Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Flight said:

You have to be able to actively choose what you loot, much of the time, with no amount of filtering solving the issue

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Let"s be honest, when was the last time you right clicked on a mob and actively chose not to loot something while solo? Alright, that"s done with.

In a group, most of the filters are already in place. You can auto-pass on RR, you can even filter the quality if you like. The NBG roll screen is fine as is as well. And it"s not like auto-loot override BoP.

You"re overthinking this. It really is that simple. If it"s tradeable, it"s auto-lootable and hence, a non-issue since if the wrong person loots it, you can always trade it after.

If it"s BoP, then naturally auto-loot wouldn"t kick in and you"d get a notice. Not being retarded when designing quest items will take care of that situation as well.

Azrayne said:

Oh I agree entirely in that regard. One thing Blizzard did so well was make their low level content polished and accessable, it doesn"t matter how awesome your endgame is if everybody stops playing at level 7 and cancels their subscription.

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And I agree that the game needs to evolve into a grouping atmosphere. I said several pages ago that they should start small though. Taking WoW as an example, RFC/SFK/WC/etc...should have been 2~3 mannable. Just make it larger groups of non-elites with the bosses just having 3x a normal mobs hp or something. Whatever, you get the idea.

It"s a lot easier in the early game to find one or two other people. It"s a pain in the ass in the early game to find a tank, a healer and if your game considers it a "role", CC, etc...

Moreover, 2 years down the line when hopefully new people are still coming into your game, they all end up skipping the low level dungeons and group content entirely because it requires 5 people and there"s maybe 3 people total in the proper level range and one of them is afk.

I mean, one of my favorite passtimes used to be rolling up alts and grouping with one or two friends. Facilitate that.

Oh, and finally, if you do go with an experience->levels (/YAWN) gamestyle, don"t split xp so harshly. With 2 people in group, both should still get full reward. 90% each for 3 people, 80% each for 4 people, 70% for 5 people and beyond, no lower. If you violate this rule, you are out of MMO-club and will not be allowed back because it"s obvious you hate people who group up.

Azrayne said:

Honestly Zehn, I don"t understand where your love of solo gameplay comes from. I definately think it needs to be a viable option, but I think grouping should always be preferable.

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I"m with Zehn, in the belief that any successful MMO - at this moment in time - needs to have a strong solo experience from 1-max. But it can have a lot more than that.

Small group levelling should be more than an option. XP penalties are traditionally too hard on small groups who level together. They all say, "..hey, two people can kill twice as many mobs faster than one person so just over half the XP is fine..", without taking into account travel time and that there usually isn"t enough mob density in areas to support the hypothesis.


Most of what we are saying is based on existing games, but lets think outside the box, again. If story, adventuring, enjoying your skills/abilities and the graphics to go with them are driving your game, rather than the grind to max level it changes a lot of things and we just haven"t seen a game like that yet. The Bioware Star Wars game will prolly achieve this.

What I am saying, not particualrly well, is that I want the game levelling experience to be more of an objective than it presently is, compared to end game content, because it has depth and is fun.




And, related to that, I would love to see a skill AND level based character system.Why not have both ?PL all you want, miss all the content you want, its an option - but you are going to gimp your character - at least for a while.

Pllllleeaaaaase make this system and use a time based skill system, a la EvE, to aid character development. Make the skill tree options wide ranging. Make an outline plan for them stretching 5-10 years and a number of expansions into the future, so that the skills are as significant and as big or as small a growth mechanism as your game devs define they need to be. If this is done properly it does not stop guys with a months worth of skill doing end game with the guy with 5 years worth of skills. It might stop you getting into the top 0.01% of guilds, but something is going to.

Zehn - Vhex said:

Let"s be honest, when was the last time you right clicked on a mob and actively chose not to loot something while solo? Alright, that"s done with.

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Many, many times. Always, if inventory is full. The answer to this is going to differ from person to person, according to play style. And there are many pack rats out there.

