Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Tropics said:

Put that thing on the website a couple weeks before the games release and as long as the game"s interface is good and the tutorial is entertaining and interesting the hype for the game would be enormous AND a huge portion of your player-base would know exactly how the interface and contros work by the time they bought the game. They would ALSO have an easy way to get friends to try it out without having to give out trial accounts that require a epic sized download.

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Agreed.

If nothing else, you should have a free trial of some sort right at launch. Nothing shows confidence in your product more than "Don"t take our word for it, try it for free."

If your tutorial is interesting and story driven, ending on a high note that conveys how huge the world is and leaves the player wondering where this adventure might lead, you"d sell a ton of accounts due to the demo alone.

Zehn - Vhex said:

I don"t think the name really matters. Sometimes simple is really good as well. Is anything really as iconic to the casting class as "Fireball." No reason you can"t use a mix of both though. Would Ice Comet really be more awesome if they threw some random fantasy name in front of it?

And as neat as having bigger and more elaborate particle effects are when casting, it sucks having to turn that stuff off in a raid because it"s so flashy. Subly increasing the size of a fireball or adding to the number of magic missiles you throw out is one thing, but we don"t really need a laser light show.

More important I feel is how you get the spell.

If all I do is kill 30 boars, ding level 3 and get my ice armor buff...yippee? You could call it Jingle"s Merry Armor of the Horrible Cold and have it summon Shiva straight from Final Fantasy to lick my all over with her icy tongue and...well okay that would be pretty cool.

But honestly, getting it by going to the trainer or just automatically getting it kinda blows. On the other hand, if I climb the frost wizards tower and then rip the secrets from his very mind as he lays before me broken and beaten, that"s a little better then paying some guy who has nothing better to do all day then hang out and wait for little wizards to run up and hand him 5 gold for the instruction book on how to cast it.

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I agree with you on learning different spells, one of the things that really dissapointed me with WoW was that they didn"t implement spell scrolls, or quests to learn new abilities. It"s just talk to your trainer every 2 levels, kind of dull.

I think scaling spell effects would be nice too. Obviously you have to keep it reasonable, but casting the exact same fireball for 80 levels is pretty lame, especially when the spell effect is shitty to begin with. It doesn"t need to turn into a massive comet of doom that fills up half the screen, but making it a bit bigger, a bit flashier, would be nice.

You can do non-trainer based skill/spell accrual in many ways. Tie your increasing a spell"s power with usage, ala leveling up the spell when you have cast it x number of times vs. targets that grant xp. Have quests that directly result in new abilities or spells for the classes present when the quest is completed. This can be anything from turning in bear asses to killing a class/profession specific npc at the end of an instance or dungeon. Have all npcs drop spell/ability pages that when you combine enough of them you get a random spell of your level. Or put specific spells as drops off a themed monster. Bob the Fire Wizard drops Bob"s Flaming Orb or something similar. Have it so you can only learn an ability that is tied to a certain type of npc. The fighter guy"s Piercing Thrust can only be learned after he"s fought and killed several Swashbuckler type guys. Player crafting (hi EQ2) is another way to provide skills for the playerbase.

Multiple ways to go about it that doesn"t require trainer interaction. And even then, you can still make the "give Trainer 5 g, grats ability!" system into something more interactive. You give Trainer 5g, he gives you Fireball. You go into the optional training arena instance and complete some timed combat/tradeskill/whatever event and you get Frank"s Fireball, a more powerful version of Fireball that costs identical mana yet does more damage and has a dot effect or something. Replaces your Fireball spell. Or you could simply be spawned into an instance to fight a same level npc that has all the abilities you would normally get at that level and only through beating that npc can you learn the abilities. This can be changed further by having the option to remove one or more abilities from the enemy so that he"s easier killed but won"t teach the removed abilities. Or having specific conditions in the arena, such as a constant lifedrain on both players where canceling the healing spells of the enemy results in victory while still being able to keep yourself alive.

Quite a few ways to go about it and it would be quite easy to assimilate multiple avenues into a single game.

Rezz said:

This can be anything from turning in bear asses to killing a class/profession specific npc at the end of an instance or dungeon.

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Alot of good ideas in there, I will pick out that one in particular just to mention how cool it would have been to have rogues gain a new melee attack at the commencment of a successful Van Cleef kill. Instead of a trainer giving you the skill for a couple silver have Van Cleef use the attack and thus as your character has seen Van Cleef use it then at the end of the fight a rogue is told they have learned a new melee attack and it is automatically put into their book.

