Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

For a niche PVP game I"d like to see one with 3 factions, and the ability to change items based on who is winning the war. If you had Good, Neutral, Evil teams then items would have some statistics that were only useful to members of those teams.

As the overall war progress shifts, the itemization changes as well so items might go from 1/1/1 to 1/2 to 0/0/3 if one side completely dominates. Basically, it would create a slightly different version of the mobs / dungeons that are world accessible so that the loot is best for the team in control of the war. The other teams can still get loot / prevent the winning team from getting loot, but the stats would be skewed in favor of the winner.

Alarion said:

But the whole point of a Role Playing Game is to Play a Role, right?

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By that definition every game is an RPG then. Over time RPG has gotten a broader and broader sense anyways. Pretty much everything is action-RPG now, especially MMO"s. It"s just a matter of how heavy the influence of each is.

Anyways, my point was that the setting of the game only matters if the game itself isn"t a piece of shit. If it were the reverse WW2online would be the best game ever because killing Nazi"s never gets old.

Zehn - Vhex said:

Oh and for what it"s worth, Tolkien era had bombs. In fact they would be quite capable of creating cannons, bombs and other industrial revolution era technology. Half the point of the books is that the good guys choose to not use the power of the enemy (explosives and etc..., i.e. industry) and that every time they have, bad things happen.

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I think magic and science kind of merge in alot of the fantasy world. Alchemy and it"s relation to greek powder can easily be used in a fantasy based MMORPG and not blow the immersion out of the water. I agree with you that fun is a large part of keeping people into the world but keeping people wanting to see the next part of that world, that next zone or that next mob because they enjoy the actual storyline of the world and the actual environment is also a huge hook that cannot be ignored.

Zehn - Vhex said:

By that definition every game is an RPG then. Over time RPG has gotten a broader and broader sense anyways. Pretty much everything is action-RPG now, especially MMO"s. It"s just a matter of how heavy the influence of each is.

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I can agree with this on a technical view, because technically no matter what game you play, you are "playing a role". A race car driver, a running back, a army general or just overall asshole.

The term for the genre of games that we currently classify as RPGs and MMORPGs probably needs to be changed. You know, something like "play my cookie cutter character the way the devs tell me too game".

Tropics said:

The most tech I want to see in a high fantasy MMORPG is cannons, and even that is pushing it and I would probably keep them isolated to boats.

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Why develop cannons when your mage team can drop the equivalent of a mini-nuke on an opposing fortress? Who needs poison gas when your mages start doing vador chokeholds on the soldiers?

Who needs non-mages when mages can rule the world? They have to have some independence from them or they may as well be sheep.

Zehn - Vhex said:

Oh and for what it"s worth, Tolkien era had bombs. In fact they would be quite capable of creating cannons, bombs and other industrial revolution era technology. Half the point of the books is that the good guys choose to not use the power of the enemy (explosives and etc..., i.e. industry) and that every time they have, bad things happen.

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The point was, Tolkien hated the industrial revolution. The scourging of the Shire was probably his most pointed allegory in that direction.

Ukerric said:

The point was, Tolkien hated the industrial revolution. The scourging of the Shire was probably his most pointed allegory in that direction.

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Saruman ruining the woods and lands around his tower to cater to the mass production of an army is a nice one too.

Zehn - Vhex said:

What we"re sick of isn"t fantasy RPG"s. What we"re sick of is poorly made games with ridiculously imbalanced pvp, .....

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Personally, I"m just sick of games that balance PvE abilities and roles to cater for the PvP aspect of the game. I don"t care how unbalanced the PvP is because I never play it.

Flight said:

Personally, I"m just sick of games that balance PvE abilities and roles to cater for the PvP aspect of the game. I don"t care how unbalanced the PvP is because I never play it.

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PvP balancing wouldn"t be so bad as long as it isn"t focused on 1v1 / 2v2 balancing. If you"re damned and determined to balance down to that level then PvP & PvE functionality in the DB need to be completely separate.

