Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Zehn - Vhex said:

Blizzard has shown that creating sub-niche"s for classes is a universally bad idea.

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I thin a sub-niche is fine, aka a Deathknight having a stronger ability to tank as a frost spec, a stronger ability to self preserve with blood talents, and the prefference for AOE and DPS within the unholy tree.

What I don"t really agree with is the talents not being a "sub-niche" but warping the class into a completely different entity such as a druid being a DPS cat and bear tank one minute, a healer as capable as any in the game the next, and a strong caster dps in the other spec.

In one class you have the talent trees add flavor and make the character more powerful in a certain segment of what it"s general aim is. In the other class the tree completely redefines the character, that is not a sub-niche and talent trees should not change a class to the degree that they are in fact 3 entirely different classes that you now have to balance with melee dps, caster dps, tanks, and healers.

I don"t have an issue with the way the mage trees works, I like the way the SK trees work, neither of these classes have their main role changes much through the trees and instead have a simple change of flavor and the way they do things. The shaman though, same as the druid, each tree changes the way the class plays entirely, a resto shaman and a enhance shaman are so far removed from each other in the way they work they honestly should not bother being the same class at that point, make them two seperate classes if you are making a tree be that game changing to a class.

Tropics said:

I thin a sub-niche is fine, aka a Deathknight having a stronger ability to tank as a frost spec, a stronger ability to self preserve with blood talents, and the prefference for AOE and DPS within the unholy tree.

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You completely missed what he was talking about.

Zehn - Vhex said:

The fantasy setting is fine.

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Agreed. And that was kind of my point. Blizz has it in spades. No doubt. Time to let it be, and build the next "WoW calibre" game (or something to that effect) in a different setting.

With the plethora of high profile fantasy games available (WoW, LoTRo, EQ2, Conan, etc.), adding yet another to the pile won"t really expand the mmo space into other settings. But whatever those settings are, they"ll need to be highly considerate of whats made WoW the king of the hill.

Take WoW overall, transpose it onto a sci-fi or post-apoc setting, with post-nuke cities, burned out ship hulls or dripping wet and slimey underground sewer / basement dungeon settings filled with creepy looking shit to kill. Keep the questing and battlegrounds systems. Swap out the armor, swords and magic for kevlar, AK47s or laser guns and "nanotechnology".

Make it play exactly like WoW. Plenty would eat it up. I don"t think the same could be said for another fantasy game right now. Maybe not ever.

column said:

I agree. The starcraft MMO will be what everyone plays after WoW.

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There"s no way a Starcraft MMO would have the same mass market appeal that WoW does. I"m sure it"d be popular, but not nearly on the same level. Keep in mind that a large part of Starcraft"s success was its level of balance and highly competitive play. Could they recapture that in an MMO? People are debating whether or not they can in SC2. I just don"t know.

Also, one consistent thing I"ve noticed in speaking with people and sort of watching their habits is that female gamers are put off by heavy sci-fi, but drawn in by fantasy. Part of WoWs success is it can easily pull even female gamers in.

Not saying I"ve done studies or have any data to back it up, but it seems consistent. Chicks dig elves.

It may be that the majority of sci-fi games immediately place the player in some kind of war-torn, dangerous future with lots of violence, explosions, and action going on. Stuff us guys are all about. With fantasy games, even if that conflict is present in the world, there"s an equal amount of peaceful settings and areas where you feel like you can just sit and socialize. That"s an important thing for a lot of female players.

Rayne said:

Take WoW overall, transpose it onto a sci-fi or post-apoc setting, with post-nuke cities, burned out ship hulls or dripping wet and slimey underground sewer / basement dungeon settings filled with creepy looking shit to kill. Keep the questing and battlegrounds systems. Swap out the armor, swords and magic for kevlar, AK47s or laser guns and "nanotechnology".

Make it play exactly like WoW. Plenty would eat it up. I don"t think the same could be said for another fantasy game right now. Maybe not ever.

