Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

BOE=bind on equip....no-drop basically. No tradeable gear isn"t fun, but it"s not that huge of a deal.

I can agree with the tiered quest thing to this extent - there needs to be NOT MANY of these.

What it comes down to is it makes it very hard for people to group up and not waste a lot of time bickering and worrying about what part of the quest people are on.

Vanguard suffered from that A LOT, LOTRO some too.

Quests should mostly be one shot type deals. It just gets really annoying otherwise for non-static groups.

Honestly, I"d like to see games shorten the leveling curve SUBSTANTIALLY and concentrate on things to do at max level.

Save quests for truly epic stuff, make them very long quest chains that you can work on for a while.

You"ll have time to do this if you aren"t stuck creating 300 quests to collect bear asses at varying levels, which nobody enjoys.

Think about it this way: in these games, we"re supposed to be heroes, but we"re essentially stuck /training/ to be heroes for a stupidly long time by doing boring and repetitive things. Nobody enjoys that.

Those people who think you should "enjoy the ride" to max level are tossers who can be safely ignored. I"d group them in with the people who want to be punched in the crotch RL when their character dies.

Let me get to the interesting stuff quickly and make sure it"s interesting. That way, I might make it past level 20 with one of these damn games sometime in the near future.

Ngruk said:

BOE?

And to the second point, I am not sure I get what you are saying.

You want to be able to "join in" on a tiered quest at any stage of it if someone in your group has done the other steps, but you haven"t?

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Tiered quests are fine, if they are very good ones. But what Turbine did with LOTRO is terrible. Just about every single quest is tiered.

Duppin said:

Honestly, I"d like to see games shorten the leveling curve SUBSTANTIALLY and concentrate on things to do at max level.

Save quests for truly epic stuff, make them very long quest chains that you can work on for a while.

You"ll have time to do this if you aren"t stuck creating 300 quests to collect bear asses at varying levels, which nobody enjoys.

Think about it this way: in these games, we"re supposed to be heroes, but we"re essentially stuck /training/ to be heroes for a stupidly long time by doing boring and repetitive things. Nobody enjoys that.

Those people who think you should "enjoy the ride" to max level are tossers who can be safely ignored. I"d group them in with the people who want to be punched in the crotch RL when their character dies.

Let me get to the interesting stuff quickly and make sure it"s interesting. That way, I might make it past level 20 with one of these damn games sometime in the near future.

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Or, now stay with me here, it"s gonna get tricky. You make THE WHOLE GAME INTERESTING!



OMFG Revelation, amirite? Leveling is fine, in fact, it"s the fucking STAPLE of RPGs, even the MMO variety. Just make the whole trip fun, filled with interesting stuff, and then you can enjoy the trip. Honestly, EQ2 comes the closest with the leveling thing, I have tons of fun and never feel rushed to see the end game because there is so much to do and see. It"s only when leveling is used as a time sink (Hello, WoW, etc.) that you run into the "OMG need to max level!"

Ngruk said:

What is the ONE single thing in MMO"s today that you see, and think is the absolute suck?

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Grinding for gold to get necessary repairs/mounts/useful items that you are expected to obtain.

Ngruk said:

What is the ONE single thing in MMO"s today that you see, and think is the absolute suck?

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Lack of polish/love of perfection. There are only two things I care about in an MMORPG. Great gameplay, lots of great polished content.

Too many people are trying to be re-evolutionary. I want a game with the basics done perfectly well, before everything else fancy is added on top. There is this obsession with wanting to throw out buzzword features, but I have grown so completely cinical that every time I hear an MMORPG buzzword I just scroll past the rest of the post. I would also love to see an item loot MMORPG with balanced PvP, but I don"t think anyone is interested in spending money to make that kind of game mainstream, since the audience for those games isn"t mainstream yet.

Ngruk said:

You want to be able to "join in" on a tiered quest at any stage of it if someone in your group has done the other steps, but you haven"t?

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It would make sense to me if you could help your friends on the hard part of a tiered quest and not get the rewared immediantly.... but then later if you did the earlier parts you would not have to come back and repeat the "crux" of the quest.

So in wow for example if you killed the bad guy at the end of a quest line you could still loot the head and turn it in later after you completed the prereqs.

The downside would be the tracking all the stuff players partially completed.

whaerf said:

It would make sense to me if you could help your friends on the hard part of a tiered quest and not get the rewared immediantly.... but then later if you did the earlier parts you would not have to come back and repeat the "crux" of the quest.

So in wow for example if you killed the bad guy at the end of a quest line you could still loot the head and turn it in later after you completed the prereqs.

The downside would be the tracking all the stuff players partially completed.

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That sounds really nice from a simple gameplay perspective, but I wonder if it would drive roleplayers nuts.

