Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

While there is no feature in any game I"d lick nuts for, I think the argument is steering away from the vital pieces to making Copernicus be as good as we claim, and want.

The class you choose needs to serve a useful purpose in achieving the in game goals set by designers, but beyond that it needs to be fun as hell.

There are a litany of reasons I can give you for my class choices since EQ, but the fact was there were choices, which is why I have always been a fan of classes to begin with.

I am not sure why I chose a Human Monk exactly, but I know one of the reasons was because ONLY the human could be a monk, so I would be different, and unique.

I also know that I stayed up through the night to hit 17 to get flying kick... Nerd reasons aside that"s what I think you shoot for right?

Classes that make you feel cool, unique, and skills that inspire folks to want to level and get them.

But being useful and having fun are the important pieces to any race/class in any MMO right?

Grave said:

I"m personally over flying mounts. It was cool for awhile but now I really feel like I could take it or leave it. The only thing I love about them is the speed in which they get me where I need to go, and that can be replaced fairly easily.

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My personal favorite is enforcing land based travel early in the game and then opening up some ease of travel later in the characters life via portal gates in or near major cities, items from lengthy quests that have the ability to transport a person to specific locations, ect...

I would rather not have the option of flying mounts, really fast land mounts later in the game are ok, spectral horses for necro"s or whatnot, but at the most the things should hover barely over the ground and thus still travel the land routes.

I would love to see a game that can take the tension of traveling through Rathe Mountains as a level 10 character and somehow keep at least some of that feeling throughout the game, even when you are level 60, only now it is not Rathe Mountains but the Forest of Doom or what have you.

Of course that sense of tension exists in large part to the costs of death, the exp loss and upcomming corpse retrieval. No clue what the plans for a death penalty are going to be in this game but they need to be something alot more then WOW to bring back some of the nerves that EQ caused.

Zehn - Vhex said:

-Fuck- reagents. That"s another nuisance that needs to die a painful death.

If you get a hadron for the idea of material components for spells, then use Catalysts and don"t make it take up an inventory slot.

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So how does a Catalyst differ from a reagent? A different bag system? One thing I miss about EQ was the bone chip market for necro and SK pets. I spent alot of time as both classes and I farmed alot of bones to sell to high level necro"s when I was a noob and I also spent a huge amount of gold on bone chips later on helping later noobs out. I liked having a huge stockpile of bone chips.

I often was annoyed that later on pet spells in EQ were not obtainable that could allow me to use drake bones, or even dragon bones.

I hated the way the mage pets worked, if you have nothing to do but buy a bunch pf reagents from a merchant then the system is flawed, but the bone chips were a part of EQ I never had an issue with. As far as bag space, I would simply make an item like that stack infinately, so you use only a single bag slot for your reagent of that type whether you have 5 or 5000. It is akin to arrows, but with those if a new game does not finally use an "endless quiver" and then include some single rare drop arrows that you can put into the "endless quiver" and thus have an endless supply of that arrow to shoot...

Ngruk said:

While there is no feature in any game I"d lick nuts for

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Best quote from a CEO ever, or best quote from a CEO ever?

Ngruk said:

skills that inspire folks to want to level and get them.

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Yes, please!

Assuming you don"t mean to imply I"ll be motivated to level up so I can upgrade to "Swing Sword II" from "Swing Sword I", then I"m in total agreement. While it"s fine if certain skills are shared by several/all classes (i.e, Sense Heading or other generic stuff), it absolutely makes a class more interesting and fun if there are unique skills at various levels through the class progression to keep me motivated. Better still - at least for me - if those unique skills (in particular) do not magically appear in my spell book, but instead have to be researched/quested. I have no problem with having to work for the good stuff.

I"m sure it makes balancing a bitch for the devs if they have to take into consideration a number of unique and (hopefully) powerful skills, but balance won"t mean squat if the player has already lost interest due to a boring ass skill progression.

Grave said:

Where"s the issue with it? Seems like trying to make everyone completely even causes more problems than it solves and is a total balance nightmare of constant tweaking and retweaking.

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That is the problem though right there. If you do NOTHING but DPS along with 3 other classes then every one of those classes needs to be doing pretty much identical DPS because if you only do one thing you better do it as well as anyone else and better then anyone else who does DPS and ANYTHING else.

In regards to reducing the spam healing/tank mechanic utility in all the classes doing things to reduce/mitigate damage incomming to the group/raid is going to be crucial. You are going to need to have people interupting mob casting with various slams/attacks, you are going to need to have a rogue do some sort of eye gouge attack that makes the next 3 incomming attacks from the mob have a 80% chance to miss, you are going to need to have that shadowknight type of player who can cause a blood splatter type of attack that does a small aoe heal to anyone within 5 meters of the mob, ect... If you want to kill off healing to a degree (I don"t think it should be ousted totally) then you are going to need to create a whole lot of utility for classes, and there is no balancing an eye gouge that causes the mob to go blind with a casting interupt, both are valuable in different ways. Tweaking needed to be done for a class would have to do with making sure their skills add benefit to the group in beating mobs, not how they stack up. As long as the rogue makes the fight easier then great, and it is probably gonna be beneficial to have a rogue AND a shadowknight rather then 2 of either due to different utility blending better then stacking the same stuff.

imready2go said:

Yes, please!