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This is exactly what I was saying needs to be avoided.

I certainly think there"s room for a big ground-based sci-fi game, but I would hope it wouldn"t be done like this.

WoW is great, yes, but copying its gameplay does not equal success. WoW"s success is beyond the design, beyond the gameplay, it"s just something else entirely.

It"s better to not look at WoW any differently than you do every other game. Look at the genre as a whole, what has worked and hasn"t worked (a lot of stuff in WoW is horrible, even if its the most successful game - and a lot of stuff in Vanguard is fantastic, etc) and use that overall knowledge for your planning. Saying, "well, WoW did this and they have the most subs" is folly.

The MMOs that succeed in this coming generation will be the ones that are based on solid core ideas that will translate to terrific gameplay. The guys that change the game. Ones that don"t just say "alright, let"s make a post-apocalyptic MMO" and go on adding quests, crafting, etc. just because other games have them.

SWTOR and Copernicus are planning to move the genre forward with story. Even if they have elements of previous MMOs in them, this is the core concept that they are holding onto that will bring about things we"ve never seen and help them (hopefully) claim a significant following that shows people that more can be done in this genre.

Any new game, regardless of whether its sci-fi or fantasy or whatever, will have to find an individual core concept that lets them do the same if it wants to survive.

Grave said:

WoW is great, yes, but copying its gameplay does not equal success. WoW"s success is beyond the design, beyond the gameplay, it"s just something else entirely.

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Thats not exactly what I meant really. By overall, I mean the general aspects of the entire game. Mainly for the sake of familiarity and the ease of its "jump right in and play" style.

Adding in stuff that worked great in other games couldn"t hurt, and its what every new game does anyway, generally speaking.

Theres no "sekrit ressupy" for WoW"s success. It took the majority of boring, tedious, and stupid shit out of everything before it, and added in a buch of cool stuff people really went for. Yet even now, you"ll find plenty of people willing to bitch about how certain things are still tedious, boring and stupid.

MMORPG in future settings just doesn"t fit well imo. Futuristic settings are all about "ranged weapons" aka guns, plasma beams, lasers and all this shit. Some settings also have melee weaopn, but overall they"re mostly about ranged shit. In current mmos, ranged shit is mostly boring, if it"s not it uses special abilities(usually spells) to make it a bit less boring. If you shoot with a gun, there"s no way to do fancy shit with it besides full auto. Well you can bend bullet trajectories if you want but that"s not particularly useful either since the bullets already auto seek targets in mmos. Because they"re RPG, they usually go for binary results, you miss or you hit, which doesn"t work well with weapons either. Overall the whole concept of mmorpg I think fails when it comes to "real" weaponry. Works ok with melee combat because melee weapons aren"t designed to kill people with the minimum effort of pressing the trigger, so the individual skills have an effect on how well you use melee weapons, which lets the game have "skills and abilities" that use the weapon in different interesting ways.

I guess there"s ways to make shooting weapons semi interesting by having various aiming types to get various effects(aim for arteries for bleed effect, eyes for dodge reduction etc), but I don"t know, I still feel that standing there and shooting a plasma gun feels much less interesting than shooting a bow, even though it basically uses the same mechanics. Combine that with the fact most "classes" would end up using those weapons, and I think the whole mmorpg in future setting is ground for failure. I think if you want a futuristic setting, you need to make it a mmofps. Maybe I"m wrong and someone will make an awesome mmorpg in a futuristic setting, but not really buying it.

P.S.: Eve is hardly a mmorpg. It"s mmo alright, but I feel it mostly plays like a RTS with RPG elements than an actual rpg. Most people don"t think of eve when they say they want a mmorpg in future setting anyway.

Pyros said:

Eve is hardly a mmorpg. It"s mmo alright, but I feel it mostly plays like a RTS with RPG elements than an actual rpg.

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Wow, that"s damn true.

Eve is a tactical spreadsheet simulation.