But yeah that is definitely my biggest complaint about WoW over the past 2 years. Shitting on classes because of 2v2 arena imbalances is annoying as fuck.

Campa said:

PvP & PvE functionality in the DB need to be completely separate.

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This has been said for years. Its just too bad no one ever listens, or even bothers to try because it might delay release by a few months. Funny how that works, isn"t it?

Every item should have 2 separate sets of stats. One set for PvE, and the other for PvP. When it comes time to balance classes for the PvP game, you can make adjustments through those item stats without royally fucking up the PvE game.

Campa said:

PvP balancing wouldn"t be so bad as long as it isn"t focused on 1v1 / 2v2 balancing. If you"re damned and determined to balance down to that level then PvP & PvE functionality in the DB need to be completely separate.

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This is how I feel about it as well.

People whining that a priest cannot beat X class in a 1v1 battle make no sense. Of course a priest sucks in 1v1, their primary focus is healing and their power derives from the support they lend to other classes. In 2v2 even a priest would be a weak partner, but in 5v5, now THERE is where the power of the priest should start to shine, as they work to keep themselves out of direct combat and keep their team mates doing their things.

Class balance to me should NEVER mean that in 1v1 combat a well played class of any sort has a chance to beat another. Balance IMO should mean that each and every class has their own niches and brings positive benefits based on their spells and/or skills. A warrior in EQ is a good example, they could not even solo the Avatar of Fear at level 50 in the pre-vamp Cazic Thule while a necro"s pet at 49 with a couple daggers destroyed it. BUT, a warrior was still a crucial class when it came to a group crawling through a dungeon while a necro is far more expendable. They both had their own niches and things they were good at.

A company should not aim for balance, they should aim for each class to be useful in a variety of ways. If a class like say for example a shaman is not getting invited into groups or raids that means you need to look at the class and what it is bringing (or not bringing) to the groups. If it is a weaker single target healer then other classes and yet you see that alot of fights are becoming overly difficult because of AOE damage then make the shaman more of a AOE healer to fit a niche that exists. Forget balancing single target healing, let one healer class be the best single target healer, let one class be the best at AOE healing, and let one be a master of HOT spells or whatnot. This is how things should be done, but in so doing this you must also keep in mind that the content, the environment and the encounters must then be created to actually allow these specialty types of utility to be utilized (see lockpicking in EQ for how to create a cool utility skill and then waste it with little content that uses it).

This post is ridiculously long. I apologize in advance and would like to offer any of you on the lakeshore of Wisconsin free pancakes when I make them tomorrow morning as compensation.

This is how things should be done

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WoW showed pretty soundly that it"s a bad idea. It seems nifty in concept, but you"ve already got a pretty big niche setup in class structure as is with buffing/debuffing/tanking and etc...

Where it becomes problematic is how powerful the sub-niche is. The healing one is easy to claim because "oh hey, just hve every fight have an AE, problem solved!"

As a paladin for the last 2 years, I can say fuck that.

Let"s try AE-tanking and make that a niche. How about a tank whose only strength is in tanking mobs with heavy magic damage?

The problem is then you need to have every boss fight have a token aspect so that person isn"t useless on said fight, but then you run into the problem of you being unable to do the fight if you don"t have the proper class to counter it. Plus it just becomes annoying for every boss fight to have a token AE, token adds for the AE tank to handle while the one or two classes given AE dps abilities take them down while the token add that needs to be CC"d is done so by the single class with a decent CC and so forth.

This is why you don"t see more fights like Instructor Razuvious in Naxx.

A better way to handle it is to just make it so that each class that fills a generic niche does so in a different way. Just like mages use fireballs and warriors use swords to deal damage. VG did a good job conceptually of this.

Anyways...

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As for PvP, as I said in the Aion thread, just remove gear/levels/etc...from the equation. Strip it all away. We keep having this noble fantasy of overcoming people with better gear by being more skilled then them, but that"s usually not the case. 9 times out of 10 it"s a one way curb stomp and you"re the chump.