Tropics said:

If you did a small download tutorial/demo that was a 2 level mini version of the game using the same interface as the real game with some simple combat, a hybrid class that does not really exist and does a bit of everything (cast, melee, heal), some small scale profession stuff, abit of loot dropping to show the inventory, ect... and put that on the website for the game and treated it like a tuturial/demo that could be one of the greatest marketing successes a company could ever create.

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Sounds like the original EQ tutorial!

Clerica said:

Sounds like the original EQ tutorial!

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I was thinking a little more polished, a little more flow like playing the actual game where you give the player a quest NPC, get them to take the quest, teach them to use the map to find a group of orcs, kill 6 orcs to complete the quest, go back to the NPC and turn in, see your character ding, get a new spell, learn how to scribe the spell, ect....

EQ"s did not come on a website, it was loaded onto your hard drive along with the actual game. It was also a little bland, I would like to see a realtively decent amount of polish and work put in so it doubles not only as a tutorial but as a really good demo that makes the player eager to play the actual game. EQ"s tutorial was not as polished or as interesting as the final product.

The idea is this tutorial/demo would be that "first fix is free" method of marketing that works well in some other industries and ya don"t make that first taste a stale boring one.

I would probably use a race that does not exist in the game, a couple spells that do not exist in the game, a pet spell that does not exist in the game to get people use to those controls, a few melee things that don"t exist. Basically something interesting that does not spoil anything from the actual game. The tutorial would be interesting and unique and at the same time nothing in the real game would be spoiled by it.

internets said:

Green Monster Games... 06-30-2009 12:48 AM Fuck you, pretentious bitch.

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Look Grave, you"ve got a fangirl! Awwww....Grave"s a big enough boy to stand up for himself. If he thinks I"m being a douche he"ll tell me. Silly little troll.

Rezz said:

You can do non-trainer

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You"d have to come up with a ton of idea"s which is why I think it hasn"t been heavily invested in yet. No reason to half-ass it and replace buying it for 5g off a trainer with having the trainer tell you to go kill some random named for the ability.

Adventure games do it already with you gaining new abilities as part of the story plot but then again they usually only give you a dozen new abilities at most.

Even still, I look back at games like Metroid and think how lame they"d be if instead of finding the ice beam in an ancient chozo ruin, instead you kill 100 space pirates, ding level 12, then go back to your spaceship and pay some random dude to teach you how to ice beam. Then go back and resume farming space pirates for xp and loot.

While tying levels and new abilities together has been a staple of the RPG genre for a long time, there"s really no reason you can"t merge the adventure concept of discovery with the RPG aspects.

That is like apples to oranges. In a single player game you have control over what the player experiences, how and when they experience it, etc. As soon as you put that "uber skill" in some hidden temple the level one noobs or alts will get their buddies together to get it right away. So the skill you intended your players to have at say level 50 now have it at level 1.

Pretty sure you can still have level restrictions. I said merge, not replace. And even then you can have that ability C requires that you have ability A and B first.

Think outside the bun. <3

Ngruk said:

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....

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Couldn"t agree more.


I"ve been playing EQ1 again, for some time now. I"m on a server that is progression locked to PoP. Having a blast revisiting old places and doing old camps. I"m enjoying this experience more than any other MMO I"ve played since EQ1 the first time around.

I would contend that it is the total lack of quests (for leveling) that adds to the enjoyment of content design. As soon as it is dungeon crawls and quests players just tear through it as fast as possible. Some of the dungeons in WoW are as well designed as in EQ1, but none of them produce the same nostalgia.

Add on to that how much more social a static camp is and you are understanding a lot of the appeal of EQ.


I really hope to see some static camps in Copernicus, with fast enough respawn to make them a leveling option, with rare spawns that add to the carrot of wanting to spend time there.

Picking a class should be a choice, as Ngruk pointed out, but I don"t think a player should be penalized for doing the wrong choice in a fresh new game, maybe this is a point to be considered.

I personally liked the original EQ2 idea, where you picked an archetype and moved towards your end class in the first 20 levels, but I can see why many don"t enjoy something like that. I"m also sure something similar could be studied, possibly the same path done in one hour of playing through a short introduction to the world and its lore, rather than after 20 levels that required a lot more time to gain.