Assuming you don"t mean to imply I"ll be motivated to level up so I can upgrade to "Swing Sword II" from "Swing Sword I", then I"m in total agreement. While it"s fine if certain skills are shared by several/all classes (i.e, Sense Heading or other generic stuff), it absolutely makes a class more interesting and fun if there are unique skills at various levels through the class progression to keep me motivated. Better still - at least for me - if those unique skills (in particular) do not magically appear in my spell book, but instead have to be researched/quested. I have no problem with having to work for the good stuff.

I"m sure it makes balancing a bitch for the devs if they have to take into consideration a number of unique and (hopefully) powerful skills, but balance won"t mean squat if the player has already lost interest due to a boring ass skill progression.

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I look at the bland skill progression as another "cost" in having to create the mass of content players "require".

I say that because I don"t wonder if there were times when masses of content was created vs. some of the cool stuff like animations for skills and things like that, that I as a player would have preferred. I get geeked when I see new art for my skills.

I"ve either missed, or it"s never happened, an expansion that brings on new animations for my toon. Though I think I remember WoW adding some?

Ngruk said:

But being useful and having fun are the important pieces to any race/class in any MMO right?

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Yes, and the former has a large part in leading to the latter.

That said I think a important part of the race/class in a MMO is also a sense of identity, and this EQ did extremely well with racial starting areas like Akanon, Felwithe, Halas, ect... where your character really was a gnome or a barbarian. One thing WOW has never done for me is give me the sense of identity I had when I was a gnome in EQ with our clockworks all over the place and my first battles being against our own out of control creations. Or for that matter an Iksar, who was given one of the greatest backgrounds in the entire game and got to level up in the ruins of it"s own former empire. You can almost not spend too much time creating that truly unique starting area for each race and class. The gnomes in their tinkerers paradise, and if you happen to be a necro then have the trainer are in some dark hidden area where they hide from the non-evil gnomes. And if you are a dark elf that necromancer guild hall can be the front and center shrine of society giving the two different race"s of necromancers a very different feeling for their race/class, one was a shunned member of their society and the other was revered.

They added new particle effects/sounds for a lot of the combat skills, but I think the animations are still mostly the same.

Tropics said:

Yes, and the former has a large part in leading to the latter.

That said I think a important part of the race/class in a MMO is also a sense of identity, and this EQ did extremely well with racial starting areas like Akanon, Felwithe, Halas, ect... where your character really was a gnome or a barbarian. One thing WOW has never done for me is give me the sense of identity I had when I was a gnome in EQ with our clockworks all over the place and my first battles being against our own out of control creations. Or for that matter an Iksar, who was given one of the greatest backgrounds in the entire game and got to level up in the ruins of it"s own former empire. You can almost not spend too much time creating that truly unique starting area for each race and class. The gnomes in their tinkerers paradise, and if you happen to be a necro then have the trainer are in some dark hidden area where they hide from the non-evil gnomes. And if you are a dark elf that necromancer guild hall can be the front and center shrine of society giving the two different race"s of necromancers a very different feeling for their race/class, one was a shunned member of their society and the other was revered.

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I think the opinion here at 38 is very much in line with this. That special feeling that your race/class is very different than the other races/classes was and is a big deal.

Having your own starting city that was unique to your race, that explained your races history was huge to me and lots of the folks that were around and involved in that are either here, or had an impact on the folks that are.

Glad to hear it. I think it"s definitely worth giving each race a unique starting experience that really ties the player into the lore and history of their race.

One thing I"ve always wanted to see was a starting area that was actually in a high level, dangerous zone. You"d start out and be able to see a little bit of your racial home city, but then through some series of events are forced away to some other land (appropriate for your level). This would instill in the player that sense of sort of finding their way "back home", a grand tale that would have them returning home a seasoned adventurer. Even better if they find that home in peril when they at last arrive!

I just think it"d be interesting to see a little variance on the old "home city = newbie grounds" deal, not that there"s anything particularly wrong with it. It seems like it"d give the world a little more of an "adventuring" feel if you came across the city of the Barbarians around level 40 or something and it actually felt somewhat exotic and interesting to meet them and be among them. You can"t get that same feeling in WoW because, well, why would you go back to another races" newbie ground for much of anything.

You also have to make sure you don"t have to many starting areas or there will be some places that will be completely empty and you also spread players out.

Spreading players out is bad.