PvP is ultimately about competition anyways. Can I push my buttons better then he can push yours. Once you start including gear and levels you"re not only decreasing the pool of people you can pull from to compete you"re effectively turning PvP from a competition of skill into just another grind.

Remove gear/levels from affecting PvP and you can do even more fun things. Have abilities do a set % of damage. For example, fireball always does 25% of an emies health in damage. So while mudflation eventually makes my fireball hit a mob for 10k damage, I don"t need to make sure everyone"s health is artificially inflated each expansion so that isn"t a one shot.

"But Zehn! I want something for my efforts! I don"t want to lose to somebody who just started playing last week!"

Suck it up puffball. If you want to win, you have to be better. You shouldn"t win just by virtue of having played the game longer.

There"s a reason nearly every serious pvp game out there does a full reset everytime you start a new match. Can you imagine playing DoTA where somebody who has been playing for 2 years automatically starts games at level 5 and Vlad? Or StarCraft where the guy with 2000 wins under his belt gets to start games with 10 SCV"s instead of 4?

It just wouldn"t be fun anymore. MMO"s are the only games that try to bring this into the playing field and it"s not only impossible to balance properly (bad), it limits the number of opponants you get to face (bad) and ultimately drives people away (bad). Why even try to compete against a deathknight with 32k hp?

The only logical counter-arguments usually boil down to

A) Isn"t that the whole point of MMO"s? Gear progression?

and

B) Suck it up pussy and work for the gear.

I hope we can all agree people who would argue B need to be shot.

So let"s deal with A.

Actually, this post is way too long as is. I"m going to go play a game that tries to mesh gear progression with PvP and lament the fact that the only people I can realistically compete against are other fresh 80"s...who have all given up on PvP because it"s not worth it when people with 3x your hp and can 2-shot you rule your ass.

Granted WoW doesn"t have the best balance to begin with, but this is a problem that"s existed in pretty much every MMO. Time to break the fucking cycle and realize PvP needs to be about competition and skill. Not who has played 8 hours a day for the last 2 years. We have PvE for that.

Zehn - Vhex said:

This post is ridiculously long.

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Amen.

I agree with everything you said. But, it"s gonna be a looong time before any MMO company realizes this, and acts on it. If it ever happens.

There are too many asshats who just like to steamroll people because they put more time into the game. Then you have the people who just like pain and PvP even though they know they have a slim chance. They bitch, but they still PvP.

If people wanted a fair game, they"d go play a FPS, or an RTS for PvP action. But they don"t. They like being top dawg and picking on people who are weaker.

What it all boils down to is PvP is still insanely popular in MMO"s despite all it"s obvious flaws. People complain, but they still do it. I just choose not to participate in that aspect of MMO"s unless it"s a sandbox/skill based game, because at least then it"s a *bit* more level of a playing field.

However, having separate PvE/PvP in the DB"s would at least be better than current. I think I remember Blizzard giving a reason why they wouldn"t do this and it has nothing to do with timetables, according to them.

I wish I could find the post I read, but I believe it was GC that said it. Something along the lines of:

The game is already an enormous amount of information to take in, adding this would just make it more tough to learn, and more confusing for the average player.*

Which I personally think is a bullshit reason.


* Not a direct quote.. fuck.

You can have PvP gear progression, just don"t make it parallel to pve progression(bad) or use the pve gear. Just make it so the pvp "upgrades" have their own specific slots, and act like wow"s tradeoff glyphs, say your fireball casts 1s faster but does 15%less dmg. Lets you customize stuff and improve your character in some ways, without totally raping the shit out of newbies. Think TF2 achievements stuff, if you"ve been playing for a bit, you have more weapons for your class, but they"re all still balanced and having the Snipe Bow doesn"t make you a better Sniper than joe the casual who just started. Or CoD4, heard they did that too even though I haven"t played the game.