None of the classes should fill a niche role: there is no "best at AE damage", because from there on you"ll be forced to stuff in AE encounters everywhere to have that class happy.

Abilities should be gained in a different way than by visiting a trainer, here I agree with pretty much everyone else: I wouldn"t mind a skill similar to the old EQ research for spellcasters and something along the same lines for meleers and the possibility to upgrade skills efficacy ala EQ2, both via crafting and adventuring.

Lotro never used spell_X (rank 2), but automatically scaled spells with the casters level and that"s the way I think it should be done.
Take for example a young mage: he learns Firebolt as his introductory spell to the world of magic, Firebolt will scale with him to max level and will always be the fast casting, cheap on resource consumption, low-medium damage nuke. At one point in his career he learns Fireball, which is a lot more flashy, has a splash area of effect upon impact, longer casting time and higher resource consumption (think of energy, not mana) and can become the main fire-based nuke of the caster for his whole career.

I"d like for some "finesse" to come back into playing a class: as an example in vanilla WoW, tanking in group dungeons was a constant management of abilities on several targets, be them sunder armors, shield slams or shield block/revenge combos, it took awareness of the situation, threath management and didn"t allow for mindless AE spamming as we see today in most games. I admit that with some different design decisions it could have been slightly easier to manage things for the tank (allowing for example Tclap in defensive stance would have helped a lot to secure initial agro), but it was doable and it was a lot more fun than AE+AE+AE, rinse/repeat.

As far as tanking goes, holding threat isn"t really the fun part. While pushing dps is fun in and of itself, having to tab sunder tab sunder or mouseover sunder wasn"t that very interesting. You can go on all you like about "omg skill!" but it wasn"t really entertaining. You might as well give a tank an ability called "maintain threat" that does no damage and tell him to spam it over and over again.

I prefer instead ducking behind a corner to dodge a spell, backing out of an AE, stunning them in the middle of huge burst, popping shield wall if my health gets low, etc...

Your mileage may vary of course.

Moreover when I play as a non-tank, I vastly prefer not having to watch threat or sit there with my dick in my hand for 10 seconds as the tank builds threat. Again, I"d rather the skill be in interrupting a cast or switching to a high priority target then going "One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, okay now attack"

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Miele said:

I personally liked the original EQ2 idea, where you picked an archetype and moved towards your end class in the first 20 levels, but I can see why many don"t enjoy something like that.

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I didn"t really enjoy this too much. It wasn"t just that it took awhile to get to 20 and during that time you were a lame duck generic class either. The biggest one is it really detracts from the "my class is unique" feel. EQ2"s suffered as well from the class transformation quests almost universally being lame. I think one was "Go here, collect 5 slime samples. That"s what it means to be a druid!" or some shit.

If anything, reserve that for the playable demo we discussed where you"re a generic level 0 and the game introduces you to basic MMO gameplay as well as the specific features of your particular MMO.

Miele said:

Picking a class should be a choice, as Ngruk pointed out, but I don"t think a player should be penalized for doing the wrong choice in a fresh new game, maybe this is a point to be considered.

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THIS! Yes. Something Jason has talked about pretty much every day since he came here. I didn"t understand it to the degree he meant it until a year or so ago, but ya, NEVER make an early game choice present itself as a handicap or penalty later in the game.

Zehn - Vhex said:

As far as tanking goes, holding threat isn"t really the fun part. While pushing dps is fun in and of itself, having to tab sunder tab sunder or mouseover sunder wasn"t that very interesting. You can go on all you like about "omg skill!" but it wasn"t really entertaining. You might as well give a tank an ability called "maintain threat" that does no damage and tell him to spam it over and over again.

I prefer instead ducking behind a corner to dodge a spell, backing out of an AE, stunning them in the middle of huge burst, popping shield wall if my health gets low, etc...

Your mileage may vary of course.

Moreover when I play as a non-tank, I vastly prefer not having to watch threat or sit there with my dick in my hand for 10 seconds as the tank builds threat. Again, I"d rather the skill be in interrupting a cast or switching to a high priority target then going "One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, okay now attack"

Edit:



I didn"t really enjoy this too much. It wasn"t just that it took awhile to get to 20 and during that time you were a lame duck generic class either. The biggest one is it really detracts from the "my class is unique" feel. EQ2"s suffered as well from the class transformation quests almost universally being lame. I think one was "Go here, collect 5 slime samples. That"s what it means to be a druid!" or some shit.

