactly are you trying to design a game for? Plants? Animals? How many of dandelions or dogs do you know that will put up $15 a month to play your game? Being a person... I have feelings such as pride, ambition, and greed. Sure there are other reasons to play mmo"s, but 10 years of experience tells me these are what keeps people logging in more than any other reason.

Oh you might be sitting there thinking how WRONG I am... You"re thinking, "I am not a greedy person... I just like to have FUN!" How fun is it to run Naxx for the 30th time, when you got all the gear you could possibly want on the 10th run... but you do it. You do it because even when the game fails you in providing that next carrot, we create our own in the form of DKP, or being the top of your class in the guild leaders mind.

I need to back peddle just a bit... There is a miniscule subset of people out there that the current crop MMO"s does fail. These are the people you describe. They don"t need carrots. They don"t give a damn about getting the next level. They are like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction... He believes he is enlightened, he is above it all, and he is going to remove himself from the rat-race and live a life of wandering. But thankfully we have John Travolta there to cock slap him back to reality. That reality is that he wants to be a bum.

So as you see, people that read quest text, clearly are bums.

There are some very valid points in the last posts, I"d like to comment about:

Monster variety: I played D&D for 21 years, pretty much with the same people and one of the things we really love, is fitting the most weird monsters in our adventures. Goblins, bugbears, ogres have their place as usual, but I can tell you that the monster manual is big enough to amaze even the most veteran players in most adventures.

There is no need to go out of the way, campaigns must mantain a certain feeling to them, but be them random encounters or dungeon end bosses, rare monsters spice up stories a lot more than the usual "dragon in the lair".

Since monsters can scale just as players, why limit yourself to lvl 1 snakes and lvl 20 golems+lichs? It"s possible to scale down (or up) most monsters, give a theme feeling to a campaign and still produce kickass content.

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I"m still sold on levelling, and not so hot on skill-based system (ala UO so to say), because in the end all these things are just a skin you lay on character progression and I like the levels more. What I don"t really like is the constant +10 level for each expansion, it doesn"t make sense to me, but I guess it"s the lazy way out to have people consume the oh-so-cool levelling content.

Taking for example WotLK: what about having major questlines give new spells/skills as reward, thus "forcing" people to do them? Damn, you saved Undercity, good job pal, learn this new spell and enjoy it for the days to come.

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Classes: I can"t wait for a non-asian MMO to implement the job system. I"d really like to keep playing one character, but I"m quite an altoholic, yet it pisses me off to no end that I"m losing all I got with my previous char. The same deal for professions: why the hell I must be limited to 2 professions and thus forced to level a new character to raise 2 more?
I understand the need for devs to promote replayability, but I can guarantee that a truckload of players would feel more compelled in levelling all classes/professions on a single character, rather than rerolling new ones over and over.

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Gear: can we get rid of constant upgrades at this insane rhythm? Equipment should be meaningful, not just a stepping stone towards the next piece which I"ll obtain in two weeks top. Sidegrades are boring, period. Let me upgrade my own gear through quests, crafting and whatnot, doesn"t have to be every 20 minutes nor 12 months, but relying on something that is just not RNG would be an extremely good thing.

Maybe many players wouldn"t be that cool with this, but I think an upgraded Thunderfury (for example) to be on your character all the time, would have been a good thing. It doesn"t have to be the best sword, it just needs to be exactly as good as the best weapon available once fully upgraded, so there is an alternative for players who missed the MC days, but the old school ones could still keep a TF if they wish so (and new players can go get one if they really want to).

Epic quests: yeah, goddamn epic quests ala EQ1 (just a bit less camping and more epic oriented, please). Coupled with the upgradable weapon feature, this could be something extremely cool to have. No bindings of the windseeker please (or however they were named).

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Class quests: one every 10 levels, at the very least, don"t be lazy, amaze us. I want to feel like I"m progressing in my career, gaining ranks in my order so to say, there is no better thing than class quests at that.
WoW was so cool at the beginning as a druid, bear form quest, poison cleansing, aquatic form... then devs probably got too lazy and just stuck spells on trainers, including cat form (for which I totally expected a quest).

As a rogue it was even worse: I was sent into this hidden cove in the mountains and pretty much nothing came out of it but maybe a stupid new item and a broken quest chain? (can"t remember really).

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Mentoring: single handedly the best feature I"ve ever used in a MMO (EQ2). The fact I could at any moment, scale down to play with a friend or to help lowbies doing a dungeon while mantaining it interesting, was just nothing short of awesome.

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I think I rambled about pretty much everything now, sorry for the wall of text.

bobyab said:

I have feelings such as pride, ambition, and greed. Sure there are other reasons to play mmo"s, but 10 years of experience tells me these are what keeps people logging in more than any other reason.