Then set the filter to only loot things over a certain value, or turn on the filter to only loot green quality+ items. Or set it to only loot if you"re under 80% inventory capacity. Unless you"re basing your decision on whether or not the item is pretty, chances are a filter can be created. Especially with a healthy modding community. You should see my auto-destroy list. It"s like 9000 items long now.

Why does my inventory have a size? Besides roleplaying reasons. Isn"t it just nothing but frustration?

Fog said:

Why does my inventory have a size? Besides roleplaying reasons. Isn"t it just nothing but frustration?

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This.

I always hate my first few hours of gameplay until I can get sufficient bag space. I realize it"s "realism" (although how the f*** am I carrying 8 backpacks and fighting?), but if feels more like an arbitrary limit on how long I can "play" the game before having to run back to sell.

I don"t why it annoys me so much when there are things that should annoy me more

I think it"s a matter of consistency. Inventory management doesn"t seem to fit with any game that doesn"t require you to do other RP-like things. At least in Diablo you could go back and forth with great rapidity once you had reached a certain point where the scrolls were cheap. Of course, Diablo had perhaps the most annoying inventory system ever.

I totally agree. Inventory management is a pain in the ass and not fun at all.

Fog said:

Why does my inventory have a size? Besides roleplaying reasons. Isn"t it just nothing but frustration?

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Well, the upper limit is usually a database decision. VG had nigh infinite bank space during beta and the results were...interesting. But why there"s such a low limit to begin with is yeah, silly. Although ironically this ultimate leads to the bank alt situation anyways. Has to be a better solution somewhere.

It"s one of those terrible ideas that keep getting ported from game to game for some really terrible fucking reason that developers think we "enjoy" making choices between looting and not looting shit.

It"s retarded and they need to quit that shit out. In all games for that matter. Find me one review where someone said, "Y"know...Mass Effect was a pretty good game, but it could have been made better if I was only allowed to carry 15 items at a time and had to keep going back to the store to sell off excess loot."

You won"t, because Sim Closet Space is a fucking stupid idea.

Zehn - Vhex said:

You won"t, because Sim Closet Space is a fucking stupid idea.

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Maybe. However, it"s also used as a time and money sink to force people to revisit/use npc vendors more often, and to purchase progressively bigger bags. It also serves as a reason to have cloth/clothing/outfitting classes craft bags, contributing to certain degrees of game depth.

I"m sure this as well as other features will be phased out as games keep seeking to satisfy the increasingly immediate gratification desired by players... until it hurts their subs

And for those complaining about inventory organization, thereshouldbe a better way to see/organize items in inventory. Horizons/Istaria used an interchangable visual and list format to be able to see and find inventory items, though they also factored encumbrance into the game for said items.

I think there needs to be a limit for technical reasons if nothing else. What would happen if a character ran around with 10,000 items on him all the time? I"m not an expert on server stuff, but it seems like that would create performance issues for that player if no one else. [[Edit: As Zehn said said above regarding VG, that"s what I get for sitting here with the reply window open while I afk.]]

I agree though, it seems like the point of a limited inventory is to add some type of challenge to the game, and yet it doesn"t really. I guess it does help to impede excessive farming/botting, but not much. It also serves to limit the amount of money a new player can make at the start of the game since they"re bringing back less vendor loot. Is that worth frustrating the player? Probably not.

At the very least, have a separate inventory for quest items and a separate inventory for tradeskill items and mats. This not only helps clear up loot inventory space, but also clues the player in that those other items could be sold to tradeskillers or are important for quests, etc.

Well, you don"t necessarily have to go that far. Quest items can easily be baked right into your quest journal. And how WoW differentiates Tskill items from vendor trash is pretty good. There"s plenty of other shit that doesn"t need to take up inventory space though.

Oh, and fuck resist gear. That shit has never been a good idea in any game that"s used it.

Anyways...I"m pretty much anti-anything that breaks game flow. Which is why I have such a raging hardon for hating on things like looting, inventory management, mana vs. energy, etc...etc...

UnchainedAcolyte said:

Maybe...

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There"s better methods of doing so. If your idea of a good money sink is annoying the shit out of your playerbase (HERE"S LOOKING AT YOU DURABILITY) then you have already failed as a developer.