If anything, reserve that for the playable demo we discussed where you"re a generic level 0 and the game introduces you to basic MMO gameplay as well as the specific features of your particular MMO.

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The problem was that that "path" you took had you ending up at the same place as the person who chose your class but took the other path. Yes there were 24 classes, but imo that was in name only. There were 12 classes with 24 names.

Zehn - Vhex said:

As far as tanking goes, holding threat isn"t really the fun part. While pushing dps is fun in and of itself, having to tab sunder tab sunder or mouseover sunder wasn"t that very interesting. You can go on all you like about "omg skill!" but it wasn"t really entertaining. You might as well give a tank an ability called "maintain threat" that does no damage and tell him to spam it over and over again.

I prefer instead ducking behind a corner to dodge a spell, backing out of an AE, stunning them in the middle of huge burst, popping shield wall if my health gets low, etc...

Your mileage may vary of course.

Moreover when I play as a non-tank, I vastly prefer not having to watch threat or sit there with my dick in my hand for 10 seconds as the tank builds threat. Again, I"d rather the skill be in interrupting a cast or switching to a high priority target then going "One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, okay now attack"

Edit:



I didn"t really enjoy this too much. It wasn"t just that it took awhile to get to 20 and during that time you were a lame duck generic class either. The biggest one is it really detracts from the "my class is unique" feel. EQ2"s suffered as well from the class transformation quests almost universally being lame. I think one was "Go here, collect 5 slime samples. That"s what it means to be a druid!" or some shit.

If anything, reserve that for the playable demo we discussed where you"re a generic level 0 and the game introduces you to basic MMO gameplay as well as the specific features of your particular MMO.

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Threat in general is one of the worst mmo concepts I have ever seen. Sure its cheap and easy AI. But its horribly unintuitive, creates lame variance from pvp and pve, and is boring. Like you said, watching aggro, etc. Doing too much damage is bad? really? Lineage 2 for example literally did have a "create aggro" button.

I"d like to see the mitigation variance between tanks and non tanks much much smaller. Meaning caster, etc can actually take hits, and are expected to. Freeing up the npcs ability to move around and attack, since they dont have to be locked into place focusing on one "tank" target.

Caliane said:

Threat in general is one of the worst mmo concepts I have ever seen. Sure its cheap and easy AI. But its horribly unintuitive, creates lame variance from pvp and pve, and is boring. Like you said, watching aggro, etc. Doing too much damage is bad? really? Lineage 2 for example literally did have a "create aggro" button.

I"d like to see the mitigation variance between tanks and non tanks much much smaller. Meaning caster, etc can actually take hits, and are expected to. Freeing up the npcs ability to move around and attack, since they dont have to be locked into place focusing on one "tank" target.

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I disagree to some degree, in your opinion on threat. I think it"s incredibly relevant and useful when you remember it"s all numbers behind the screen, but what I want to see, and what I love about some of the stuff happening here, is more AI, more intelligent MOB AI.

Every encounter taking 5 minutes won"t work, no chance, but when encounters take on a life of their own due to "smarter" mobs on occasion, that makes me tingle

MOBS, like PCs, should range in intelligence and it should show, and mean something, and players once they get into your world should begin to "learn" about the mobs that way.

Be cool to know that camp of gnolls you spy isn"t the Danuser Hill Gnolls, them being dumb, but rather it"s the Schilling Clan, known for their group tactics and hatred of healers.....

Then you go from managing a threat meter to managing the actual game screen as you watch for Gnolls to peel off and circle your healer.

tl;dr version: We want smart mobs...but not too smart.

Ngruk said:

and what I love about some of the stuff happening here, is more AI, more intelligent MOB AI.

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Threat is mostly the result of not being able to properly block mobs and whatnot. What keeps mobs in DnD and whatnot engaged on your tanks is that you"ll murder their ass if they try to peel off and more often then not you can corner them or otherwise block your squishies from harm.

Many fond memories of summoning some 2hd creatures, invising them, commanding them to stand in a doorway, casting protection from fire on them and then launching fireballs into the next room without fear of retaliation. <3

Anyways...