Oh you might be sitting there thinking how WRONG I am... You"re thinking, "I am not a greedy person... I just like to have FUN!" How fun is it to run Naxx for the 30th time, when you got all the gear you could possibly want on the 10th run... but you do it. You do it because even when the game fails you in providing that next carrot, we create our own in the form of DKP, or being the top of your class in the guild leaders mind.

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No, I agree. This is exactly what I meant. A whole lot of people are just playing because they want to be the top of their class and get the best gear. That goal doesn"t have much to do with lore and quest text, and when content "gets in the way" of their work to become the best (like when they don"t immediately know where to go for a quest and have to spend time thinking about it, or when the "fun" quest line gives lousy rewards and the "boring" one has great rewards) then they try to get around the content so they can get back to being the best as soon as they can.

Most MMORPGs have a progression system that totally supports this idea of being the best. In WoW, you can look at your character stats, and know that you really have better gear than your buddy over there and you will absolutely perform better in the game. I don"t think it"s any surprise that a ton of people pay attention to that and not the story/lore/mystery/whatever "RPG" part of the game as much.

They could take all that out, if they wanted to, and then they would be left with just people who were interested in the content. For a long time, there were a lot of pretty serious virtual worlds with none of that, back when MUDs and MOOs were king. But I don"t think as many people are interested in that sort of thing -- I think Second Life is a pretty good representation of the size of that market.

Fog said:

No, I agree.

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Uh...been done.

Edit: And guess what peoples #1 complaint about the game has been. Drumroll if you would please?

BadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadaCLANG

A complete lack of an endgame.

Miele said:

I"m still sold on levelling, and not so hot on skill-based system (ala UO so to say)

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UO isn"t what we"re talking about. I mean it sorta is, but it also mostly isn"t.

Basically, well...I guess the easiest way to explain it is to take EverQuest AA"s and instead of just grinding out 400 boars to ding levels/aa"s, you attach a quest to each one. Tie that into LOTRO"s virtue system/WoW"s achievement system and it"s just absolute tits.

I"d go more into elaborate detail but it"s 5:30 in the fucking AM and I really should be in bed. Even God isn"t awake at this hour, fuck.

CoH was a fun game, it just needed the endgame. It actually now has some nice loot in the form or epic quality enhancements, shame their development team were such morons early on and lacked the funding/manpower to take the game in the direction it needed to go. Still has better animations and smoother gameplay than pretty much any game on the market for as dated as it is.

Zehn - Vhex said:

Ice Comet made us wet our pants because it did 2x the damage of the previous damage spell and almost 5x the damage of the previous spell rank. If frostbolt rank 9 was a 5x damage up over frostbolt rank 8 sure as shit I would wet myself.

If you want it to be more immersive, (which is a meainingless word to begin with but fuck it I"ll roll with it), they need to work on how you get the spells. Not what the fuck you call it. You could name a spell "Mike Phelps mighty bong hit" but it wouldn"t mean dick if all I do is go to a trainer and buy the spell after killing 300 antelope or whatever other retarded wildlife creature developers eventually start phoning it in with.

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Actually (base damage numbers) :

Lightning Shock lvl 37 570 damage
Conflagration lvl 43 900 dmg
Rend lvl 47 855 damage
Ice Comet lvl 49 808 damage


What was special about it was casting time and the fact it was based on Cold resist with a neg check on cold resist. The majority of mobs in early EQ were more resistant to the Fire and Magic damage type than cold,


But, like you, Ice Comet has always been THE skill in pretty much any MMO in terms of standing out in the memory. Part of that was and is down to the name, for me at least - plus, like you and Foghorn are advocating, the way you got it. It was one of the few abilities you had to do a lengthy quest to achieve - Tartons Wheel (I seem to recall it was also a rare drop off Vox).



I wouldn"t want to see the majority of spells and skills achieved by questing - well, actually, I would - because it would have a major drawback. The amount of times you would have to spend questing for your skills or abilities would mean most people would either skip the majority of them or spend no time adventuring and all their time questing for them. There would be more of the former than the latter, as people would choose to forgo most of them.

I would like to see key spells and abilities quested for a la" Ice Comet.


edit : the other reason Ice Comet stood out, at least once they later enhanced it, was the superb and unique graphic they gave it.

