Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

It is my hope that new games will bring back more meaning to the actual physical stats. Instead of +dodge just make Agilityand intelligence the modifers of dodge and put agility on the gear instead. Instead of +parry just make dexterity and strength the main modifiers. Instead of +crit gear just give people more dexterity.

I would rather see more attributes then we have in WOW. I want back Wisdom to go along with Intelligence so that casters have multiple things that they need to look at building. I would like to see Dexterity, Charisma, Intuition, Focus, ect... they can brainstorm more. And I would like to see things like Intelligence affect a warriors ability to do certain things to a small extent such as increase their parry, dodge and hit rate since they can read the movements of their opponent clearer as a intelligent human warrior then say a huge lumbering ogre halfwit of a warrior.

And in that regard I would like to see the racial stats matter, I would like to see a ogre at the end game still be a noticably stronger warrior, which can be done by making gear modifications on attributes percentage based rather then raw number upgrades. Instead of making a pair of bracers add +10 strength make the bracers +10% to base strength so that a ogre warrior who has 130 strength naked gets 13 strength bonus from the bracers while a human with 80 strength will get 8 Strength bonus from the same bracers. This keeps the relative power of the races that exists at the start consistent throughout the entire games life, which was destroyed in EQ due to armor making a gnome virtually identical in strength to a ogre in the end with equal gear.

Racial stats should matter, I know it makes trying to balance a human warrior with an ogre warrior, but as I said intelligence and other stats can be used as modifiers to affect certain things. The ogre can hit harder yet with less consistency then a human would so he might miss twice as often yet hit twice as hard when he connects. The ogre might have 60% more hps but he might also get hit alot more often for full damage because of low agility, dexterity, and intelligence. The warrior class in a racial setup like this would become much like the differences between a druid tank and a warrior as WOW does it atm, they would flat out do things differently.

Kuro said:

I dislike Ratings because you spend the next expansion gearing yourself back up to where you already were in those stats.

It just seems... silly.

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Expansions should take the Zelda/Metroid method.
You zone into the new areas and all your gear magically disappears, and you have to spend the whole expansion regathering it.

Tropics said:

It is my hope that new games will bring back more meaning to the actual physical stats. Instead of +dodge just make Agilityand intelligence the modifers of dodge and put agility on the gear instead. Instead of +parry just make dexterity and strength the main modifiers. Instead of +crit gear just give people more dexterity.

I would rather see more attributes then we have in WOW. I want back Wisdom to go along with Intelligence so that casters have multiple things that they need to look at building. I would like to see Dexterity, Charisma, Intuition, Focus, ect... they can brainstorm more. And I would like to see things like Intelligence affect a warriors ability to do certain things to a small extent such as increase their parry, dodge and hit rate since they can read the movements of their opponent clearer as a intelligent human warrior then say a huge lumbering ogre halfwit of a warrior.

And in that regard I would like to see the racial stats matter, I would like to see a ogre at the end game still be a noticably stronger warrior, which can be done by making gear modifications on attributes percentage based rather then raw number upgrades. Instead of making a pair of bracers add +10 strength make the bracers +10% to base strength so that a ogre warrior who has 130 strength naked gets 13 strength bonus from the bracers while a human with 80 strength will get 8 Strength bonus from the same bracers. This keeps the relative power of the races that exists at the start consistent throughout the entire games life, which was destroyed in EQ due to armor making a gnome virtually identical in strength to a ogre in the end with equal gear.

Racial stats should matter, I know it makes trying to balance a human warrior with an ogre warrior, but as I said intelligence and other stats can be used as modifiers to affect certain things. The ogre can hit harder yet with less consistency then a human would so he might miss twice as often yet hit twice as hard when he connects. The ogre might have 60% more hps but he might also get hit alot more often for full damage because of low agility, dexterity, and intelligence. The warrior class in a racial setup like this would become much like the differences between a druid tank and a warrior as WOW does it atm, they would flat out do things differently.

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If you go that way you just might just make different classes for each race.

Vinen said:

If you go that way you just might just make different classes for each race.

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I was not quite thinking along those lines but you are right, other then closely related races whose stats are relatively similar (an elf and a human both being able to be a ranger). The human and other races of that size/attribute type could be a Knight as their warrior type of class, and the Ogre and trolls could have a warrior type class called the brawler.