A good money sink is something players should want to spend money on, not something they have to. Mounts/collectable pets are a good start. Player housing is a fucking money sink goldmine. Shit like that. And in game arcade/ccg system or something.

As for making tradeskills useful...well...maybe when I"m drunk I"ll explain how tradeskills have been continually fucked up by developers that have no clue what the shit they"re doing.

As for me, It"s noon so you know what that means kiddies. It"s Rock Band time!

Edit:

Just got this neg for a post in the EQ fanboy thread

M Leveling up in WoW is some of the most boring, dumbing down the process to trained monkey level and discouraging the premise of grouping is horrible idea. Not only is it boring as shit, but you"ll lose and frustrate customers.

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I should really know better then to interject logic into circle jerks. You know how I said that they should encourage grouping by gradually pushing players into it by doing small group content before really getting into the tank-healer-dps paradigm that we"ve come to know and love?

Who would have thought that by encouraging low level players to group up I"m discouraging grouping. Jesus what astonishing logic. No wonder developers don"t listen to the unwashed masses. That level of stupid makes my teeth hurt.

Zehn - Vhex said:

There"s better methods of doing so.

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For money sinks, definitely. Part of the craft of designing, however, is in having enough minor sinks, both timeandmoney, to make content and progression meaningful, and to have other players have some sort of part in that directly or indirectly (hi2u grouping and crafting, ie, bags). The sinks shouldn"t be obvious to the average player, though, and I"d argue that part of the reason for time/resource sinks at the beginning is to allow new players to acclimate to the game.

If everything boils down to a money sink (though it"s arguable most time sinks do ultimately), then it becomes a blatantly obvious single-minded grind to the playerbase as a whole, and encourages gold selling even more if your wall is purely/predominantly a money sink.

Time sinks might be annoying, but those that encourage direct or indirect player interaction are necessary in an MMO.


A secondary problem with finding things to purchase with money, etc. outside of preconceived sinks is the constant requirement to add new content on an ongoing basis outside of what is being developed for patches and expansions.

I"d agree on the player housing and several other options for reasons to encourage players not only to accumulate wealth, butplay the gameand experience the content. The next logical step for Blizzard is to make achievement points spendable (for combat and non-combat items), thenre-attainable.

We need an in-game casino so we can gamble all of our hard earned gold playing poker & blackjack.

Zehn - Vhex said:

And I agree that the game needs to evolve into a grouping atmosphere. I said several pages ago that they should start small though. Taking WoW as an example, RFC/SFK/WC/etc...should have been 2~3 mannable. Just make it larger groups of non-elites with the bosses just having 3x a normal mobs hp or something. Whatever, you get the idea..

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Wall of Text incoming.

Pretty much agree with most of the points in this post -- though I"ve got nothing against adding say one or two sub-endgame full-group dungeon (with superior rewards). -- though you kinda imply that with the SM mention earlier. Majority sub-endgame dungeons should be small-group.

That being said - after a good thirty or thirty-five seconds of thought I"ve decided that the approach of solo, small group, group, raid -- is sorta, kinda wrong.

While it"s fine to focus on designing content that is primarily solo, sm. group, group, etc; I think developers also need to focus on designing content that is progressable in appropriate time slices.

What ultimately killed WoW for me was hanging around at max level with no way to advance absent raiding (serious time commitment w/ lockouts) or faction grinding (serious time commitment and nothing particularly interesting to get for 90% of factions), VG was similiar (but took a lot longer because there were more interesting things to grind for).