Flight said:

Actually (base damage numbers) :

Lightning Shock lvl 37 570 damage
Conflagration lvl 43 900 dmg
Rend lvl 47 855 damage
Ice Comet lvl 49 808 damage


What was special about it was casting time and the fact it was based on Cold resist with a neg check on cold resist. The majority of mobs in early EQ were more resistant to the Fire and Magic damage type than cold,


But, like you, Ice Comet has always been THE skill in pretty much any MMO in terms of standing out in the memory. Part of that was and is down to the name, for me at least - plus, like you and Foghorn are advocating, the way you got it. It was one of the few abilities you had to do a lengthy quest to achieve - Tartons Wheel (I seem to recall it was also a rare drop off Vox).



I wouldn"t want to see the majority of spells and skills achieved by questing - well, actually, I would - because it would have a major drawback. The amount of times you would have to spend questing for your skills or abilities would mean most people would either skip the majority of them or spend no time adventuring and all their time questing for them. There would be more of the former than the latter, as people would choose to forgo most of them.

I would like to see key spells and abilities quested for a la" Ice Comet.

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Much life lifeleech was for SK"s - I used it till the 60+ taps came out- and still busted it out for long lifetap rotation set ups and dueling. The quest involved was fun, got you into your class some more and was generally enjoyable.

They revamped almost all spells - icecomet used to hit for 1200+.

Gnome Eater said:

They revamped almost all spells - icecomet used to hit for 1200+.

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Yeah, but that wasn"t recent, it was early on. Even after changes it remained memorable and stood out.

Flight said:

Yeah, but that wasn"t recent, it was early on. Even after changes it remained memorable and stood out.

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This was like well after Kunark.

To give an idea of how amazing Ice Comet was, Sunstrike, which was the top Kunark spell, used to hit for 1600, and that was considered amazing, and that"s a 1/3 upgrade.

bobyab said:

I would say your argument is severely flawed, but I am not even sure I know what you are trying to say. It"s like this... I do not need to share a world with mouth breathing retards to experience quests and lore. I can pick up a book, I can play 100"s of different console games, or do what ever the fuck gives me "OMG, I"m in another world jollies".

So ya, remove the carrot from your MMO... that?s a great idea... what exactly are you trying to design a game for? Plants? Animals? How many of dandelions or dogs do you know that will put up $15 a month to play your game? Being a person... I have feelings such as pride, ambition, and greed. Sure there are other reasons to play mmo"s, but 10 years of experience tells me these are what keeps people logging in more than any other reason.

Oh you might be sitting there thinking how WRONG I am... You"re thinking, "I am not a greedy person... I just like to have FUN!" How fun is it to run Naxx for the 30th time, when you got all the gear you could possibly want on the 10th run... but you do it. You do it because even when the game fails you in providing that next carrot, we create our own in the form of DKP, or being the top of your class in the guild leaders mind.

I need to back peddle just a bit... There is a miniscule subset of people out there that the current crop MMO"s does fail. These are the people you describe. They don"t need carrots. They don"t give a damn about getting the next level. They are like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction... He believes he is enlightened, he is above it all, and he is going to remove himself from the rat-race and live a life of wandering. But thankfully we have John Travolta there to cock slap him back to reality. That reality is that he wants to be a bum.

So as you see, people that read quest text, clearly are bums.

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He has a point.
Content is King.

Look at WAR, for a moment.
When it first came out people were purposely NOT leveling into t4 because t3 pvp was more enjoyable.
Create a game that has real extended content at all levels, and people won"t feel the need to max out to "end game", if end game exists on all levels.

Look at how many people play twinks in wow, etc. And what is really potentially interesting about this, is the "casual" gamer is given content at all levels as well then.



The other topics;
no more wildlife. lol.
Immersion is very important. There are Role playing games for a reason. A balance of immersion and fun needs to be achieved however. Permanent death is immersive, but not very fun, for example.
Rng loot is brilliant imo. Getting something you want, then being able o keep going on the chance of getting a better version of the same item is a great way to add replay, or what is effectively a soft cap. (This requires no raid timers, or the like.)

People here have absolutely no clue about design. Do you really think you can create enough content so that people always feel they are "levelling up"?

The ratio of time spent at the level cap versus levelling up is completely out of wack if you consider the amount of time creating content for the level cap versus content levelling up.

Gnome Eater said:

People here have absolutely no clue about design. Do you really think you can create enough content so that people always feel they are "levelling up"?

The ratio of time spent at the level cap versus levelling up is completely out of wack if you consider the amount of time creating content for the level cap versus content levelling up.

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Yes?
Re-playability is the key.
Pvp tends to be the easiest way to do it.
Look how much time people spend playing the same maps in various FPS"s, or in Diablo doing various loot runs. You don"t need NEW content if the content you have is worth doing over and over.

Lets use the WAR tiered pvp zones for an example. They aren"t perfect by a long shot, but can be used as a model.
Imagine each teir had multiple gear options, and a ladder to keep track of players performance in that teir. You could sit there in tier 1 for months, staying on top of the ladder in that zone if you wanted. Or if each Tier had real objectives that only players in that level range could achieve over time.

