Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Big_w_powah · Feb 27, 2009

Miele said:
First and foremost, developers keep encouraging people at grouping to get better rewards (loot) and such a system would not be so enticing because if the standard paradigm "more people = better loot" is applied, I bet a small percentage of the population would give a damn about scalable content and always shoot for the best stuff.

Possible exceptions would be:

1) people that want to see the so called end game, but do it with just a couple of friends, say your standard 4 to 6 players clique.

2) Die hard soloers.

Obviously, given scaling difficulty, one will argue that 5 people content is easier than 25 people content (which is very debatable, but it"s kinda accepted as true), so the loot would be inferior and this would preclude the small groups to partecipate effectively in other type of competitive content, for example PvP, where they would never have the upper hand.

As of today in the 2 MMOs I played the most recently, all group content is at least 3-mannable, in some cases even two mannable, except for gimmick fights or specific boss mechanics, if the players involved are above average quality.

In short this system would require a total re-thinking of the standard loot progression system (solo->group->small raids->large raids), the pvp system and the type of rewards obtained from such activities.
It could end up as the second coming of Jesus for MMOs or as a waste of development time, depending on the approach taken.

Take for example EQ2: at one point they introduced solo instances, which were pretty much short caves filled with solo mobs and a slightly tougher solo mob at the end. The problem is that the rewards for these instances were total crap, thus they were left collecting dust by the vast majority of players and soon forgotten.

If today in a game like WoW they would introduce a scalable instance mode, people would complain that loot is shit when less than 5 people are involved, or it"s so easy for class_01 while class_05 suck balls at doing it.
It"s already amazing how 10 men content is often harder than 25 men content (if you can call that "hard" at all), yet offers inferior rewards, the further you push the slider towards the low number of players, the louder would be the complaints.

In a game where progression is not necessary tied to loot and/or not so adamantly defending old paradigms as stated above, this system woud have the possibility to work, with one big cost associated: you transform a MMO into a glorified Diablo; if I can kill Baal alone, why would I want more players to take my rewards?

From my personal point of view, disregarding the potential negative effects, I"d love such a system as I don"t enjoy pugging really much, so me and friend or two could see everything (and it must be everything) without needing to invite morons in our groups.

Added risk: In the moment developers start saying "but if you face a dragon in 2 the fight is not epic enough" the system collapses (aside from the fact I think it would be a lot more epic facing a big monster with just two people).

Last but not least you"d have to rethink your class system: if you need a person to keep the monsters attention (read: tank) and another to cure or heal, you are in a terrible situation. Some smart player may come out with kiting techniques that work, but tank and spank risks to be a lot easier to perform.
A job system wouldn"t help much, if all you get to do with it is switching to tank+healer to duo instances, let alone if you have to solo them where everyone would switch to "best soloing class".

Maybe creating a game from the ground up with this in mind is doable, but trying to attach such a system to a typical MMO of today would result, in my opinion, in a massive failure and for some reasons I don"t think Copernicus is shifting that far away from our current paradigm, even if they won"t wow-ify it too much, I bet there will be a typical tank+healer+dps trinity involved.
I"d love to lose that bet and for them to amaze with something innovative.

Of course, theres the option of more than one type of scaling.

To use Baal for example; He is designed to be taken with 6 people.

If you can take him solo, great, but less loot/less rare loot drops.

The closer you get to 6 (say, up to 4-5) your rewards increase. If you kill him as designed, special events happen...The higher you get above 6, the scaling goes back down in terms of loot.

Alternatively, Baal is capable of exploiting certain attacks if theres too many/too few players (lets say, if theres too many players there, its worth his while to turn the entire floor into molten lava, but he doesn"t do it when theres fewer because of the damage it causes him/ammount of energy it takes him to do)...This drastically increases difficulty. If theres too few, he gets cocky and figures a good swipe will pwn you bitches, so he turns his weapon into brimstone, swings it hard as fuck, and takes you all out with massive damage. Again, increasing the difficulty.