Now I"ve got nothing against raiding or faction grinding but those can"t be the only ways to advance. Things that need to change:


1. Instances/travel/raids. Instances can be a significantly bigger time investment than camping (stop laughing). Look I can park my char near someone I want to camp - login occasionally to see if there"s an opening in the group that"s camping and if there is hop on for an hour or three. Better yet I can email a couple of buddies that I want to camp named_Y on Saturday -- we can all park our chars near the guy and on Sat we can spend an hour or three camping. No fucking around getting to the guy -- and no fucking around through umpteen trash mobs and bosses we don"t give a crap about. (actually its more complicated than this -- realisticly you"d inviz to the boss & etc. but whatever)

With instances you almost generally have to run the whole instance and if something happens and someone LDs, wifeaggros the healer you"re grouping with, whatever, and you have to leave the instance you"ll have to run the whole fricking thing again. Screw that. I"m fine with making the player run a full (3? 4? hours) instance one-time, but after that it should take no longer than one hour from entry of any instance to any particular boss -- I don"t care how this is done: portals inside the instance that activate once you"re passed them once. Keys that you get that allow you to bypass content -- whatever (again a better solution would be class-based means to avoid content such as inviz -- but whatever).

Same thing for travel, for raid zones, for whatever. I don"t care how cool travel is the first time or the raid zone is the first time. It all gets old fast. I"m fine requiring someone to walk their way to a new zone the first time or fight through two hours of trash the first time to a raid boss -- but making people spend time traveling or fighting two or three hours of trash over and over again is ridiculous. Travel between zones you"ve visited should be instantaneous and you should never ever have to fight through more than an hour of trash.

2. AAs. Every MMO should release with something akin to AAs. I don"t care how actually implemented -- EQ style AAs or something else (e.g. LOTRO"s traits are sorta kinda a form of AA). If I"m max level and I want to go out and grind some mobs - I should get something other than a .001% chance at some world drop or something. Faction grinding isn"t a good substitute for AAs because (a) what happens if I"m already at max faction -- nothing and (b) if there are no faction rewards, or if the faction rewards aren"t particularly great -- I don"t get any feeling of accomplishment. The thing about AA"s is that allow anyone to feel like they"re improving their character even if they"re just logged in for an hour a day during the week -- moreover properly designed (see Zehn"s comments on xp) - you can grind AA"s solo or in a group. So AAs are a solution to both the be able to progress in appropriate time slice problem and the make content for solo/group/etc problem. Nice side benefit - faction grinding is slightly less grindy when you"re also getting say 1 or 2 AA every hour.

3. Generally. For the record I"m not saying all advancement must happen in 1-hour time slices. My basic point is that we"ll never go back to EQ where folks were on 12-hours a day -- hell people were "on" all night they"d just sleep with their computer on and char logged in and wait for a call in the middle of the night. Just that when designing there should be clear stopping points every 1-3 hours. If you"re making a new raid zone - make sure that there"s a place/portal/whatever 3 hours in (assuming a reasonable progression) from the entrance where a semi-casual guild would naturally stop for the night -- 3 hours beyond that there"s another place/portal/whatever where a more hardcore guild could stop.

4. Generally II. Nor am I saying that all content should require a minimal time-investment. I do think that time invested should = return. A member of a hardcore raiding guild who puts in 6 hours a day 5 days a week should have lots of uber loot and the raiding AAs to show for it. But by providing progressable content appropriate to different types of play (casual, semi-causal and hardcore) I think you can make most folks happy (though you can"t ever make everyone happy). I qualify as semi-casual these days - so I don"t care that hardcore players have better loot or stronger chars than I do, all I want is to be able to see clear, specific advancement in my character with the time I invest in advancing him.

Not sure what you"re exactly getting at there Tad. 1/3/4 are pretty much de facto in WoW right now and 2 is well...go read this thread I suppose:

I don"t really get the point of Grey items in WoW. All items should have a use, be it for a quest, tradeskill, equipment or gimmick.

Grey items serve to give the players money, and then they immediately put in systems to serve as money-sinks to counter-balance them. Makes no sense. If you want to give the players gold for killing shit, give them gold for killing shit. Don"t make them sell bullshit items that they rarely have room for.

WoW has to have grey items instead of coin because half the enemies in the entire game are ANIMALS. Hoho.

Grave said:

WoW has to have grey items instead of coin because half the enemies in the entire game are ANIMALS. Hoho.

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Of which you"re undoubtedly killing for a collection quest--up the reward.

That said, I think the point you"re making is sarcastic, and that the animals should just drop coin (or something), which I generally agree. Realism gets in the way of gameplay mechanics far too often.