Giving people a reason to stay in lower zones is a GREAT way to keep old zones active, and have all the effort spent on them, not turn into people leveling through zones in a week and having 2k people all sitting around in the end game zones.

Gnome Eater said:

People here have absolutely no clue about design.

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This.

Nothing like incredibly wrong armchair design early in the morning.

I"d love to have a nonstop succession of levelling content with lore that kept evolving but yeah, that"s not going to happen. It takes Blizzard 2 years to create the levelling/pre-raid game of WOTLK, and you can probably consume that in 2 months playing incredibly casually (I mean see everything, not hit level 80).

Completely agree on the issue of wildlife. Have "critters" as Blizzard calls them for flavor, but I"m not interested in quests involving them. You can make a hunting mini-game out of them for skinning/cooking tradeskills if you want, complete with very rare animals, but leave it at that.

Another related thing that irritates me with this is level scaling. I want to see a game where the level of a creature is actually meaningful, as it is in Dungeons and Dragons. I mean, you run around Grizzly Hills on WoW and you have level 75 bears and wolves and whatnot. Am I the only one that thinks this is kind of ridiculous?

To me, your average human NPC who sells flowers in the city should be level 0, the baseline. Animals, no higher than level 10 for the most badass bear or lion or whatever. It should follow some kind of logic. At level 80, a player should be considered the type of mortal who could ascend to godhood or something.

I dunno, maybe I"m just being too much of a dnd nerd here, but it"s just stupid that a wolf in Howling Fjord is higher "level" than C"thun, a god.

Zehn - Vhex said:

UO isn"t what we"re talking about. I mean it sorta is, but it also mostly isn"t.

Basically, well...I guess the easiest way to explain it is to take EverQuest AA"s and instead of just grinding out 400 boars to ding levels/aa"s, you attach a quest to each one. Tie that into LOTRO"s virtue system/WoW"s achievement system and it"s just absolute tits.

I"d go more into elaborate detail but it"s 5:30 in the fucking AM and I really should be in bed. Even God isn"t awake at this hour, fuck.

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The difference is that instead of doing one quest for every class-talent-aa combo, you do one quest that everyone can use (collect 10 bear asses) and that everyone can convert into their aa-talent of choice. The latter option is quite more appealing from a developer"s point of view (and the budget guy too I guess) in terms of time spent designing and balancing all of them, isn"t it?

Stupid wow example, because it always fits: a class has on average 27-29 different talents per tree, plus, I"m totally shooting numbers out of my ass, about... 50 spells? Make it 50 for simplicity.

So you would need to set at least 10ish baseline spells (let"s define them as the basic fireball of the class, newbie quests rewards if you wish so) and 60+ quested ones if I understood your idea correctly, meaning that in a relatively small amount of classes environment, say 10, you"d have to craft 600+ unique and entertaining quests (and I assume some should take a little bit longer than 10 minutes).

Holy fuck, 600 beatiful and entertaining quests? Where do I sign up with my blood?
After 4 years and some, I can maybe count 60 quests like this in wow (and being generous in labeling them fun/beatiful), I don"t think it"s remotely feasible to expect 600 great quests on a MMO release, hell, most players would set for 50 great quests shared among all classes, considering most are just plain garbage "bears anatomy inspection" type.

Sure, in a utopistic reality, I"d join you in this awesome world of awesomecraft, but unless a miracle happens, I don"t see such plans ever seeing the light, but I"m a terrible armchair designer after all, so I may miss your solution or maybe I misunderstood your basic idea.

I don"t believe anyone should remove general questing from the game as long as it"s done well. I think questing merely for the sake of leveling, and having no class identity is just as wrong an extreme as what you"ve painted.

What do you guys think about the potential of Blizzard"s "Phasing" mechanic as a way to answer some of the issues with non-instanced content?

I"m always arguing in favor of a game that has both instanced and non-instanced dungeons, and I was thinking phasing could be an interesting mechanic in regards to making non-instanced stuff work.

Quest-specific mobs could be phased out to people not on that quest. If you"re running around the dungeon and see someone fighting them, you"ll know they"re on your quest and you might form a group. Other players wouldn"t be in your way because they don"t even see those mobs.

Nameds could spawn and only be visible to certain groups within the zone, then when they are killed the group receives a hidden flag that ensures the same named wont be phased in to them for a certain amount of time, giving other groups a shot at it. This would keep people from just camping a spot and encourage them to move around and find other named or get into other adventures.

It would give you something similar to that old school dungeon competition but would inspire less animosity towards fellow players because the opportunity for griefing is much lower.