Rewards would of course scale. Special drops for X+/-Y, special events happening.

Maybe that swing kicks out the wall behind you, and opens a passage to Baal 2.0"s chamber, while turning the floor into lava allows Baal"s daddy to come up...So maybe you don"t actually get to kill Baal--you just have to fight him, survive long enough for the special event, and then you actually get a different boss to fight..Dynamic dungeon? Check. Encounter Scaling? Check. Awesome fun shit? Check

FoghornDeadhorn_foh · Feb 27, 2009

Sounds pretty easy to implement in a satisfying amount of content.

Draegan_sl · Feb 27, 2009

Grave said:
It"s quite simple really.

Very large dungeons with various points of interest, and preferably a quest hub or two within it. Look at how you would design an outdoor zone (which are going to be non-instanced anyway) and apply that to a dungeon.

Few or no fixed spawn locations for random nameds. No camping one spot waiting for one to spawn. These nameds would just spawn in a random location and wander around.

Toss in a few triggered Nameds. Maybe after looting so many of x object, or killing so many of one type of mob, a named spawns and is already tapped by the group or player who triggered it.

Phase or instance quest nameds so people aren"t fighting over those (assuming they aren"t triggered like above). Normal quest mobs can remain un-instanced, but make sure there are plenty of them.

Reward the player for killing trash. Token drops that can be turned in for fun items (illusion clickies, temp run speed potions, teleport scrolls) or reputation items, etc. Trash is supposed to besomethingof a chore, but it doesn"t have to be outright miserable. Let the player feel like they are at least getting something.

You get the idea. The fact is we play in non-instanced content everyday and no one cries about it, it just happens to be outdoor. The second you mention non-instanced dungeon people freak out. Meh.

Sounds like a Public Quest that isn"t gay.

Big_w_powah · Feb 27, 2009

FoghornDeadhorn said:
Sounds pretty easy to implement in a satisfying amount of content.

If you were referring to me--it wouldn"t have to be implemented for a lot of bosses. (lets face it, doing it for every boss would be impossible)..but the notable bosses with the best loot, yeah, it"d be worth the dev time.

Flight · Feb 27, 2009

To contribute to the debate on solo content, in the context of these instances, one of the main lessons WoW has taught us is that any MMO that wants mass success has to cater extensively to solo players.

One of their failures in the expansions has been to fail to build on that, so that soloing is little more than a leveling mechanism and a grind. I would bet the bank that future successes will need to expand solo options.

Flight said:
Another is the Anarchy Online system, which I am a MASSIVE fan of. I"ve never pushed it hard because I"m not sure how much of it is my personal taste and how much it really is a superb system. In my opinion, it is as innovative and has as much and more lasting benefit than FFXIs job system (withoutsub jobs).

For those unfamiliar with it, the game has "Mission terminals" in the cities and hubs (you can get an idea of it from . You set a series of sliders with a range of mission parameters and it generates a list of instanced missions with an objective from a pool (eg assassinate a named NPC, retrieve an item) and a specified item reward, which can be a piece of armour, a weapon or a skill.

The missions scale according to the number of people in the party and their levels, so its good for anything from 1-6 party members. This system has been easily catered for in expansion after expansion, with increasing level caps, in AO.

If you combined this with the ability to raise all classes on your main character, the longevity and replayability of the two systems would increase exponentially. I can"t stress just how much I love this mission system. It perfectly combines the pure MMO experience, with the D2 experience, that Caliane is discussing above.

I make no apologies for quoting this a second time. I"ve mentioned the idea about having a "trade skiller" option. If this was the only place you could get some trade skill resources it would be a brilliant blend of adventure and trade skill classes, which no MMO has yet captured.

What other sorts of sliders or parameters could you have in a fantasy MMO environment ?

