Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

James said:

This is so retarded it hurts. Someone on another board put it far more eloquently than I ever could, so I"ll just quote him:

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Fair enough, what if you could run a raid with 28 or even 35 instead? I didn"t say I want all "raids" with groups of 20 or 10 or 5.
If a scaling system is implemented, your awesome 22 men guild won"t have the *need* to find those 3 eluding competent players, but could recruit them without being in a rush and if you have more than you would normally need, you can make them play with you all the time, instead of taking turns which is something nobody likes.

You can even remove the cap for raid size, scale down obtained rewards accordingly when it approaches the zerg size. Honestly, people raided with 72 in EQ1 and before they introduced raid size caps, they could be even more, hell you could always run more than 1 raid in a zone when it wasn"t instanced. Just being able to run a hylarious pug of 100+ players would be cool every now and then, even if lag kills them all.

You see? Some people read only what they want to read instead of looking at the whole picture: maybe I like the idea my small guild won"t have to take turns and can instead filed one or two more players, your super large guild could go to raid with 60+ instead and "select" the 12 groups-super-omg-fucking-hard mode where mob farts will be so powerful the turbulence generated will strip cloth users naked or they could zerg the 8 groups version for faster (and likely lesser quality or quantity) rewards.

Anyway, that was just something I had in mind as a nerd playing these games, I"m sure people that is paid to find ideas and solutions can probably come out with much better stuff. I just have a gripe with a hard cap for the number of players that can raid at once, if some dev can figure out a good way to invent a soft cap instead, I"d be joyful and pay him a beer or three.

James said:

So what you"re saying is bosses need a "hard mode" version that will award extra loot, achievements, and titles, generally setting them apart from the rest of the scrubs on the server? Sounds familiar...

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Yes, but you need to make the "hard mode" more continuous and allow players the ability to control how difficult an encounter is (to a limit, of course)

Kind of on a complete tangent, but am I the only one who thinks we need to put an end to this trend of using mounts as some major progression point and only handing them out 20 or 40 levels into the game? I understand the logic in using them as the metaphorical carrot, but I think an incentive born solely out of how agonizingly dull it is to wander around the gameworld on foot for the first X levels is bad design.

Faster mounts? Sure. Cooler mounts? Hell yeah. But at least give us something serviceable within the first hour or two of playing a character.

Genereally speaking you"re not going that far in any game you start out in. You don"t have to start making larger trips until you start up w/ the group content and or a different set of quests. This is when you want to do shit w/ your friends who are other races etc and need to make it over there. I don"t really see a problem with using a mount as a "coming of age(level)" type deal as they have been doing for quite some time. I"d rather not be in the newbie zone/island w/e seeing a bunch of people on mounts.

Ninajrr said:

Yes, but you need to make the "hard mode" more continuous and allow players the ability to control how difficult an encounter is (to a limit, of course)

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You mean like tiered hardmodes with 1, 2, 3 and sometimes even 4 or 5 different levels of difficulty? Hrmn...James you got a line on where we"ve seen something like that before?

Anyways...

Miele...you"re kinda missing the point. Yes it sucks that you have 26 players and someone has to sit out. However, until this miracle algorithm appears that can completely balance a 5 man fight for 100 people so that difficulty is consistent (taking into account other random factors such as DC"s, communication issues, reaction times in large environments, world objects being harder to see due to crowding, etc...etc...) so that the same loot drops (otherwise you"ll end up with logical gaps anyways. That is if 20 people is the cutoff point between getting ilvl 219 gear and ilvl 226 gear, sucks to be your guild if you have 18 raiders) and all the other logistical problems you"d have to solve....

...well it"s kinda pointless to talk about. Right now it"s a pratical impossibility. We might as well talk about how boss fights are getting stagnant and the answer is to have completely realistic destructible environments where every grain of sand is considered it"s own object. Neat to think about and yes it"s a solution, but it"s also practically impossible at this point.

And so is scaling raid content to group size unless you go with completely pointless classes like in CoH and enemies whose most complicated ability is a snare. Perhaps we can get Dumar to pipe in here with a "Done right, dynamic content is awesome!

Ninajrr said:

Yes, but you need to make the "hard mode" more continuous and allow players the ability to control how difficult an encounter is (to a limit, of course)

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So what you"re saying is there needs to be varying degrees of difficulty for each hard mode encounter that are completely player controlled? Like a big red button, maybe...

Zehn - Vhex said:

You mean like tiered hardmodes with 1, 2, 3 and sometimes even 4 or 5 different levels of difficulty? Hrmn...James you got a line on where we"ve seen something like that before?

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Yes, exactly like that, but I am suggesting you can do it without having to design 5 independent difficulty versions of the same content by having variables alter the reward probabilities based on how well the players do.

Personally I"d rather push a big red button. It"s just so much cooler.

Ninajrr said:

Yes, exactly like that, but I am suggesting you can do it without having to design 5 independent difficulty versions of the same content by having variables alter the reward probabilities based on how well the players do.

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Nothing I"d enjoy more then beating 1 keeper YS only to find out we didn"t get an ilvl239 item because RNG fucked us on your continuous scale. Random loot is random and subsequently terrible. We sure as shit don"t need -more- randomness injected into the loot system.

Caocao said:

Genereally speaking you"re not going that far in any game you start out in. You don"t have to start making larger trips until you start up w/ the group content and or a different set of quests. This is when you want to do shit w/ your friends who are other races etc and need to make it over there. I don"t really see a problem with using a mount as a "coming of age(level)" type deal as they have been doing for quite some time. I"d rather not be in the newbie zone/island w/e seeing a bunch of people on mounts.