Ngruk said:

BOE?

And to the second point, I am not sure I get what you are saying.

You want to be able to "join in" on a tiered quest at any stage of it if someone in your group has done the other steps, but you haven"t?

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As noted BOE = bind on equip gear. EQ is the only game that got loot almost right. There is BOP/A is fine for somethings like epic items but the majority of loot should be unbound so you can easily use it and then pass to a twink or sell it. Soulbound items that aren"t epic suck.

Tiered quests. Something like LOTRO"s epic questlines or a quest for an epic weapon are fine as tiered quests. The problem in VG and LOTRO (and even to a lesser extent WoW) is that there are so many tiered quests when you"re leveling that it becomes very difficult to form a pug -- everyone is on different tiers of the quest.

The simplest solution is to just let everyone in a group share the non-epic tiered quest -- no matter what tier the group is working on (early, middle, or final boss kill for reward). Yes there is some content skipping, but the person who doesn"t do the lower tiers is also missing out on XP. So there is a hit for not doing the content.

In general, games are far to quest centric (the kill 10 bears for 10 bear-asses problem).

Ngruk said:

You want to be able to "join in" on a tiered quest at any stage of it if someone in your group has done the other steps, but you haven"t?

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Just have each "step" of the tiered quest be it"s own flag. You can share the tiered quest and start doing it with a PUG, but you can"t get the reward until you go back and complete the beginning steps, which you would get by talking with the starting quest NPC.

The skipping is only temperary.

Ngruk said:

But the problem with twitch skills in MMO"s is connectivity is it not? I mean if your connection has a spike and during that spike twitch skills matter, doesn"t that suck?

On another note. I am very curious to hear from the masses on many topics. Having said that, and I don"t want to start a Q&A that gets 51423 five word one line responses, but if you had to make one gripe, you only had ONE, about MMO"s, what would it be?

What is the ONE single thing in MMO"s today that you see, and think is the absolute suck?

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Repeating the exact same content over and over and over and over (and over) to get items that you can"t trade for the items you want == Loot should be more randomized and you should be able to trade more items than most current games allow.

I have 3 hehe, sorry:

1) Chalk up another vote forconsumables and repair costs.It is simply a chore and, as mentioned above, directly supports farmers and gold sellers. Let us log on, raid, log off like good old EQ.

2) Also -mounts in most MMOGs are just jboots with a visible graphic. They are simply a move speed buff and that is all. I guess in in EQ you can sit on back and get the sitting regen bonus, but that isn"t much better. It would be nice to get real mounted combat in an MMOG. I"m talking about lance charges, flying combat on the back of Griffons or Dragons, War Elephants, Chariots, Goblins on Warg Wolves, force dismounting riders, pets don"t "poof" when you dismount, and assist you in battle like a pet, etc. Mounts should level as well, have barding and equipment, and have trainable abilities. The WoW Hunter Pet interface, for those who haven"t seen it, would be a good start for the Mount inventory/stats page, but need a lot more obviously. (see below).

3) Can we getfull collisionsometime?

Ngruk said:

What is the ONE single thing in MMO"s today that you see, and think is the absolute suck?

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Replayability.

The only MMOs I"ve been able to level multiple characters on where UO, VG, & LOTRO.

1. UO because max"ing your main skills was just insanely easier
2. VG because there were more than 1 or 2 progression paths
3. LOTRO because of the Deed system makes me want to do everything

The thing that has killed replayability in the other MMOs I"ve played (WoW especially) is that once I"ve taken one character through the leveling content I know it will be the exact same if I tried to do it again. So despite the fact I enjoyed level"ing the first time in WoW, I could never get past 20 on any other character because the content wasn"t fresh & wasn"t fun the second time.

MMOs would be well served to have a team dedicated to going back and updating old areas with new content on a regular basis. Add in EQ2"s Mentoring System so vets can go back to experience the new content with new friend"s they"ve brought into the game or buddies who are rolling alts and things would be great.

My one thing would be lack of characer building. Most games are merely gear collection games, you"re not building or creating a character you are merely shopping in the in game store to play dress up with your avatar. A nekkid level 70 in WOW is the same as every other nekkid level 70. AA"s help a bit in EQ, but in time people get all the skills and become the same again.

If you want people to take the time to play the middle of your game make it important to train, educate, and skill up your character rather than just racing levels then getting gear.

When the highly skilled characters start being able to defeat the highly geared ones is when your getting close to getting it right. Not skilled players...but skilled characters. When you can finally create something that isn"t just a walking gear rack then you are getting close.

Ngruk said:

but if you had to make one gripe, you only had ONE, about MMO"s, what would it be?

What is the ONE single thing in MMO"s today that you see, and think is the absolute suck?