AO system :

FFXI system :

Rangoth · Mar 3, 2009

I like reading this more than I post here, mostly because I can rarely add something that hasn"t been said in the last 100+ pages, but I have noticed a few things I would like to point out as, at least, interesting to discuss.

It seems many people here have positive things to say about instancing and non-instancing. It really just comes down to how well both concepts were designed from the ground up. I would like to say though that the people who claim you just need large enough dungeons, or enough dungeons so that population wasn"t overwhelming need to look at that specific aspect of VG. Maybe the only problem was that travel between them was too long, we may never know. But if you spread people too thin that sucks as having them too dense. Instances do help there.

The idea I fell in love with, but never saw completed at least the way I read about it, was VG"s AES(Advanced Encounter System). The idea was that all dungeons are public, but you as a group did something to trigger an event/fight that was just for you. Examples were things like: on the way down to the boss you kill 50 kobolds, the king sees your presence and is now spawned in his chamber, but only you can fight him. Almost like his room is a private instance with him and his 4 guards, so many people could be in his room at the same time doing the same encounter. If a group members leaves or something you can simply replace as it is a public dungeon and there are people all over, but the encounter is still for you. Another is that you pull a lever or something and the group now opens a new hallway through a secret door. No one else sees it but the group that pulled the lever.

The giant hurdle I see is perhaps the technology to do this. I think it was said in a post maybe 10-15 back but dungeons should be just like the overland with more difficult mobs as to ENCOURAGE grouping. Have the dungeon public but make some(not all which was posted in the same post) special events in the dungeon instanced. This lets all those who wish to do them, prevents others from fucking up an encounter, etc. EQ2 kinda did this, VG promised they would and never really did except in a small handful of spots.

Only other thing I read constantly here and that bothers me is the encouraging behavoir vs. discouraging behavoir. I always see the "design loot around X number of players killing and lessen it for more or less". That is discouraging. If I have a group of 5 and my friend logs on I am punished for bringing the 6th person. I certainly don"t have all the answers, or even a really good one for this problem, but I believe that once the designers/company pick who their game is for they should focus on encouraging players to do things the intended way, and not penalize them for approaching it from another angle. The idea of random dungeons or scaling difficulty is appealing for this, but I have yet to see an implementation for it that wasn"t full of flaws.

In the end MMO"s just cause too many problems. In a single player game you have to(for the most part) do things exactly as the designer wanted you to. There is usually only a single option, exceptions are things like fallout but even then it is limited. But with MMO"s and the constant variable of how many and what type(class), it is near impossible to have the entire game system flexible enough to read, adapt and reward dynamically based on those and other factors. So there must be a desired or ideal configuration for a given task or encounter(at least with current technology). Once that ideal is chosen, I think the focus should be on a reward based on that ideal, done with more/less/different should not lower that reward nor should physical prevention of a variation of the ideal be created(instance player caps). If someone wants to bring 50 people to a 6 person designed fight, let them. It in no way hurts the rest of the game. Maybe all 50 people are such good friends they would rather do shit together than break up into small groups. Or maybe a group of 4 is so skilled they don"t need the extra 2?

Big_w_powah · Mar 3, 2009

rangoth said:
I like reading this more than I post here, mostly because I can rarely add something that hasn"t been said in the last 100+ pages, but I have noticed a few things I would like to point out as, at least, interesting to discuss.

It seems many people here have positive things to say about instancing and non-instancing. It really just comes down to how well both concepts were designed from the ground up. I would like to say though that the people who claim you just need large enough dungeons, or enough dungeons so that population wasn"t overwhelming need to look at that specific aspect of VG. Maybe the only problem was that travel between them was too long, we may never know. But if you spread people too thin that sucks as having them too dense. Instances do help there.