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Which would kind of be my point, give it to people when they start doing longer trips.

If you take WoW by example, back at release you got a mount at 40, by which point you"d already explored probably 2/3 of the gameworld, wandered the better part of both continents on foot, it was a bitch. Likewise with WAR (which is what brought this thought to mind), you get your mount at level 20, meaning you"ve already run around two of the four tiers on foot. It"s boring, it"s tedious and it"s unnecessary.

I"m not saying pop into the game with one, but I think getting your basic run of the mill mount at level 10 or so isn"t beyond reasonable.

Zehn - Vhex said:

Nothing I"d enjoy more then beating 1 keeper YS only to find out we didn"t get an ilvl239 item because RNG fucked us on your continuous scale. Random loot is random and subsequently terrible. We sure as shit don"t need -more- randomness injected into the loot system.

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In absolutely no way would this be more random. By doing a good job in the encounter, you eliminate the probability of getting shitty items and increase the odds of getting good items. Look at my example above, notice how in the extremely well performing instance I said that the "decent item""s chance to drop goes to 0%? Yeah. It goes to 0%, not 1%. 0%.

If you are getting in that area of difficulty where it is 1%, and then you get fucked by the RNG and that 1% occurs, then next time all you need to do is a little better and that will never happen again. Additionally, putting in discrete characteristics on top of the continuous scale (like #of Drakes) can be used to combine and eliminate that RNG fuckitude even more.

That islessrandom, since the players have more control over what the reward ranges will be.

Zehn is either bored or trying to interview for a job.

Also if you peel back the skin of this thread you"ll find each one of these arguments argued before with the same people. It"s funny.

Nothing has changed except the amount of shitty games that wasted millions of dollars still not getting anything right.

Azrayne said:

Which would kind of be my point, give it to people when they start doing longer trips.

If you take WoW by example, back at release you got a mount at 40, by which point you"d already explored probably 2/3 of the gameworld, wandered the better part of both continents on foot, it was a bitch. Likewise with WAR (which is what brought this thought to mind), you get your mount at level 20, meaning you"ve already run around two of the four tiers on foot. It"s boring, it"s tedious and it"s unnecessary.

I"m not saying pop into the game with one, but I think getting your basic run of the mill mount at level 10 or so isn"t beyond reasonable.

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Maybe wondered it once.. flight points helped w/ that a lot.... The only other game that had any thing like this was DAoC w/ it"s horse route system. So to say you had to run every where pre 40...

Caocao said:

Maybe wondered it once.. flight points helped w/ that a lot.... The only other game that had any thing like this was DAoC w/ it"s horse route system. So to say you had to run every where pre 40...

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Oh come on, don"t tell me you didn"t wish you had a mount every second you spent running around the barrens...

The Barrens and EQ2"s Commonlands need to have their datafiles burned on some manner of pyre fueled by the souls of the innocent.

Kuro said:

The Barrens and EQ2"s Commonlands need to have their datafiles burned on some manner of pyre fueled by the souls of the innocent.

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Seriously. I"d even add Duskwood and definitely add STV (before you could get mounts at 30) to that list.

STV for horde isn"t bad. Barrens isn"t nearly as bad as it used to be either. I"d honestly say Stonetalon/Desolace/TN are worse by far. Barrens you at least load up on 21 quests, do a complete circuit around the zone, turn them all in and get 20 more quests, repeat. Prior to RAF that took maybe 2~4 hours and would take you from 14 to 21~22.

Grizzly Hills can go screw itself though.

Stonetalon is an amazingly beatiful zone with very little content in it, which is a huge pity, although I cannot really think of any Blizzard zones that are not graphical masterworks. Blizzard artists are amazing.

Gnome Eater said:

Stonetalon is an amazingly beatiful zone with very little content in it, which is a huge pity, although I cannot really think of any Blizzard zones that are not graphical masterworks. Blizzard artists are amazing.

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I always thought Tanaris was incredibly ugly, and most of Silithus as well (I did love the parts with the Qiraji architecture). Wetlands, Arathi, large parts of Plaguelands, durotar, etc.

Not saying they don"t have some amazing zones, ashenvale and darkshore, storm peaks, STV, Un"goro, dragonblight, borean, HF, blackrock, and a whole host of the old world instances, etc. But there are definately some lacklustre ones in the mix.

Azrayne said:

I always thought Tanaris was incredibly ugly, and most of Silithus as well (I did love the parts with the Qiraji architecture). Wetlands, Arathi, large parts of Plaguelands, durotar, etc.

Not saying they don"t have some amazing zones, ashenvale and darkshore, storm peaks, STV, Un"goro, dragonblight, borean, HF, blackrock, and a whole host of the old world instances, etc. But there are definately some lacklustre ones in the mix.

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Wetlands weak? no way. that zone left a HUGE impression on me in beta.
Thandol span?
Leaving Loch modan, going through the tunnels down the mountain and ending up in the fens.

If EVERY zone were some fantastical eclectic mess, you would get bored of them very fast. Setting themes, and establishing high points and low points creates a visual balance.
The fens of wetlands make walking up to the stonewrought Dam from below even more impressive. or the thandol span, or the pirate ship.
Its a fairly big empty zone fair enough. Something should have been done with Grim Batol and its surrounding area.

The "ugly" zones are a bit too ugly at times. Plaugelands, netherstorm, shadowmoon valley, Silithus. They tried to set them as bleak, but its almost too effective at that, and becomes just an eyesore. The more interesting bleak areas like Scholomance/stratholme, duskwood, ghostlands, felwood, etc end up way more visually appealing even in their horror.