I would have to think about it abit, of course balance would be an issue to some and development time to create the various types of classes for each combat type depending on the races would be steep.

That said I actually like the idea of just having the various races that are quite dissimilar to each other having their own classes rather then having a gnome and a ogre both being a warrior with the exact same types of attacks, wearing the same type of armor, and using the same types of weapons. It makes no sense when you really think about it.

Tropics said:

It is my hope that new games will bring back more meaning to the actual physical stats.

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It"s largely a semantic difference. Crit rating has 3 effects for me as a Paladin. How is that any different then what you"re proposing?

What"s more important is making sure players understand an item is an upgrade or not compared to what they"re currently using. Design the system however you want with diminishing returns, soft caps or mob scaling against your rating, whatever. The spreadsheet nerds will love it.

But for Joe Casual, make absolutely goddamn certain he knows how a new piece of gear will affect his performance and in what ways. Granted, this requires the developers knowing their own game and classes which WoW long ago lost sight of (lol at Hunter 2pc set) but you get the idea.

Racial stats should matter

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The example of the big/strong warrior vs. quick/agile warrior is always the most common example when trying to push this idea. Unfortunately it never works out quite that well. Even under "perfect" balance situations you have glaring gaps. Just look at blizzard and how after 5 years they still haven"t managed to balance tanks.

You"re not only then trying to balance each races class aagainst eachother race, but you"re also trying to balance class roles on top of that.

Furthermore, it"s a matter of making sure all classes race have stats that are attractive to them. What about say, ogre vs. erudite? Not many casters really care to stack strength/stamina style stats which are what we"d figure is the Ogre"s forte.

And then to try to maintain PvP balance as well on top of all that.

Nah, I"d rather that the game designers give me the option. Let me stack the shit out of agility/dodge/parry if I want to be an agile tauren warrior or stack the shit out of stamina if I want to be a beefy gnomish warrior.

Zehn - Vhex said:

Furthermore, it"s a matter of making sure all classes race have stats that are attractive to them. What about say, ogre vs. erudite? Not many casters really care to stack strength/stamina style stats which are what we"d figure is the Ogre"s forte.

And then to try to maintain PvP balance as well on top of all that.

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Balancing an Ogre dps caster vs an erudite:

Erudite plays down whatever path he choses, nuker, doter, pet"er, whatever. Uses talents so that spells get enhanced dmg from their good primary stats. Low hps, cloth armor, standard glass cannon stuff, no surprises here.

Ogre plays down same lines, but choses different talents, Say a seal of blood style boost/backfire, combined with hp regen or +hp per dmg done talent (balancing the heal would be tricky, need to make it solid for the high sta ogre, yet weaker, but not no-show for the Erudite). Talent that boosts pets based on casters physical stats. You end up with both using same spells to do similar dps, but different play styles and Damage from:X percentages.

You could setup limits so that you couldn"t run both paths (limit talent points, exclusive paths, etc) or just not. Let the fragile Erudite take both +dmg paths if he wishes and then deal with being 1 attack away from death due to being even more fragile (breaks down if your game ever gets to the point where *everyone but the tank* is one hit away from death).

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Its not perfect, and likely would both be a bitch to balance both against itself, but also in Solo/Group/Raid and Noob/Intermed/BoS gear situations. But its possible, on paper.

Zehn - Vhex said:

It"s largely a semantic difference. Crit rating has 3 effects for me as a Paladin. How is that any different then what you"re proposing?

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Because if you use atributes then each point of dexterity not only affects crit but also increases your chance to parry an attack, it may decrease the chance of an incomming attack interupting or delaying a spell casting, It may increase your ability of getting a spell casting crit, it will help in your ability to pick locks, it may reduce the chance of being successfully disarmed, there are any slew of things that a point of dexterity can affect in different asspects of the game and they all make sense from a "I am more dexterous" standpoint.

When you get a point of crit it affects crit, whether that be offensive and defensive spell casting and melee attacks. It affects nothing else. Which means it is not akin to dexterity, it is more akin to some magical thing that makes you sometimes crit but it has no physical reasoning for that increased chance to crit because that stat affects nothing else that might also benefit from whatever makes you more likely to crit.

I just like the way it works in the games when attributes are what affect things like that and thus affect other things. It makes sense for the rogue to be hugely dexterous and thus be able to hit vital points in his attacks. Sure you can pretend it is the same type of thing if you have crit stats on items instead, but when you are building a game from ground up and have not yet went either direction you don"t have to pretend, you can simply build the game to emphasize an importance on attributes from the start.