The idea I fell in love with, but never saw completed at least the way I read about it, was VG"s AES(Advanced Encounter System). The idea was that all dungeons are public, but you as a group did something to trigger an event/fight that was just for you. Examples were things like: on the way down to the boss you kill 50 kobolds, the king sees your presence and is now spawned in his chamber, but only you can fight him. Almost like his room is a private instance with him and his 4 guards, so many people could be in his room at the same time doing the same encounter. If a group members leaves or something you can simply replace as it is a public dungeon and there are people all over, but the encounter is still for you. Another is that you pull a lever or something and the group now opens a new hallway through a secret door. No one else sees it but the group that pulled the lever.

The giant hurdle I see is perhaps the technology to do this. I think it was said in a post maybe 10-15 back but dungeons should be just like the overland with more difficult mobs as to ENCOURAGE grouping. Have the dungeon public but make some(not all which was posted in the same post) special events in the dungeon instanced. This lets all those who wish to do them, prevents others from fucking up an encounter, etc. EQ2 kinda did this, VG promised they would and never really did except in a small handful of spots.

Only other thing I read constantly here and that bothers me is the encouraging behavoir vs. discouraging behavoir. I always see the "design loot around X number of players killing and lessen it for more or less". That is discouraging. If I have a group of 5 and my friend logs on I am punished for bringing the 6th person. I certainly don"t have all the answers, or even a really good one for this problem, but I believe that once the designers/company pick who their game is for they should focus on encouraging players to do things the intended way, and not penalize them for approaching it from another angle. The idea of random dungeons or scaling difficulty is appealing for this, but I have yet to see an implementation for it that wasn"t full of flaws.

In the end MMO"s just cause too many problems. In a single player game you have to(for the most part) do things exactly as the designer wanted you to. There is usually only a single option, exceptions are things like fallout but even then it is limited. But with MMO"s and the constant variable of how many and what type(class), it is near impossible to have the entire game system flexible enough to read, adapt and reward dynamically based on those and other factors. So there must be a desired or ideal configuration for a given task or encounter(at least with current technology). Once that ideal is chosen, I think the focus should be on a reward based on that ideal, done with more/less/different should not lower that reward nor should physical prevention of a variation of the ideal be created(instance player caps). If someone wants to bring 50 people to a 6 person designed fight, let them. It in no way hurts the rest of the game. Maybe all 50 people are such good friends they would rather do shit together than break up into small groups. Or maybe a group of 4 is so skilled they don"t need the extra 2?

See, this is where my idea about the boss using different attacks based on rather its too few or too many for his design, maybe opening up different encounters where the original boss flees. This would give the option of going after him, but he is going to have been rested, or go for the new boss with better loot, thats suited to your numbers in his abilities.

You could still kill X, but now you have Y to go after instead,,

Gordish_foh · Mar 3, 2009

Big W Powah! said:
See, this is where my idea about the boss using different attacks based on rather its too few or too many for his design, maybe opening up different encounters where the original boss flees. This would give the option of going after him, but he is going to have been rested, or go for the new boss with better loot, thats suited to your numbers in his abilities.

You could still kill X, but now you have Y to go after instead,,

Doing stuff like that is not hard to setup but the big issue comes from balancing it. When it comes to balancing an encounter it"s not as simple as if the target is X many and if players is greater than X then add this.

Balancing an encounter is hard enough for the target number of players and the target power, i.e. players geared at this level. Once you start adding in more variables it becomes very time consuming and where do you draw the line?

If a solution for that comes up I think you"ll start to see more variable encounter designs that scale on how many and what set of players are fighting in the encounter. In my experience though it comes down to a time and resource thing and in a perfect world they don"t enter the equation but it"s not a perfect world.

Rangoth · Mar 4, 2009

Gordish said:
Doing stuff like that is not hard to setup but the big issue comes from balancing it. When it comes to balancing an encounter it"s not as simple as if the target is X many and if players is greater than X then add this.

Balancing an encounter is hard enough for the target number of players and the target power, i.e. players geared at this level. Once you start adding in more variables it becomes very time consuming and where do you draw the line?