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The inability to actually be in a virtual world. I think UO, despite never really playing it much, came the closest.

My issue is, currently most MMOs are basically single player games, with co-op turned on. I level my character, you level yours, then we insert them into the same zone/dungeon/instance and play together to beat the monsters.

I would like to see a game that doesn"t feel like this. One that makes me feel like I am really a citizen in this other world. Which means, if I want to be a pleb and bake cookies, I can. If I want to try to become some political figure, and maybe organize a coup and attempt to take over as "local emperor" of a city-state, I can. I suppose what I am saying is - MMORPGs are missing a lot of the RPG element. Sure we get the stats, the monsters and weapons of the tabletop systems. But that"s about where it ends. You really don"t role play - and I am not exactly talking about the RP that takes place in "taverns" in most MMOs these days.

I don"t know if this at all even practical, but it"s something that has always really irked me about MMOs :-/

Alarion said:

I would like to see a game that doesn"t feel like this. One that makes me feel like I am really a citizen in this other world. Which means, if I want to be a pleb and bake cookies, I can. If I want to try to become some political figure, and maybe organize a coup and attempt to take over as "local emperor" of a city-state, I can. I suppose what I am saying is - MMORPGs are missing a lot of the RPG element. Sure we get the stats, the monsters and weapons of the tabletop systems. But that"s about where it ends. You really don"t role play - and I am not exactly talking about the RP that takes place in "taverns" in most MMOs these days.

I don"t know if this at all even practical, but it"s something that has always really irked me about MMOs :-/

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Eve does alot of that.

I think EQ"s EC selling days came close to that feeling. That place was like a damn virtual flea market.

Harvesting.

On paper, it sounds neat. Ooh, I can mine rocks, chop down trees, skin animals and pick flowers. How immersive! In practice, its the most goddamn boring thing ever introduced to gaming. It is the ANTI game. Where recreation becomes work.

A long, long time ago when UO was being hyped pre release, I remember them talking about this awesome feature whereby you had to keep your characters stats by using them. And one example of this was chopping wood to keep you strength up. And I absolutely hated the idea. Clicking a fucking log over and over? No thanks. And that"s stuck with me ever since.

The first time I quit WoW was right after AQ opened, after spending weeks picking flowers. The second time I quit WoW, was after picking a bunch of flowers because one Khara run blew through a huge pile of mana potions. I then used them all again on a night of pathetic Prince Malazhazzar attempts. I hate hate HATE harvesting.

redjunkopera said:

Just have each "step" of the tiered quest be it"s own flag. You can share the tiered quest and start doing it with a PUG, but you can"t get the reward until you go back and complete the beginning steps, which you would get by talking with the starting quest NPC.

The skipping is only temperary.

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++!

One of the biggest deterants to grouping while leveling in WoW is that unless you"re in a permagroup, it"s almost impossible to find someone who needs the same quests as you do. If you"re on step 5 of a quest and want to group with someone on step 2, you either have to redo the last few steps (potentially wasting enough time that you might as well have not grouped with them), or somehow convince them to just help you finish the chain without any benefit for them. I"m not sure how you"d get around the lore problems, but even if you want a solo-friendly game there should be as few things as possible that discourage grouping.


One thing I"d like to see is a reduction in the link between played time and advancement. If someone who plays 16 hours a day advances four times as fast as someone who plays 4 (or in the case of something like WoW"s old honor system, several hundred times as fast), there will people who play 16 hours a day pressuring you to put in enough content to satisfy them, leading to pointless timesinks as that"s the only way to keep up. Encouraging players to play that much is just generally a bad idea -- over half the Rank 14s I know quit the game shortly after hitting rank 14, as the pressure to spend more and more time playing resulted in them burning out. Something along the lines of WoW"s rest system, but applied to everything may work well -- if the first hour of rep farming is twice as effective as the second one, it becomes much easier to have a rep grind that"s feasible for a "casual" player while not being completed in one day by a poopsocker.

Krueg, I"m with you on that.

I like tradeskilling (although I view it second to adventuring) but harvesting is not fun, its not immersive, its just a waste of time in a game IMO. I didn"t mind how EQLive did tradeskills...with pelts and required items dropping off mobs that you were already killing. That way the people who didn"t want to tradeskill/harvest could sell off (or give to guildies) the items they were looting off mobs.

The only tradeskill I enjoyed in WoW was enchanting because I was using materials made from disenchanting items that I would get from mobs while adventuring. I personally think tradeskilling should be an extension of adventuring, not a completely separate "sphere" of the game. Make them dependent on each other by providing the materials you need to obtain dropping off mobs that you"re killing while you"re questing or in dungeons.

I hate hate hate harvesting too.