What"s more important is making sure players understand an item is an upgrade or not compared to what they"re currently using. Design the system however you want with diminishing returns, soft caps or mob scaling against your rating, whatever. The spreadsheet nerds will love it.

But for Joe Casual, make absolutely goddamn certain he knows how a new piece of gear will affect his performance and in what ways. Granted, this requires the developers knowing their own game and classes which WoW long ago lost sight of (lol at Hunter 2pc set) but you get the idea.

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With this I do actually think a certain amount of experience in the game should count for something. You can make the early part of the game make it very clear what each stat does for the player through quests and NPC"s that explain each stat (and unlike EQ each stat must have real and noticable effects). You can have a detailed window telling what dexterity does, you can say it increases your chance to parry by X%, increases your chance to get a crit by Y%, ect... but since each stat can affect alot of different things it would partially be up to the player to decide if he wants the 5 strength over the 5 dexterity and if the increased ability to block, increase in raw base damage and 8 other things strength affects are worth more then the increased parry chance, increased crit chance, and 8 other things dexterity does for his character.

A little bit of trial and error and testing of things is a good thing to be a part of the game IMO when it comes to things like this.

What about say, ogre vs. erudite? Not many casters really care to stack strength/stamina style stats which are what we"d figure is the Ogre"s forte.

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At the end of the day should a Ogre be a equal to a Erudite as a caster though? I think EQ did it OK with the ogre being the shaman caster and as such more atuned to diseases and spirits while the erudite was more in the elements and raw power thing. This would come back to the thing above where probably the ogre race needs it"s own casting classes that make sense from whatever perspective you use to create the lore of that race and thus they would be powerful as those casting style classes, although perhaps they do not reach the full destructive power of the true glass cannon but they always have the benefits of their racial stamina and strength to offset any shortcommings in raw magical prowess. If the Erudite can hit a ogre nearly twice as hard with a spell but has half of the HPS of the ogre then things are not that far off from a PVP perspective, if the ogre can slam as a racial skill and as such if a ogre caster gets close to a erudite caster the erudite caster is likely to be slammed, stunned or knocked to the ground, and be at a disadvantage.

Of course then trying to balance PVE, the different ogre caster can have more utility spells with short term buffs to melee due to effects they can cast on the NPC, the ogre can be given more slow working dots that are not as effective in PVP but that can add up to large damage in long term PVE fights, there are lots of ways to do this as well. Although I will admit this here and now I HATE when companies try to balance PVP and PVE with the same spell powers. I would personally make the spells work on totally different number generators for PVP and PVE and balance them independent of each other.

See, that"s an insane increase in workload all to what, make a retadin but call it an ogre-wizard instead? Rather then making players feel unique you"re just going to water everything down anyways. All you"re really doing is saying, "okay ogre"s warriors use attack power to cast magic, while Erudite wizards use spell power to cast magic. See, different!"

And then what happens to gear? Is gear going to be tailored to the all the class/race combinations in order to preserve stats?

What about my human warrior? What if I want him to be a more brutal then agile warrior type? How do I go about switching if my base racial stats push towards a more agile fighter? Do I get to choose at character creation? Why then can"t I choose for all races? In which case what"s the point in the first place of just outright denying some race certain aspects because your idea of lore is that all Ogre"s are brutal tards while all gnomes can dodge bullets?

All you"re doing is quintupling your development time as you now have to create armor, abilities and so forth for racexclass number of setups. Even more so if you include the ability to specialize your class further.

It"s all predicated on the idea that you"ll be able to properly balance it as well. You won"t. See Blizzard and tanks. You"re the cooldown tank! You"re the high AC/hp tank! You other two tanks? yeah...you can tank on trash or something, I dunno...come back in a couple years when you outgear the instance then you can tank it for some random pug.

To be completely honest I wouldn"t even really bother with races as playable. Just give me the insane character customization options that Aion has and I"ll make my own race and then I"ll gear up to how I want to play my class. Or if you do insist on race, have 2~3 unique classes per race as Vinen suggested. IE: Elves can be sorcerer or ranger. Human"s can be warlock or ninja. Dark Elves can be deathknights or psionics. Dwarves can be soldiers or priests. Etc...