I agree 100%, which is why I personally prefer to just say fuck it. Design the encounter based on your target(6 person group or something) and let people who want to cheese it cheese it. Who really cares? As long as them cheesing it by bringing 100 people doesn"t prevent other groups of 6 from doing the encounter, it makes zero difference to me how others do it.

I think this all just falls back into the fact that developers/designers cannot make everyone happy and they cannot predict all player actions...it"s a waste of time and they won"t win. Just build things with a design and let people do what they want provided it isn"t exploiting a game bug(fix the bug!).

I guess I just don"t like the fact that I am forced to leave out friends for "mechanic" reasons. If I want to add that 7th member to my party and it makes the boss a bit easier so be it. The ubers who do it with 3 can mock me in general chat and post how Im a n00b on their websites and I can still log on daily and group with my buddies and experience stuff.

Draegan_sl · Mar 4, 2009

Because if you can cheese it, everyone will. If you can cheese it than your design and development of that encounter is worthless.

Rangoth · Mar 4, 2009

Draegan said:
Because if you can cheese it, everyone will. If you can cheese it than your design and development of that encounter is worthless.

I guess I disagree with this statement. And if people want to cheese things....you would argue that designers should stop that(or try), I am saying they should not.

There are many people who would like to do things in a legit way or near it. I do see your point though....just not sure I agree with it completely. I do agree that some super AI which was dynamic against variable number of players would be the ideal, but that"s just not possible yet in my opinion.

Ngruk_foh · Mar 4, 2009

rangoth said:
I guess I disagree with this statement. And if people want to cheese things....you would argue that designers should stop that(or try), I am saying they should not.

There are many people who would like to do things in a legit way or near it. I do see your point though....just not sure I agree with it completely. I do agree that some super AI which was dynamic against variable number of players would be the ideal, but that"s just not possible yet in my opinion.

If it can be hacked/exploited/manipulated, it will, 100% guaranteed. Not only that but within an hour or two the said exploit/hack/manipulation will be posted around the world for all to see.

Rangoth · Mar 4, 2009

Ngruk said:
If it can be hacked/exploited/manipulated, it will, 100% guaranteed. Not only that but within an hour or two the said exploit/hack/manipulation will be posted around the world for all to see.

True, but there is a difference between haxxed/exploited/cheating and just bringing more people. You might bring more because they are your best friends or you might bring more because it makes the encounter easier. But that is far different than cheating.

And I do see the point of preventing this kind of behavior(why kill boss with 6 when its hard and you could bring 10 and make it a joke?)...I tend to just think that preventing that kind of thing does more harm than not. Again the ideal is a boss that scales somehow or scaled rewards, but I don"t see technology and AI there yet.

Gordish_foh · Mar 4, 2009

Back in EQ days you had guilds who killed things with numbers and other guilds who prided themselves on accomplishing things with smaller numbers. I would like to believe that would still be the case today.

I can see both arguments though. Putting caps on the numbers allows a better balanced and challenging fight guaranteed.

Bellstian_foh · Mar 4, 2009

99% of players will take the path of least resistance, that"s why I hate when developers say "you don"t have to use x, but it"s there for people who do"

GuyJantica_foh · Mar 4, 2009

On the subject of dungeons, I"ve always thought there should be more non-combat related activities/obstacles that certain classes bring solutions to. A cheesy example would be rogues finding traps and disarming them, but really there could be lots that are semi-unique to the different classes. I understand the basic diku-style game dynamic of healer/tank/dps to conquer content, but that really just leaves all classes being centered around combat in some way. I guess I just wish there were more to the core game. Something along these lines may have been brought up here before, but I couldn"t find it. If so, sorry for the redundancy.

Unchained Acolyte of the Lady Gaga_foh · Mar 4, 2009

GuyJantica said:
On the subject of dungeons, I"ve always thought there should be more non-combat related activities/obstacles that certain classes bring solutions to. A cheesy example would be rogues finding traps and disarming them, but really there could be lots that are semi-unique to the different classes. I understand the basic diku-style game dynamic of healer/tank/dps to conquer content, but that really just leaves all classes being centered around combat in some way. I guess I just wish there were more to the core game. Something along these lines may have been brought up here before, but I couldn"t find it. If so, sorry for the redundancy.

