Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Draegan said:

You"re really gonna break out AOL NWN? Fuck I"ll break out Shadow"s of Yserbius on my 2400 baud modem on Sierra INN Network. You needed tanks and dps and healers. Thats the first MMO back in 1991.

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I just wanted to acknowledge the badassery of a Shadows of Yserbius mention in this (or any other) thread. This thread now has Moorguard, Shilling and Shadow of Yserbius mention in it. It can now be considered epic.

The whole class/hybrid/skill thing can be argued a bunch of ways, but there are a few elements of human behavior that remain absolute. Chief among them pertinent to this discussion is that players will always choose the path of least resistance. Second is that creating expectations and then changing them is bad.

The goal of having a bunch of options to fill a role is a noble one that sounds great in theory. You could even get the on-paper balance to 99% accuracy. But given that the path of least resistance is always preferred, once that path is figured out as related to classes it makes on-paper balance meaningless. Any perceived advantage, no matter how slight, creates the path of least resistance. It won"t matter to those who don"t min/max until they meet a min/maxer, who will delight in informing them that their choices don"t fit into the path of least resistance. At that point, the notion of broken classes trickles down to the masses as popular opinion, regardless of whether it"s significantly valid or not.

Expectations come into play when you allow someone to fill a role in one situation but then don"t let them perform that role in another. For example, if you allow both a warrior and a paladin to tank normal group mobs with similar efficiency, but then take that role away from paladins as challenge ramps up to raid encounters, some segment of the paladin playerbase is going to be pissed that their preferred role is no longer available to them. It doesn"t even matter if they have access to another role that still provides value; if the role they enjoy isn"t there, neither is the fun.

In theory, I agree that offering a lot of choice to the players is good, in flavor, roles, and actual gameplay. However, there are basic human behaviors that tend to get in the way. I"d love to say we have come up with some ideal solution, but honestly every way of doing it (at least that we"ve thought about so far) has some tradeoffs. As with a lot of things, it comes down to picking a direction and executing it to the best of your ability.

Maxxius said:

Personally I"d rather see the tri-class make a comeback. If you cant fill all your group needs that way then you never will. But please oh please Curt don"t continue this "needed" healer/tank system because as for me I refuse to get involved in another game that forces me to waste half my playing time trying to find one just to do some content.

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I"m okay with tri-classes too. There are like 54 combos or something given the 8 archtypes -- just pick 15 or so of them and go with it.

Of course they can try and think out of the box and get rid of the Diku archetypes. No clue what they"d replace them with. You can go pure-itemization (the MTG/CCG route. You are what you wear and what spells you"ve got) or skill (UO). Though I think skills have group-formation problems already identified in this thread.

As for Dragen"s comments above re: Hybrids:
Here"s a first pass. Assume OT/DT exists in this game so our Pally can heal his DT while he"s beating up a_random_giant.

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All tanks have Area and Target Taunts.

Tank/DPS - Monk. Tanks via evasion and dodge. Leather or cloth only. Highest DPS of tank classes. Feign Death (no timer). Dual wield.

Tank/Healer - Paladin. Tanks via armor/shield. Group
HoTs and flash heals of specific targets. Diety specific buffs. Can turn undead. Weapon+Shield (no dual). Rez.

Tank/ADPS - Mageknight. Tanks using magic (magic shields, magic bone armor, summoned weapons). Can summon weapons for other PCs. Melee weapon buffs (fire/frost). Porting. Limited illusion abilities.

Tank/Buff - Barbarian. Tanks via high resists (frost/fire/poison), highest stamina in game and weapon blocking (no shield -- dual wield). Chain only. Haste, Stamina and Morale buffs. His Self-Buffs improve as he takes damage (e.g. the more damage he takes the higher his resist buffs go). SoW.

Tank/Debuff - Shadowknight. Tanks via plate armor/shield. Target Slow and DoT debuffs (including a life drain transfer). Can target the mob life drain to himself or other members of group/raid. Can charm/lull undead (diety specific?).

Tank/CC - Inquisitor. Tanks via plate armor/shield. 10 sec AoE Mez on a 2-min timer. Lull for splitting/pulling. No charm ability. Immune to mez/stun (10min timer).

Tank/Pet - Beastlord. Tanks via plate armor/shield. Can tank with permaPet A or dps with permaPet B. Charm animals (1 mob at a time) for mez or temp pet.

* * * *
All healers have Rez.

Healer/CC - Druid. Leather armor. Heals via HoTs/Flash heals. CC via 10-sec AoE Mez. Charms elementals (mez or temp pet). Sleeps humanoids. Entangles Demons and undead. Elemental pets can port for the Druid. Limited Illusion abilities/tree-form.