Nobody wants to realize they"re gimped because you felt gnomes wouldn"t make good thieves or something. EQ did -not- do it right. Remember the xp penalty for being a troll because a slim amount of regen was considered to be super duper awesome? Look at WoW. That shit -still- isn"t balanced. Remember priest racial spells? Yeah, terrible idea that nobody liked because it gave one side a clear advantage for nearly 2 years before Blizzard figured out what was up. Ask Horde DPS"ers how much they enjoy having to gear for 1% extra hit because of an arbitrary coin flip by blizzard.

This is one of those idea"s that feel like they just make sense, but translate terribly when ported into gameplay.

Is it unfortunate? Yeah. But go read the Mortal Online thread and you"ll find an endless list of idea"s that are absolutely terrible even though they just make sense. 50%+ of my screen blacked out when I wear a helmet? No way to regain lost health outside of healing magic? 200,000 tradeskill combines with 199,980 of them being useless?

Zehn - Vhex said:

What about my human warrior? What if I want him to be a more brutal then agile warrior type? How do I go about switching if my base racial stats push towards a more agile fighter? Do I get to choose at character creation? Why then can"t I choose for all races? In which case what"s the point in the first place of just outright denying some race certain aspects because your idea of lore is that all Ogre"s are brutal tards while all gnomes can dodge bullets?

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I would say at character creation if you want a particularily strong human then for sure attribute points that you can spend at creation, as has been stated before in this thread if you use quests as a way to award attribute points at times then perhaps the player can also choose where they spend that point and can thus further boost their base strength. But will a human who goes balls to the wall strength and wants to be a brute be as strong as a ogre player that does the same with the same level of progression? I would rather the ogre ends up stronger, although a ogre that does not go balls to the wall on strength as the human did might indeed not be any stronger then that human. Which I guess since we are on a thread with RA Salvatore"s influence would be Wulfgar and his peak strength for his race, although he still paled in comparison to giants and the ogre he fights while working in the saloon when it comes to strength.

I like races to mean something, I would rather the races do actually make a difference in how you play a class or whether you can even be that class. In most games your race amounts to little more then a graphical skin and I find that a little lacking. Trying to make them truly meaningful to the way you play your character while trying to maintain overall balance in the game is for sure no small task though, I admit that. But I do think it is possible.

Then just do as Vinen and I suggested and have unique classes for each race. Why have ogre"s and elves be warriors but one is STR based and the other AGI based when you could make it so much more interesting by having Ogre"s be Brutalizers and elves be Rangers with completely different ability sets?

Rather then having to design and balance 40+ race/class combinations each gaining different scaling from stats and gears and the nightmare that entails and 30 of them being useless anyways because you figure players would enjoy dreaming about mighty Wulfgar and how it all just makes sense now! I mean who would play a human class anything when ogre"s are stronger, elves are faster and gnomes are smarter making those 3 races the best for their respective classes?

If you"re going to go that route, just make 5 races, 2 classes per race and be done with it. You could make a ridiculously complex stat/ability system so that it doesn"t matter for your 40+ race/class combinations in which case...why the fuck bother in the first place?

KISS.

Zehn - Vhex said:

Then just do as Vinen and I suggested and have unique classes for each race. Why have ogre"s and elves be warriors but one is STR based and the other AGI based when you could make it so much more interesting by having Ogre"s be Brutalizers and elves be Rangers with completely different ability sets?

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I don"t mind that in the slightest, in fact it makes more sense given that elves are not going to engage in combat with the same moves or for the same motivations as an ogre. The only thing is when you get close to the same attribute types I don"t mind the classes being not totally isolated to a single race, aka the ability for a human to also be a ranger due to the fact they are closer aligned to the elves and have similar starting stats. The same can be said for a necromancer, it makes lots of sense a dark elf could be a necromancer but a human necromancer makes sense as well. I agree with you that classes need to be alot more race specific, but there can be some overlap as long as it makes sense and if it makes sense then the attribute issue wont get in the way too much.

The more I discuss this the term "warrior" is just too generic as a class name. It is like calling a class "caster" instead of a wizard, or a warlock, or a necromancer, or a shaman. "Warrior" needs to be broken up like the caster classes are and then I agree with you, specific types of the generic "warrior" types are then designed for the various race types. An elf or human could be a ranger, a troll or ogre could be a brawler or what have you.