One of the elements of Vanguard I enjoyed was the diplomacy, not so much for the system, although it was an interesting departure, but for the fact that I could play a non-combat role and yet assist those who preferred combat. Same with SWG.

I understand that most MMO players, especially the current casual crowd (and those of us with increasing time constraints), want the quick fix of sword and sorcery. It would be interesting though to explore a game concept that had the accessibility of WoW but greater complexity (or an option for it - with benefits) in crafting and other non-combat roles to satisfy those more interested in community, economy, and interaction.

If 38Studios or another company can develop system elements such as those, especially where reputation/community/true interaction mattered on some level, I"d be sold.

GuyJantica_foh · Mar 4, 2009

I"d agree. I was happy to see Vanguard try out something like Diplomacy, but I was thinking more along the lines of abilities in the field that aren"t combat-centric. I"ve always liked crafting, but there"s nothing about the abilities themselves that are useful, say, in a dungeon beyond their products. And ultimately that just bolsters your combat role anyhow. The objective of a dungeon run is (usually) to get some form of treasure/loot. The only method of attaining that objective currently (that involves your class choice) is your combat role. You slug it out with mobs until you reach the boss and then you fight him/her too.

Maybe I"m talking about a different sort of game though. I look at the dynamics present in L4D and think those could make an awesome dungeon crawler. If you were to specialize the characters (warrior, wizard, rogue for instance) and provide abilities that deal with environmental factors like traps, locked doors, chasms, hordes of monsters, magical devices and the like you"d have a (multiplayer) game with interdependence that isn"t focused so much on combat as it is achieving a goal (getting through a dungeon). You could and will fight, but that isn"t necessarily the best way to go. I think this would be loads of fun (especially if there were a vs. mode where the enemies could spawn monsters, traps, other types of encounters). I realize this isn"t immediately integrable into an MMO framework, but I think you could evolve it to the point where you could.

Rangoth · Mar 4, 2009

GuyJantica said:
I"d agree. I was happy to see Vanguard try out something like Diplomacy, but I was thinking more along the lines of abilities in the field that aren"t combat-centric. I"ve always liked crafting, but there"s nothing about the abilities themselves that are useful, say, in a dungeon beyond their products. And ultimately that just bolsters your combat role anyhow. The objective of a dungeon run is (usually) to get some form of treasure/loot. The only method of attaining that objective currently (that involves your class choice) is your combat role. You slug it out with mobs until you reach the boss and then you fight him/her too.

I remember VG running its mouth about that shit too. I wasn"t in BETA so I didn"t have l33t inside infos but I coulda swore I read something about miners being able to hack away at caveins to get access to secret areas, or lumberjacks building a ladder to reach a new place or something. Maybe I am just delusional though.

Anyway, point stands and I"m with you 100%, being able to play an active part in the world as a completely non-combat hero should you so chose is amazing to me.

GuyJantica_foh · Mar 4, 2009

rangoth said:
I remember VG running its mouth about that shit too. I wasn"t in BETA so I didn"t have l33t inside infos but I coulda swore I read something about miners being able to hack away at caveins to get access to secret areas, or lumberjacks building a ladder to reach a new place or something. Maybe I am just delusional though.

Anyway, point stands and I"m with you 100%, being able to play an active part in the world as a completely non-combat hero should you so chose is amazing to me.

Heh, yeah there were a great many things promised in VG that I was excited about that may or may not have made it in. I think Druids were supposed to be able to drive your boat along faster by summoning the winds or some such. Good ideas, but they certainly weren"t the focus of the game. With the expectations and complexity of the diku-style we"ve all grown accustomed to they just didn"t work out.

Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

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