Most future MMO"s have either been plagued with technical problems (AO), actively encourage you to not play the game (EVE), or try to be a MMOFPS/RPG hybrid and fail(HG:L/Tabula Rasa).

I don"t count SW:G as an mmo, I count that as a reason Raph Koster should be locked away in his own little corner of the internet to ruin his own IP. Glad our opinion of him is being vindicated. Yeah, great idea, let"s make an MMO for the social programmers of the world!

Planetside is probably the only future MMO I would consider moderately a good idea. It just...y"know...had no reason to play it because it was an MMOFPS and why pay for something that"s free everywhere else?

Because FPS is the only real skill, bro!

Grave said:

Also, one consistent thing I"ve noticed in speaking with people and sort of watching their habits is that female gamers are put off by heavy sci-fi, but drawn in by fantasy. Part of WoWs success is it can easily pull even female gamers in.

Not saying I"ve done studies or have any data to back it up, but it seems consistent. Chicks dig elves.

It may be that the majority of sci-fi games immediately place the player in some kind of war-torn, dangerous future with lots of violence, explosions, and action going on. Stuff us guys are all about. With fantasy games, even if that conflict is present in the world, there"s an equal amount of peaceful settings and areas where you feel like you can just sit and socialize. That"s an important thing for a lot of female players.

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AO captured this with the Opifex breed, and the social clothing drops. Lot of actual girl players in AO, and every last one I talked to had like 8 backpacks filled with different outfits for the social gatherings that were held all the time in various spots.

I agree that you have to put chick-appeal mechanics into any game you want to compete with WoW.

Zehn the MMO will have lots of smiley faces.

Is there any recent accurate data on gender distribution in WoW? I"m not really convinced that female gamers make up a big enough segment of the market that attracting women will actually make or break your game.

Fog said:

Is there any recent accurate data on gender distribution in WoW? I"m not really convinced that female gamers make up a big enough segment of the market that attracting women will actually make or break your game.

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Attracting women specifically probably not, but having a game that has absolutely no appeal to women is probably not the smartest thing for a mmo.

And my crappy googling skills found thatBBC NEWS | Technology | The virtual battle of the sexeswhich shows 40% of female players on EQ2, while wow figures might be more male oriented, I doubt you"d see less than 25%, which is quite a lot of money.

I doubt 25%, I"d say it"s probably below 20%, maybe closer to 10%.

Fog said:

Is there any recent accurate data on gender distribution in WoW? I"m not really convinced that female gamers make up a big enough segment of the market that attracting women will actually make or break your game.

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I wasn"t saying it would make or break it, but having wider appeal is certainly something to consider.

Usually, if a casual gamer (gender aside, not trying to be sexist here) can just sit down and enjoy your game, you have something good on your hands.

I don"t know if its something psychological or what, but in my experience female gamers seem much more willing to try a fantasy game than a sci-fi one.

Azrayne said:

I doubt 25%, I"d say it"s probably below 20%, maybe closer to 10%.

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Female pop was 16% in 2005, I remember that being quoted. I wouldn"t be surprised at all if it had risen to 25% or even more now.

I don"t see any reason to believe it"s risen at all, 16% does sound like a likely figure though.

Azrayne said:

I don"t see any reason to believe it"s risen at all, 16% does sound like a likely figure though.

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I say that because in 2005 WoW was still new, the literal explosion of popularity hadn"t quite happened yet. Sure it was huge with MMO gamers, but it was awhile after that when it really started to penetrate the mainstream. I think a lot of female gamers came in after the word of mouth really started getting around and WoW was just everywhere.

ToeMissile said:

16% of 13M*$15/mon is a pretty big chunk of change.

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Put another way, around 1.8mm women play wow, if that number has NOT grown, which it has based on current data, but even if it hasn"t, it"s 1.8mm WoW players being female.

To put that in perspective that"s 6x the population of EVE online, and WAR, and a few other NA MMO"s.

1.8mm gamers would be far and away the 2nd largest NA subscription based MM).

Ya, it"s a pretty important segment.