Hey I know, you could have warriors be based around armor and shields and martial abilities. Then you could have some that use divine protections and holy abilities, let"s call those paladins. Then maybe you could have some sort of paganistic fighter that uses nature and animal attributes.. call them druids. THen maybe one day you can add some fighter that uses dark energies and unholy power. Dread knights? Nah, Deathknights! Then you can make it so only certain races can become some of those classes. Hell, a game like that may get what? 10, 11 million subs.

Personally I don"t care if racial abilities are implemented in a game, or if each race has race specific classes, as long as its balanced. We all know balance is impossible to get perfect, but when racials are useless to some race/class combos and a boon to others it creates combos that are underutilized and not as much fun. Everquest certainly didn"t do very well at this, and neither has WoW. Xp penalties and increased faction gains are retarded also, all things considered unless you really like the way a certain race/class plays your going to play the one that allows you to min max the most, and thats not about having fun or being balanced.

People love to throw around the word balance but what does it really mean. It can mean damn near next to anythings and as such has really lost most meanig when it comes to gaming unles you follow it up with specifics?

Do you mean every classes ability to solo.

Every classes ability to get groups

Every tanks ability to tank PVE

Every Tanks ability to PVP

Every tanks damaging ability in PVE

And so on and so on.

To make everything in every aspect always 100% balanced is impossible and to even try is a waste of time and money. Sorry but someone always has to be top dog at specific things or every game may as well only have 1 class and we can go back to UO where everyone can do everything and be everything.

The biggest hurdle seems to be balancing between PVE and PVP though. I really think that games that try to do both need to have separate rules for each.

While we all know what taunt does in PVE why does it have to be worthless in PVP, why cant it be different or have a different effect when used on players? I think one of wow"s biggest issues is trying to use one ruleset for PVE and PVP.

To me balance means that if there are 4 races that can play class x, none of them have a huge advantage to the point where no one plays the rest, or one of them is way behind the others. Balancing between classes is impossible, unless you eliminate different jobs/roles. How do you balance a tank and a healer? its like trying to balance a dump truck and a race car.

You balance roles with each other. If you have to tank Pikachi the Storm God, you can tank him decently with every tank classes. One might be slightly better due to class specificity, but you don"t design every boss to rely on this class specialty(AE tanking, high avoidance, phys or magic mitigation etc) and all classes should be able to perform decently in all these areas. Same for healers with AE/hot/burst heals, and DPS in general. That"s how you try to achieve balance, the lastest blizzard philosophy, bring the player not the class. Not like that they managed to, but that"s the whole point of balance.

Zehn - Vhex said:

KISS.

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Dozens of failed MMOs later, and designers and teams still forget that rule.

I personally hate balancing. Balance is overrated. Fun should be the requisite goal, and every class should not be equal. Enact enough variety and different encounters that the min/maxers have no easy answer.

I agree with Bongk that too much PVP/PVE balance juggling goes on, especially in WOW. PVP is easy, just put firm CC rules and DPS limits in place solely for it that make it balanced.

At the end of the day, just keep it simple and add content and appropriate skills.

Watching Zehn rip someone else"s idea to pieces never gets boring, you should be paid for that.

Did any MMO explore the idea of separating most of the stats from gear, except the obvious ones like armor/speed ? Or more importantly, did any MMO do it successfully ? From what I remember only Lineage 2, where the lower level armors did pretty much nothing and only certain sets boosted your stats or switched them around, which, when combined with the fact that better equipment was really hard to get made for satisfying progress of your character.And the armor was pretty much the only way to tell someone"s relative strength.

seeing how this is the most general MMO thread -

have any good MMORPGs come out in the last few months or are there any coming up that focus on a PVE endgame?

Quineloe said:

seeing how this is the most general MMO thread -

have any good MMORPGs come out in the last few months or are there any coming up that focus on a PVE endgame?

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Not saying any are good, but here is the upcoming MMOG release schedule. (2 football MMOG? huh)

Upcoming ReleasesParabellum - Q2 2009
Football SuperStars - Q2 2009
Jumpgate Evolution - Q2 2009
Fallen Earth - Q2 2009
The Warlords - Q2 2009
CrimeCraft - 08/25/09
Champions Online - 09/01/09
QuickHit Football - Q3 2009
CitiesXL - 09/03/09
Aion - 09/22/09
Mortal Online - Q3 2009
World of Cars Online - Q3 2009