Healer/ADPS - Bloodmage. Cloth armor. Heals via Blood transfer (his health to yours) and DoTs on mobs (group lifedrain). Can use parts from corpses of dead mobs to graft buffs including regen onto group. DPS via DoTs and Nukes. Porting.

Healer/DPS - Disciple. Cloth armor. High Evasion. Feign Death (longer timer than monk). Heals via Ki. DPS to enemies builds up energy which is channeled for healing (HoTs/Flash or group). Very large fast heals after some energy is builtup. Can channel energy for melee damage buffs instead of healing for the player/group instead of healing.

Healer/Pet - Shaman. Chain armor. Heals via HoTs, Pet and Flash heals. Choice of pet: 2ndary healer (Hot/regen for group), additonal DPS or cheap-ass tank. Diety specific buffs.

Healer/Buff - Cleric. Plate armor. Heals via HoTs, Flash and group heals. Buffs to stamina, dex and str. Diety specific buffs to melee or arcane damage. Diety specific turning/charm ability. E.g. Cleric of good diety can turn undead. Cleric of evil diety can charm undead.

Healer/Debuff - Shadowpriest. Cloth armor. Heals via group damage redistribution (tank -> rest of the group), group regen/HoTs and Nuke/lifedrain on mobs. In addition to the nuke/lifedrain has slow, armor, arcane dps debuffs. Diety specific debuffs as well.

* * *

DPS/CC - Ninja (couldn"t resist). Cloth armor. DPS via ranged(shruikens/arrows) or daggers/poisons/bombs (melee). Nerve strikes for 30-sec stun (humanoids, demons, animals). Stun bomb (Ninja onlyl) for 10-sec AoE stun (all). High evasion (but not as high as the monk). Dual-wield natch. Feign (fast timer). Self-rez (2hr timer/item dependent). Hate-table vanish (rogue-equivalent). Lockpicking (not as good as rogue). Limited illusion abilities.

DPS/Buff - Chaoswarrior. Chain armor. DPS via swords + bow for ranged. Haste and dps buffs. Diety specific buffs (Sta/Int/etc). Dual wield. SoW or similar.

DPS/Debuff - Rogue. Leather armor. Debuffs via dagger poisons. DPS via Daggers or swords. Dual-wield. Hate-table vanish. Combo Debuffs+DPS should make rogues highest average DPS in game. Lockpicking.

DPS/Pet - Ranger. Leather armor. DPS via Bow/Sword. Diety specific perma-pet or pet via charm-animal. Example. Eagle pet adds damage buff (self-only) for ranged combat. Bear pet adds damage buffs for melee combat (self-only and not as good as Eagle self-buff) and can act as a weak tank. No dual-wield. Ranger is only melee unit whose primary DPS is Ranged (Bow).

DPS/ADPS -- degenerate class, skipping.

* * *

All Arcane units have porting abilities.

ADPS/Buff -- Sorcerer. Cloth armor. Arcane DPS buffs. Group Int/Wis/Cha buffs. ADPS mainly via AoE nukes. Morale buff linked to damage done.

ADPS/Debuff -- Necromancer. Plate armor. Arcane DPS through DoTs and corpse explosion. Debuffs to mob armor, arcane dps, int and wisdom. Feign (longest timer of those with feign abilites). Can explode dead mobs for additional AoE damage. Only non-healer with Rez. Of one only two classes with Self-rez (1hr timer/item dependent).

ADPS/Pet -- Summoner. Cloth Armor. Demonic and elemental pets. ADPS via pet, DoTs and nukes. Can charm demons or elementals (single target only).

ADPS/CC -- Enchanter. 20-sec AoE mez (longest aoe mez in game but longer timer. 10-sec AoE same timer as the rest). Nukes and DoTs. Lull/Charm (humanoids, demons). Stun (humanoids, demons, elementals, undead). Limited mez of animals (e.g. AoE only). Illusion abilities.

* * *
Buff/Pet -- Beastmaster. Chain armor. Buffs via pet. Widest choices of pets as they determine buffs (e.g. Hawk for +ranged/arcane damage.).

Buff/CC -- Bard. Plate armor. Dual wield. Buff via song. Best Haste buff. Melee dps buffs. Diety specific songs. SoW. CC via song -- long lasting lull songs (humanoids, animals and demons(maybe)) for pulling. Hate-table reduction songs.

Buff/Debuff -- degenerate.

* * *
Debuff/Pet -- Hunter. Chain armor. Debuffs + pet. Exercise left for the reader.

