Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

For what it is worth, WoW did a pretty exceptional job of filtering the people for the F&F/Alpha/Beta/Pub. and it wasn"t entirely accidental.

Yes, they did draw from a lot of EQ and other MMO people for Alpha (and some for F&F) but most of it was just getting people into the right mind rather than getting the right-minded people. Hell, I think I was a great alpha-tester and I paid cash for that. Tigole still owes me for that I figure.

Yeah, they actively sought us and the other top guilds out and approached us to be a part of it.

It was interesting because we were working with both the EQ and the WoW devs. The difference between the two organizations was very obvious - both sets of devs were talented, creative and likeable people, but the processes and methodology they used were very different.

I"m not sure if we provided a valuable beta experience, or served as a marketing gimmick, perhaps both. That said, trying to recruit the top guilds seems like a strategy worth replicating.

Ngruk said:

Oh and fwiw, coolest Beta "thing" I"ve ever seen? WAR giving players free beta keys for turning in ANYONE violating NDA rules during BETA, frickin" GENIUS!

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I"d like to report this board for future breaking of the NDA for early access to your beta. Thank you.

Ngruk said:

Oh and fwiw, coolest Beta "thing" I"ve ever seen? WAR giving players free beta keys for turning in ANYONE violating NDA rules during BETA, frickin" GENIUS!

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during closed friends and family beta/alpha, the leaks will be very small. During closed beta, you will 100% have leaks, and there is nothing at all you can do about it, I am sure you don"t have any delusions about this point.

I think at any point that you"re inviting random people, you"d be foolish not to expect leaks.

Since we"re talking about Betas, I"ve always found it far easier to test when playing with a group of friends, and my reports are more frequent/thorough. It can be difficult (for myself, anyway) to keep logging in, day after day, squishing bugs and doing balance testing without a familiar face to help alongside and keep things fun. I think that"s a big part of the strength in recruiting well-established guilds to Beta test a game; sure, they"ve got the experience to know when things are screwy, but when they"re motivated to keep coming back to test as the process moves along, you get that kind of "expert" result consistently.

Nerfbat

Give it a peek.

No one likes crafting but masochists and freaks (i.e. Zehn probably LOVES crafting). Blizzard"s crafting system was a step in the right direction though, even if it"s balanced for shit. The more complex the crafting process, the worse the system is. I don"t wanna sit down for two hours to figure out which fucking ingot I need to mix with what eye of newt or some shit to get a (maybe) decent item out of it.

My crafting system would be perfect. Check it. Mob drops Rare Ingot, you"re an engineer, you click a button called "Engineer this shit, yo!" and BAM you got a badass new non-random item. Maybe add in a second ingredient for raid quality items that drops from bosses, but even that might be pushing it. No vendors, no running half way across the world because Dipshit Dan only carries Water Ingots and the Fire Ingot you need is sitting up the ass of Fuckwit Fred over in fucking China. No bullshit money sinks, no nothing. Can I get a hell yeah?

Hell yeah.

Crafting gave us the Coldain quests.

Crafting has a free ride for a long time due to their levels of awesome.

The EQ2 Mini-game Crafting was shit though. "So, I just strip naked and pound three buttons for 20 seconds?"

I"ll agree that EQ2"s crafting system was more annoying than it was fun, and the new trend of minigames like bejewled just seems gimmicky and silly.

I think WoW and LOTRO both have solid crafting mechanics, but they fail in other ways. In WoW, crafting is completely imbalanced. Jewelcrafting OP"ness aside, no main raiding character would ever take a gathering profession, for example. The bonuses from the main professions are too good. Also, crafting just doesn"t seem important enough. There are no real enjoyable quests for it (Fishing/Cooking have some dailies, why not everything else?) and leveling it up isn"t really fun at all.

LOTRO is similar, and I especially disliked how they forced you to choose a vocation (3 preset professions) instead of just letting you be whatever you wanted.

My ideal crafting system would likely be similar in mechanics to WoW/LOTRO, in other words I want to just be able to hit create all and watch it make stuff. However, it would make leveling the skill more fun by adding crafting quests, having fewer useless items that I just vendor, and giving me various rewards as I progress the skill (titles, cosmetic rewards) instead of only being useful at the cap.

I"ll be applying for the position, but considering it requires 2-4 years experience I doubt I"ll be looked at too closely. We"ll see!

Honestly, I think the Self-Only benefits of crafting, and limiting the # of crafts a character can know, is what"s kinda fucked up with WoW"s system. Once you reach a certain level, all the BoE stuff stops mattering, and it boils down to what personal BoP benefits each skill provides, and since you can only have a few, it comes down to adding another random layer of balancing to the game. And since leveling your crafting skills is so quick and easy, if you removed the cap on # of skills, everyone would just smorgasboard all the benefits after a few hours in Ogrimar/Ironforge. I just find it wierd that the "usefulness" of being a mighty smith... is in adding buckles and big dents to things, not in crafting Ye Olde Sword of Arse-Kickening.

I want to see a game some day where the Craft-Materials that drop in a teir of gameplay can be used to make a somewhat better grade of equipment than the standard mob-drops. Dragons dropping their teeth that you forge into kickass epic swords/daggers is the stuff of nerdy crafting fanboy wet dreams. Some games do this, to varying extents, but crafting always seems a bit half-assed, content-integration-wise, and the components usually almost entirely disappear from higher-level loot tables. The Orbs and such dropping in endgame dungeons are alright, but they"re so utterly generic

Yep, we think along the same lines Kuro. I don"t mind the profession benefits but they need to be more balanced.

I"d probably do it by allowing each profession to make a few best-in-slot items at every tier (worn/armor only), but tag it so that a player can only wear one of these at a time. That way you have some flexibility in which you use with your current gear.

Then, for weapons (since they result in a greater power increase) I"d like to see something like you"re talking about where the crafter can collect materials while raiding and craft a weapon on par with high-end raid weapons, but not necessarily better. The benefit here would be your profession helps you go against the RNG. If you don"t get a decent weapon drop in a reasonable amount of time, you"ll probably be able to craft one by then.

Step 1) Player doesn"t craft shit, player hires an NPC crafter. Teaches him his trade, helps him to learn and grow in his faith in his time here on...oh wait that"s the Bible. You get the idea. Feel free to toy with this part. Make it like pokemons where different crafters have different personalities, whatever. Player might know various field skills like botany, first aid, whatever to assist in day to day shit, but when it comes to making phallic objects out of hard wood, leave that to the professionals.

Step 2) Player acquires tradeskill goods. As a direct result of various quests to secure supply lines or clear out a cave full of gobbo"s, whatever. As PvP rewards. Can build reputation with various trading companies by protecting their caravans and getting a discount when trading one good for another. Etc...etc...

Ideally it would be structured so that the concept of "lowbie" tradeskill items like going from copper-> bronze-> iron etc...would be weeded out in favor of the time it takes to craft an item having more effect on it"s value then how much of a pain in the ass it is to gather the mats for it.

Step 3) Player has hired NPC crafter queue up production. At low skill levels, production queue can only handle a few items and any project more involved then simple constructs can take days to complete. Over time (not by quantity produced but how long player has had hired crafter), the crafter skills increase, allowing him to handle more production queue"s, create simpler items faster.

Needless to say, NPC crafter can create nearly any pattern in the game provided they have the necessary schematic and requisite materials.

Step 4) Player can even hire apprentices for the NPC crafter once he reaches a masterwork level, allowing you multple concurrent production queues to allow you to create simpler items quickly without delaying major products being created by master NPC crafter.

Step 5) As time goes on in game, player can hire new crafters with more potential once leveled up (though it may require letting his old master crafter go) with such perks as faster production queue"s, ability to manage another apprentices production queue, reaching mastery levels of certain products faster, etc...etc...

Step 6) Get your crucifix.

Step 7)

Step 8) You better stay up late...

Step 9) Make gobs of cash. Send a hooker to Zehn"s house as a personal thankyou for helping you out.

Ultimately, and this may be personal anecdotal evidence, crafting has always been about materials management and about the value of the item created, moreso then the "fun" inherrant to clicking a button and watching as a blue/orange/yellow/green/whatever colored bar fills up.

There are some people that will argue that watching the bar fill up while you play a "Press X to not die" mini-game is entertaining, but let"s be honest here, you can get your fix of that by adding peggle as an in game mini-game.

One thing I"d like to find a cure for is the inevitable "X is really to make so that players don"t blow their brains out skilling up on something, which inherantly drives the value of X into the ground as players make a million of them."

Hence the skill of your crafter is more a direct relationship to how long you"ve had him hired rather then how many iron rivets he"s smithed in order to make iron hilts for iron swords so that you can now make steel rivets to make steel hilts for...you get the picture.

Crafting also shouldn"t be a crutch for a retarded RNG-based itemization system to rely on. Just bite the fucking bullet and go back to old school DnD when the dragon had a +2 longsword in his horde and not this Diablo based horseshit where you random for loot everytime. Fuck that noise.

Crafting should be damn near 100% about augmenting your PvE/PvP acquired items and, in addition, making shit you can"t otherwise get via PvE/PvP. Or just be alternatives to awesome. Think original Blizzard engineering before they went and royally fucked that up along with enchanting/jewelcrafting.

I"d go on but these pancakes aren"t going to make themselves.

P.S: Oh, and no self-only perks for having a tradeskill. If tradeskilling isn"t inherently enough fun and/or valuable to have in the first place, you"ve failed as a designer. Tacking on a "reward" for it sounds nice in practice, but it"s a big fuck you to all the people who hate that bullshit and just want to fucking kill orcs and now have to do that bullshit because deep down we"re all min/maxing assholes.

Personally, I would love a crafting system where all I had to do was provide the supplies and could continue to play the game rather than downing another Advil to keep the carpal tunnel pain at bay.

I have been arguing since wow beta that crafting was just too easy to max level in. For a crafter to mean something it has to be either hard or take a lot of investment to be high end and make the best things otherwise every Joe Blow will make everything like its done in wow. In EQ the system itself was flawed due to clicks etc but the concept that a maxed out crafter was rare made for the possibility of being a professional crafter in game which is a playstyle quite a few people enjoy.

This concept also creates a viable economy as opposed to WoW where everyone sells items at a 1% margin because there are 200 other people who can do the exact same thing as them... there needs to be a reason to go to that master crafter.

Ngruk said:

Nerfbat

Give it a peek.

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Man I was hoping for some baseball bat product...

Ngruk said:

Nerfbat

Give it a peek.

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Hire Raph Koster(yes I know he is working on his own project, maybe he can be an advisor). I loved the way SWG did crafting, mainly how resources were handled. That resources had varying stats to them. You could use any ole resource to produce an Item, but a true trader/crafter would seek out the best of the best and produce a much higher grade item to sell.

Or look at his work from UO were quality of an item was based on skill of the craftsman. Anyone could make a weapon that would work well, but a weapon made by a grandmaster smith was just better.

Take wow for example, you have master craftsman"s who make the same quality items as anyone else. Now imagine if a being a master at a trade skill allowed you to get a couple more dps out of a weapon, or a longer lasting potion. Anyone can make a 10mp/5 potion but a true master alchemist could make a 12mp/5 and it might last 10 minutes longer.

I would like to see one or the other, or even a combination of both. Some probably think SWG"s approach was too complicated, but it was a game in itself to find better resources and make the ultimate rifle or armor.

Rythonn said:

Hire Raph Koster(yes I know he is working on his own project, maybe he can be an advisor). I loved the way SWG did crafting, mainly how resources were handled. That resources had varying stats to them. You could use any ole resource to produce an Item, but a true trader/crafter would seek out the best of the best and produce a much higher grade item to sell.

Or look at his work from UO were quality of an item was based on skill of the craftsman. Anyone could make a weapon that would work well, but a weapon made by a grandmaster smith was just better.

Take wow for example, you have master craftsman"s who make the same quality items as anyone else. Now imagine if a being a master at a trade skill allowed you to get a couple more dps out of a weapon, or a longer lasting potion. Anyone can make a 10mp/5 potion but a true master alchemist could make a 12mp/5 and it might last 10 minutes longer.

I would like to see one or the other, or even a combination of both. Some probably think SWG"s approach was too complicated, but it was a game in itself to find better resources and make the ultimate rifle or armor.

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I think this really depends on the audience you want to go for. While some people loved SWGs crafting system (I thought it was pretty cool myself) the mainstream audience would find it to be annoying and too much effort to get where they want to be. Also, the UO example only works in that kind of game because there weren"t that many items to begin with. In a game where things need to scale up as much as they do in WoW or LOTRO, its better to just have different tiers of items as you go up instead of making the same item with better stats.

I think it would be better to create a more user-friendly and approachable system, and then add the depth that you"re talking about in other ways, such as allowing crafters to discover new recipes as they work (similar to TBC Alchemy) or earn new recipes from quests. This still has the end result of a crafter who spends a lot of time on their trade having advantages over someone who doesn"t.

The main reason I dislike the different "quality levels" of the same item is that in the end anything that is below the maximum quality becomes useless. Just look at EQ2, the only thing worth putting on the broker was the perfect version of the item. Anything else was junk.

Ngruk said:

Nerfbat

Give it a peek.

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Can we vote for a Zehn"s version of crafting? I hear he"s available.

And the end of the constant click grind gets a big hell yeah!