I think it speaks volumes about how good WoW gameplay was, back then. Compared to many other MMO"s the starting "experience" sucked. Yes it was painless, quick and fun, but the variety was non-existent. So it sucked in the sense that I had zero reason to re-roll on either faction once I did a toon because it very quickly became the very same experience.

The flip side is immensely challenging though. Creating an experience so different you want people to want to try it, is immense in content alone.There is a price to pay for that much depth up front, and you need to know what that is.

EQ had some pretty awesome variety in the at start content, besides originating the kill 10 rats line of quests (which weren"t even fun then) but starting in Qeynos was a hell of a lot different than Kaladim.

I tried every race for that reason. I remember NEVER starting a Barbarian because I wanted Halas to remain this weird locale I had to travel to get to.

Who was the ogre that sold pickles in Freeport?

Ya, some of that was cool as hell. None of it was a technical marvel or huge game play development risk, but much was just "cool" stuff in the world. Things that created emotion, stupid little stuff, such as Fippy, and that wench in the hills that killed me for kicking a rabid bear....

Ngruk said:

Who was the ogre that sold pickles in Freeport?

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Boomba the Big.

The day EverQuest changed the Dumb Smiling Fatty Ogre character models was the day doom descended upon Sony"s house.

Damn you Luclin, damn you forever. (Also, killing the troll face was a slightly less weighty sin, but still abominable)

They really need to make it so you don"t have to be Luclin Models to ride horses.

Ngruk said:

While there is no feature in any game I"d lick nuts for, I think the argument is steering away from the vital pieces to making Copernicus be as good as we claim, and want.

The class you choose needs to serve a useful purpose in achieving the in game goals set by designers, but beyond that it needs to be fun as hell.

There are a litany of reasons I can give you for my class choices since EQ, but the fact was there were choices, which is why I have always been a fan of classes to begin with.

I am not sure why I chose a Human Monk exactly, but I know one of the reasons was because ONLY the human could be a monk, so I would be different, and unique.

I also know that I stayed up through the night to hit 17 to get flying kick... Nerd reasons aside that"s what I think you shoot for right?

Classes that make you feel cool, unique, and skills that inspire folks to want to level and get them.

But being useful and having fun are the important pieces to any race/class in any MMO right?

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I know you can"t say specifically for your game, but what is your opinion on the number of classes a game should have? Do you prefer the WoW approach and only have 8 classes at launch? Or do you like the archetype system more and have 16 classes? Or maybe somewhere in between similar to EQ with 12?

Ngruk said:

...and that wench in the hills that killed me for kicking a rabid bear....

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Holly Windstalker. Remember it. Don"t touch the bears.

Locithon said:

I know you can"t say specifically for your game, but what is your opinion on the number of classes a game should have? Do you prefer the WoW approach and only have 8 classes at launch? Or do you like the archetype system more and have 16 classes? Or maybe somewhere in between similar to EQ with 12?

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Wow basically have more than 8, even though at launch talents didn"t make such a big difference, nowadays though talent spec are pretty much different subclasses of the same "archetype". Lotro is a better example since it had only 7 classes, which have very limited variety, and still had some good success. VG on the other extreme I guess, with what was it, 16?

I for one loved the amount of RACES and CLASSES in EQ- starting cities abounding was great...

As for the return to find your home in peril - Faxanadu the MMO...that would be an intiresting lore for a game.

I really prefer the classes to be unique like in EQ and have say 10-12 to start. I know that I would prefer to have say a shadow priest class and a healing priest class over what WoW does which is combine the 2. I think there is a sweet spot in the amount of classes there should be without overlapping too much and that sweet spot is 11.

Healers: 4
Tanks: 2, one light and one dark
DPS: 5, perhaps 3 pure dps and 2 with lower dps but with increased utility.

Cowbell said:

I really prefer the classes to be unique like in EQ and have say 10-12 to start. I know that I would prefer to have say a shadow priest class and a healing priest class over what WoW does which is combine the 2. I think there is a sweet spot in the amount of classes there should be without overlapping too much and that sweet spot is 11.

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I think the 16 number isn"t too bad, 4 of each major archetype, tanks healers melee dps and ranged dps. You can easily find 4 different ways to do all of these, obviously it does depend on how "classified" your game ends up being, if you go for massive hybridation you don"t need that many. And yeah, "pure" classes I think are better than wow talents, but much better if you can switch classes(job system) than having to reroll everytime then. One of the good point of wow"s system is you can play multiple classes at once, you only need to regear when you switch.

As for the various starting towns, it has a lot of good aspects(lore and realistic feelings) but also some that impact gameplay. Unless you have easy travelling between them, it"s hard to meet up with your friends until lvl X, it fragments your starting population forcing you to funnel them at some early point into a couple of zones at max for the group content. Vanguard had a FUCK TON of starting zones, but it worked against it since you couldn"t group before lvl~20 because everyone started in different places. I think wow did it right in terms of amount, 3 for each side, even though it did it wrong in quality somewhat, since those zones are very forgettable.