Debuff/CC -- Jester. Leather armor. Debuffs and CC via song. Bard"s evil twin. Songs of madness (mobs attacking wildly), AoE slow, debuffs to Dex, Str. Long lasting Lull (demons, undead, elementals) for pulling.

* * *
CC/Pet -- Psionicists. Cloth armor. 10-sec AoE Mez. Charm or lull (humanoids, animals). Stun (elementals, animals, undead). Charm for temp pet. Doppelganger. Limited mez demons.

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Got a little lazy towards the end. Didn"t get into crap like who has snare or inviz. But I think, for the most part, there is minmal creep and yet most of the classes are distinct. Ninja is due to Gin"s earlier comment.

That"s like 30 classes that could just as easily be condensed into 10.. do not want.

Having more just for the sake of more is a pretty terrible idea. I"d really love to be the guy responsible for balancing that shit.. or no I wouldn"t. You are going to end up with a handful of those classes being optimal for most situations and those will be the classes the majority plays. Everyone else will be useless.

Did you ever play UO? No classes, skill based. You could be any combination of things you wanted.. yet in the end you had tank mages, dex monkeys and the occasional tamer. Everyone else was inferior and irrelevant.

Moorgard Mobhunter said:

The whole class/hybrid/skill thing can be argued a bunch of ways, but there are a few elements of human behavior that remain absolute. Chief among them pertinent to this discussion is that players will always choose the path of least resistance. Second is that creating expectations and then changing them is bad.

The goal of having a bunch of options to fill a role is a noble one that sounds great in theory. You could even get the on-paper balance to 99% accuracy. But given that the path of least resistance is always preferred, once that path is figured out as related to classes it makes on-paper balance meaningless. Any perceived advantage, no matter how slight, creates the path of least resistance. It won"t matter to those who don"t min/max until they meet a min/maxer, who will delight in informing them that their choices don"t fit into the path of least resistance. At that point, the notion of broken classes trickles down to the masses as popular opinion, regardless of whether it"s significantly valid or not.

Expectations come into play when you allow someone to fill a role in one situation but then don"t let them perform that role in another. For example, if you allow both a warrior and a paladin to tank normal group mobs with similar efficiency, but then take that role away from paladins as challenge ramps up to raid encounters, some segment of the paladin playerbase is going to be pissed that their preferred role is no longer available to them. It doesn"t even matter if they have access to another role that still provides value; if the role they enjoy isn"t there, neither is the fun.

In theory, I agree that offering a lot of choice to the players is good, in flavor, roles, and actual gameplay. However, there are basic human behaviors that tend to get in the way. I"d love to say we have come up with some ideal solution, but honestly every way of doing it (at least that we"ve thought about so far) has some tradeoffs. As with a lot of things, it comes down to picking a direction and executing it to the best of your ability.

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The root of the problem is that encounters are designed in a way that encourages min-maxing. Why? Because they are predictable. Players know they can sheep one, sleep one, and the tank can get on the 3rd while everyone dpses it down.

Instead of 3 enemies... what if 10 less powerful guys jumped you? What if one super powerful enemy was there and he was nearly invulnerable to physical damage but especially vulnerable to holy? Or some enemy that could polymorph your tank and healer while he kills everyone else. If you had a tanking paladin or a shapeshifting druid in your group suddenly they get to step in and shine, something the current MMO scene doesn"t do at all.

I know some people would be scared by such unpredictability... each type of encounter would have to have a few different ways to beat it, but the entire dungeon wouldn"t have one sure-fire way to win it. I think people would have more fun with that kind of system ultimately.

hammerdown said:

Instead of 3 enemies... what if 10 less powerful guys jumped you? What if one super powerful enemy was there and he was nearly invulnerable to physical damage but especially vulnerable to holy? Or some enemy that could polymorph your tank and healer while he kills everyone else. If you had a tanking paladin or a shapeshifting druid in your group suddenly they get to step in and shine, something the current MMO scene doesn"t do at all.

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Multiple less powerful enemies just gives a huge advantage to classes with AE damage spells. Having enemies that are only affected by holy means that all groups must have a paladin. You are making the min/max situation even worse.

Twobit Whore said:

Multiple less powerful enemies just gives a huge advantage to classes with AE damage spells. Having enemies that are only affected by holy means that all groups must have a paladin. You are making the min/max situation even worse.

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I said in the third paragraph that each encounter would need a couple of different ways to defeat it.

Tad it seems like you"re describing CoX on crack in a fantasy setting. There is no way you could actually develop good PVE content with all that shit flying around. It would end up just being watered down.

A game has to have some sort of control or boundaries when it comes to classes just so they can develop better content for them. I would play your game for an afternoon then go back to a more serious MMO. But thats just my opinion.

To what serious MMO? