Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Ngruk said:

I"m way hooked into WoW. I was definitely late to the party but damn do they know how to make a game. The list of things they did right is so long and so impressive to me. My Tauren Shaman, Orc Hunter, Gnome Mage, Dranei Paladin all feel so VASTLY different it"s incredible. Starting with their first 10 minutes in game being almost different worlds, it"s stunning.

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What"s funny is while I completely agree with this statement at the same time I just absolutely hate the class designs of WoW and it is the main reason I just can"t play it any more. The lack of a Tank/Off. Caster hybrid class is a big deal to me since that"s the style of play I prefer, if I have to deal with classes. Personally I think UO"s skill system is the best design for character development in a MMO to date, with a multi-classing system being a distant second.

The overall lack of feeling powerful is another problem I have with WoW. In VG I felt truly powerful playing my Dread Knight and in LOTRO I feel powerful playing both my Guardian & Champion. In WoW I never felt my Rogue, Warrior, or Mage were that powerful. Sure I could mow through stuff but I was always just 1 mistake away from getting crushed. Which isn"t a bad thing but is not the feeling I should have when solo"ing trash a level or 2 under me. WoW would really benefit in using a con system like LOTRO that would give them more leeway in monster difficulty range.

Not only the similarity of classes, but similarity of peoples avatars at low mid high levels is sad as well. People get the same AA"s, the same talent points, etc, etc, and are little more than an exact copy with a different name. Gear is the only defining characteristic in these games that seperates one warrior from another...and that sucks.

If you strip a character nekkid and toss him over to another player they would be able to play that character just as well as their own..because nothing is different.

I want to see choices made as a player moves along that seperates him from another player. I want everyone to start at the base of a tree then slower climb up and out into the branches. Its very simplistic and straight forward at teh start but becomes deep and complex as you move higher.

Antarius said:

Skill based systems will still have imbalances and overpowered abilities (read: Nos) It"s just that everyone has a chance to "spec into" the overpowered abilities, and when they get nerfed, it"s a simple matter of "speccing out" of that same ability. Hell, in Eve, you don"t even have to respec, you just lost out on the time you spent training your now gimped ability, but compared to losing out on the hundred of days that it takes to build up a "class" it"s just so much less of an issue.

Even purely skill based systems have "classes." In Eve you have E-Warr boats in the CC role, tacklers are the snarer, you have people who fit for tanking (3 kinds of tanks, passive shield, active shield, armor), people who fit for dps (every different weapon system is almost like a different dps class, do you want to be the close up rogue with Autocannons, sitting back like a Hunter with long range railguns and "pets" aka drones). You also have the tradeskillers, who spend their entire time doing mining/production/trade.

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Yup even in UO "classes" formed. But with the "end-game" essentially being PvP it wasn"t that big of a deal until 3-4 years into in the game"s life when they started adding new skills & abilities that completely unbalanced everything. If UO had an end-game like say WoW, "builds" like my Stealth/Mage would be worthless since I sacrifice so much on the damage side to add the ability to stealth around which was actually pretty useful in the group PvP I did.

A skill system would face the same problem class systems do, if you have distinct utility abilities how can you make those useful in the end-game in a non-artificial way and in a way that doesn"t just force you to bring specific classes for certain areas (ex: Creating locked doors that only Rogues can open)??

A skill system could be made to work well if you solve the above problem. But considering it hasn"t been solved for class-based games yet, solving it for a skill system would be even worse.

Valderen said:

I have more fun in WoW in terms of mechanics and game design...but enjoy EQ2 far more simply because of the class I play and the attachment I feel toward my character.

Then again...maybe it wouldn"t even be an issue if WoW had a class I truly loved among its limited selection.

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Very astute observation. I feel much the same way.

With WoW I feel like I"m making a series of character compromises in order to play through some really good content and explore some extremely cool environments.

Moorgard Mobhunter said:

Very astute observation. I feel much the same way.

With WoW I feel like I"m making a series of character compromises in order to play through some really good content and explore some extremely cool environments.

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Bingo.

An additional reason why I recently cancelled my account (Note to Blizz: FIX PALADINS).

Ngruk said:

. . . .
I took every class, buff, debuff, and made a huge geek spreadsheet labeling their differing abilities. . . .

. . . . Now the temp fix and some of the better fixes in other games have been handled by AA"s and other things of the same ilk with different names. But I see the big challenge and the successful games being the ones that make you MORE different and MORE unique as you "grow older" and "better". . . .

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The first sentence is not something I would have ever admitted to ;p

As for the second, the hard part with that will be the balancing act. This has ALWAYS been a fighting issue with all these games. Ideally you would love it to be the case, but in practice it becomes an impossible task, especially if you throw pvp into the mix.

One can only assume that Ngruk has a RL job that requires intense comparative analysis of obscure data and tendencies in order to choose from a variety of options based on slight statistical edges in order to play the averages..