Mobs being intelligent is a mixed bag as well. On the one hand it kinda floored me in WoW when a hunter NPC freaking kited me for the first time. On the other hand any remotely intelligent NPC would run away when they saw us coming then come back with about 50 of it"s friends.

I think it"s ultimately one of those suspension of disbelief things. We look away when mobs do ridiculously stupid things, in return we don"t have to snare and silence every single freaking mob we come across just to avoid it shouting out an alarm or running for help.

I mean let"s be reasonable. Kel"Thuzad was no idiot. He even asked for help because he knew he was about to get his ass kicked. In a more realistic scenario, he wouldn"t leave the front door of Naxx wide freaking open and secondly, as soon as we engaged Sapphiron he would have said, "Alright, screw this" and either gated out or helped Saph kill us. Or hell, even Saph should have realized after his first ice bomb that he shouldn"t freeze anyone on the second one so we wouldn"t survive.

Shit, we wouldn"t have even gotten past Patchwerk. All he"d have to do is keep running back and forth over the slimes and eventually half the raid would wipe itself out on frogger.

So while Danuser and Schilling smart gnolls are fine, Zehn smart gnolls aren"t because they"d build a trebuchet out of all the level 5 newbies they murdered and then march on Freeport and then turn it into a Vegas style resort. They"d then use the profits they earned from gambling to invest in cheap broadband for all the citizens of Norrath and enslave them by introducing the new Zehn MMO, complete with job system, equalized pvp, adventure-style character advancement, gimmick servers as a fun diversion and absolutely, positively no having to right click on corpses to loot them.

no having to right click on corpses to loot them.

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I"d pay for 6 months worth of subscription based on this feature alone.

Miele said:

I personally liked the original EQ2 idea, where you picked an archetype and moved towards your end class in the first 20 levels, but I can see why many don"t enjoy something like that. I"m also sure something similar could be studied, possibly the same path done in one hour of playing through a short introduction to the world and its lore, rather than after 20 levels that required a lot more time to gain.

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I hated this. It was one of the worst things about EQ2.

"Here, try this dull, generic archetype for 20 levels so you can be sure whether or not you wanted to roll a Ranger!"

It just doesn"t make sense to me to assume that people don"t know what they want or would like, so you try to ease them into making some sort of "educated" decision down the line, when instead you could just let them roll the damn class in the first place and they"ll probably figure out within 10 minutes whether they like the idea of it or not.

Ngruk said:

Yes there were 24 classes, but imo that was in name only. There were 12 classes with 24 names.

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Yep, another huge problem with the game.

Even now, if they would just merge most of the good/evil classes together and then add a completely separate alignment/faction system that was not tied to your class the game would be improved tenfold.

Ngruk said:

THIS! Yes. Something Jason has talked about pretty much every day since he came here. I didn"t understand it to the degree he meant it until a year or so ago, but ya, NEVER make an early game choice present itself as a handicap or penalty later in the game.

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I have dreamed about a MMORPG where you don"t in fact pick your class on a character selection screen and instead pick your race and start in the world as a classless human, elf, or what have you. You would then be required to seek out trial trainer areas such as the shady bar where a rogue trainer hangs out, an academy where knights are trained, a old hag"s cabin who teaches some basic witchcraft, ect... Guards or the like could be hailed to find out where each type of trial class trainer is.

From that start you are able to try out some various classes by asking the entry level trainers for basic tips (giving you basic skill sets). You can mess around with that killing bats and rats and if you decide you want to try something different then you can talk to a different class of entry level trainer type and get that different skill set to try out. Each of these entry level class trainer people would be fairly noob, they would be the peon of rogues, the 1st year apprentice of wizards, ect... and they would let you know that if you like the thought of this path of life after trying it then talk to "Joe Realtrainer" and he will officially lock in your chosen class with some "Are you sure you wish to follow the path of the Arcane?" type of question and a "Yes, I want to be a Wizard" button.

Perhaps you have to do a small quest or two for the real trainer with the trial skills to officially get the invite to the class and this also rewards you with level 2 such that level 1 is all that trial period and level 2 starts when you actually go beyond being just a "human". The trainer could baulk at your request to join the class initially, give you a quest to prove your worth, and then be impressed by the successful use of the skills/spells that you were able to learn from that young apprentice wizard while completing the couple simple quests and invite you to train with them, setting off the first step in a long road to power.