Zehn - Vhex said:

The only logical counter-arguments usually boil down to

A) Isn"t that the whole point of MMO"s? Gear progression?

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I have to disagree. While it doesn"t have to be completely gear progression, there does need to be progression of some kind. what is the point of the pvp in an rpg, if there is no progress? If I wanted THAT, I would go play those free games, like Dota, rts"s, fps, etc. There does need to be that MMO aspect, AND the rpg aspect.
As for balancing it. Smaller variation in best to worst for gear, as well as smaller variation in class stats.
You argue that new players are owned due to gear. Yet, thats exactly what happens in any other pvp game due to skill as well. While mmo"s don"t have that kind of skill progression that a RTS has for example. That"s where better player matching comes in.

Gear mismatch is fine for large scale pvp, not for arenas or smaller battles. Even playing crap geared alts back in the time of 3 day AVs was stillfunfor what it was, because you could use tactics and teamwork with friends to do a lot more damage than the lone GM/HW running around two-shotting a few clothies then getting focused down by 20 people because of their shiny 2h swords.

The emphasis on long-term reward in PvP over victory spoils kills it. I"ve had some fun in the arena, but its from individual games. Same with BGs. I can"t say I"ve had "fun" grinding 150Bn generi-points, though. You must incentivize the short game without turning it into simply "more points than the loser". I like WAR"s chest system in concept, though perhaps not its implementation. Still, even more "friendly" games like WoW could do with a little bit of "punch someone through the skull and take their stuff" ala UO/AC, even if it doesn"t necessarily involve loss on the other end.

Caliane said:

As for balancing it. Smaller variation in best to worst for gear, as well as smaller variation in class stats.
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That works just fine in the early stages of a new MMO, but as time goes by the gear-gap gets larger and larger. As you add content, there will always be people that dive head first into it, and then people who don"t. The people who work for it, get it and then roflstomp the people who didn"t.

"But then I"ll just go play a free pvp game like..."

No you won"t. Just like you won"t stop paying to play MMO"s because other games offer free single player, multiplayer co-op as well as all the other optional shit like tradeskills, player housing, auction houses and so forth.

You"re paying for an MMO because it offers all of this in a persistent world. You don"t have to make one aspect of your persistent world dogshit just because you want to avoid making it like the free version. That makes absolutely zero sense.

It"s not much different then the "Why should you be allowed to solo? If you want to solo, go play a single player game lol!!!" argument to be honest. We pay to play MMO"s because there are multiple facets to the game. If there"s that huge of a demand for PvP where gear matters, make a server for it.

Or hell, in the fucking PvP lobby when you set up your game allow players to check a box that says "Disable skill/level equalization" so the handful of people that want to can have a battle of who has the better gear.

Zehn - Vhex said:

"But then I"ll just go play a free pvp game like..."

No you won"t. Just like you won"t stop paying to play MMO"s because other games offer free single player, multiplayer co-op as well as all the other optional shit like tradeskills, player housing, auction houses and so forth.

You"re paying for an MMO because it offers all of this in a persistent world. You don"t have to make one aspect of your persistent world dogshit just because you want to avoid making it like the free version. That makes absolutely zero sense.

It"s not much different then the "Why should you be allowed to solo? If you want to solo, go play a single player game lol!!!" argument to be honest. We pay to play MMO"s because there are multiple facets to the game. If there"s that huge of a demand for PvP where gear matters, make a server for it.

Or hell, in the fucking PvP lobby when you set up your game allow players to check a box that says "Disable skill/level equalization" so the handful of people that want to can have a battle of who has the better gear.

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I wouldn"t hook up with many men, but Zehn is one of them. And this is from someone who dominates and HAS THE BEST GEAR. The entire idea behind pvp(and why I like games like Dota/HoN so much) is that it"s ALWAYS starting on even ground. But because I only play wow 6 hours a week means I will win 1/60 games against a dude who plays 50+ is fucking stupid. It always fucking has been stupid. For shit"s sake listen to what he is saying.

<-- drunk and gay now.