Anyway. I still think that people want choices, the need to compromise can be alleviated by an easy leveling curve. Speed up the leveling process and allow people to reach max level with relative ease. The progression of a character does not have to be a numerical one. Gear, experience playing character, skill level, ect, should be the predominate factors in relative power. EQ was a mathematical equation. The next great MMO, in my mind, will not rely so heavily on clumsy and brutish nature of the present combat systems with its ponderous number crunching, but a combination of choices, skill and player intelligence in order to overcome PVE encounters or win PVP fights.

Ngruk said:

But I see the big challenge and the successful games being the ones that make you MORE different and MORE unique as you "grow older" and "better".

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True, but to extrapolate a bit further, the real challenge with class differentiation is how to make very different class roles not translate into one"s being more or less "powerful" or "useful" than one another.

I"ve often believed that there are, at the very core of any MMORPG or MUD, three or four "key" roles to play: Healer, Tank, DPS, and to some extent, Support/Crowd Control. These roles could easily be satisfied by four classes, and you"d be done. You"d have perfect balance. Each of the four classes would have its specific and unique role, and none would overlap. There"d be no arguments between players about whose class was "better" or "stronger," because each class would be 100% distinct in its job and its function.

Now obviously, nobody wants to play a game with only four classes available to them. People want choices. People want variety. But the more you split up these four archetypal roles and build new classes around them, the more you encounter two big problems:

1) Overlap in role between classes
2) "Balance" issues between classes who overlap

These have been the fundamental problems facing any type of hybrid class since the dawn of time, for instance. If you split the role of "tank" into multiple splinter classes, each splinter class is going to complain about its position in relation to the others. No one will ever be completely satisfied. By the same token, no DPS class out of 10 DPS classes is ever going to be completely satisfied, because everyone who chooses the DPS route wants to be "the best" at that role -- and everyone believes it"s his or her "right" to that distinction.

Now the real question is, what"s to be done about this fundamental issue? Can the four archetypes ever be broken up equitably? And if so, how many classes can you break them up into in order to enhance variety but mitigate (if not eliminate) problems 1 and 2 as stated earlier? Can new irreducible, fundamental archetypes be imagined?

Curt, you obviously seem to be a big fan of class distinction at the endgame. You want your class to be vastly different from your guildmate"s class. If that"s the case, and as you touched upon earlier, I"d caution against designing an MMORPG with too many classes thrown into the mix. The more you splinter the four archetypes, the less distinction there will be among and between roles, and hence, among and between classes. The question is: how much "variety" in sheer number of classes are you willing to sacrifice in order to maintain "uniqueness" in each class?

Alternatively, are you willing to ditch the class system altogether and go with a skill-progression route?

Millie said:

Can new irreducible, fundamental archetypes be imagined?

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Yes. The Healer/DPS/Figher/CC are the result of current mob encounter archetypes. High Damage, High HP, More than 2 mobs.

Add or change the mob encounter archetypes and you end up with new class archetypes.

See my one example in the next MMO thread. We can add a Puller archetype by making pulling far more important.

But take buff/debuff classes -- usually hybridized -- we could break out buffing/debuffing into actual archetypes by requiring those for mobs -- with mobs that run away/haste/inviz/etc far more often than they do we"ll need a designated debuffer in the group. Similiarly we can design mobs that require buffs see inviz/eb/more hp/more mana/etc.

We can have "phase-shifted" mobs (think of all those TNG aliens in sub-space) -- really just another inviz -- buffers are need to "phase-shift" the group so it can fight and see these particular mobs.

* * *

My one request for whatever fantasy game that comes out GMG -- use the defensive target concept from VG. It"s the main reasons healers in VG >> healers in other games.

to go along with tad"s post above, and Millie"s as well - we really do need to see some variety in mob encounters - especially bosses.

For the most part, most multi-mob encounters are:
-pull
-cc
-tank
-spank

Many boss encounters follow this same pattern. I suppose there is only so much you can do in a MMO w/o becoming too overly bizarre and making the coordination required almost impossible. But, we really do need something different. I know some of the bosses in WoW require different tactics - but they are all essentially, at their core, the same.

How about requiring the usage of some of the classes skills to defeat a boss - or at least, w/o those skills the boss becomes much, much harder.

Maybe, for example, you need a rogue to stealth in and pickpocket a mob for a key, then stealth over and open some chest/safe/whatever and get some item. Then stealth up and backstab the boss or use the item acquired, incapacitating him - allowing the other party/raid members to do extra damage or damage him without being attacked. W/o doing this, the encounter is only doable for the most well geared, most skilled people. Probably a silly idea, but I think it"s time for this genre to really have a revolution in the combat/raiding systems. You can only modify the basic combat system from Diku/Circle so much. Incorporate some strategy elements, some elements from other game genres. Just something, we need something vastly different to keep things from going stale.

The chess event in Karazhan in WoW is an example of something that is different from the norm. Maybe not real challenging really, but it breaks the mold of "pull boss01, tank boss01, heal tank01, dps boss01, cc adds, avoid random_boss_ability, dps boss01, collect loot"

Problem is if you make encounters too "class specific" you make it harder for people to form groups to do it. Group formation is another issue that has plagued all these games as well. I am sure many of us can relay how often they gave up trying to do certain things simply because they couldn"t get the needed parties together.

Ideally I would love it that pretty much any group combo would work on most encounters, and original EQ was pretty much like that, until the Planes and then Kunark came out. At that point, the whole "holy trinity" was created and it just never seemed to have been broken since. Tho it might have fallen slightly to dynamic duo (tank/healer and then all the rest).

Character creation for MMO"s should be like this from now on:

VG was the only game I"ve ever played where I could actually have fun playing a Healer class (Cleric) and that was mostly because I wasn"t always having to sit back being a healerbot. I could actually get in the action using my melee attacks to give buffs to my party or restore mana to myself. The only way it would have been better is if I could heal my party through fighting as well, rather than having to cast my heals separately.

Would that have continued to be true in the Raid game?? Don"t know but I"d like to think it would have been possible.

I do however think it was a step forward in design of healer/utility classes and I would love to see someone take it even further by making those functionalities extensions of DPS"ing. Instead of having to cast heals you cast offensive spells that transfer life from your target to your defensive target (which I agree should become a standard feature) or you mez a target by using an offensive chain that starts with a stun but ends with a long mez.

The roles of Healers & Utility classes in the Raid game are just screaming for some new ideas because the current model is not fun to a lot of people.

Balance is something that is highly overrated and is a buzzword that should have been shot a long time ago. Perfectly balanced classes with everyone able to match up to everyone else is only possible if you only have 1 class.

Classes should have upsides and downsides...individual classes should have the ability to shine in certain situations..not all. Devs and players have put way to much energy into the homogenization of the classes when it should really be going the other way.

EQ took you in a straight line. AA"s didn"t make us unique, some just had more than others. Given enough time we all became the same again.

WOW allows you to walk 3 seperate but similar paths per class. Some people hate this...they want a warrior to tank not be dps and they want a priest to heal not dps...etc, etc. But this is a step in the right direction.

Frankly, the day someone designs a game where you can build the character rather than play collect teh best gear will be a huge win day for MMO"s. Aside from gear, there is nothing inherently different about most characters in most of these games. That is why people break it down into numbers and min/max...everything they get and do revolves around the numbers on their gear.

Change that and make it somethign fun and then you will really have something.

Maxxius said:

Problem is if you make encounters too "class specific" you make it harder for people to form groups to do it. Group formation is another issue that has plagued all these games as well. I am sure many of us can relay how often they gave up trying to do certain things simply because they couldn"t get the needed parties together.

Ideally I would love it that pretty much any group combo would work on most encounters, and original EQ was pretty much like that, until the Planes and then Kunark came out. At that point, the whole "holy trinity" was created and it just never seemed to have been broken since. Tho it might have fallen slightly to dynamic duo (tank/healer and then all the rest).

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Or make it like Shadowbane, if a mob gives 100exp, it gives 100 exp to ALL group members, so essentially youre a dumbass if youre not in a group. Its not forced grouping, but the advantages of being in a group far outweigh not being in one.

Also the group size matters as well. If you give players the option to have 10 players in agroup rather than 6, for example, chances are they will getthe "core" classes they need and just fill the rest with whatever is available not sacrificing anything along the way.

The only way to truely be unique in an MMO other than min/maxing rare gear is by skill. Introduce twitch style play and you will take away from the gear wars. I think AoC might do this with their combat philosophy.

As far as the healer dynamic changing, you might see something good out of Warhammer. Who know though, I"m only going on Barrett"s interviews.

Never bothered with shadowbane so can"t speak from experience, but that does sound like an easy way to just power level up heheh.

Draegan said:

The only way to truely be unique in an MMO other than min/maxing rare gear is by skill. Introduce twitch style play and you will take away from the gear wars. I think AoC might do this with their combat philosophy.

As far as the healer dynamic changing, you might see something good out of Warhammer. Who know though, I"m only going on Barrett"s interviews.

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If you introduce twitch skill to mmorpgs, by nature which are more cerebral time played based games, youre essentially going to alianate most of the people which play mmorpgs now. If you want twitch games, go play one of the shooters.

I think this is definitely the wrong way to take mmorpgs.

Mkopec1 said:

If you introduce twitch skill to mmorpgs, by nature which are more cerebral time played based games, youre essentially going to alianate most of the people which play mmorpgs now.

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This is one of the reasons it"s going to be interesting to watch the reaction to Age of Conan. They"re pushing out of the MMO box in a lot of ways.

Of course, there are things to keep in mind when judging any title"s relative success. Just as it is dubious to assume that because a hugely successful title did gameplay a certain way means the only way to achieve similar success is to emulate that, it is equally perilous to assume that a gameplay idea implemented in a less successful game is automatically the wrong approach. There are plenty of great ideas employed in obscure or marginally successful games that are worth consideration; the fact that the game as a whole wasn"t a hit could be a reflection of any number of issues, some completely external to the game itself.

In short, be prepared to steal ideas from anyone, at any time.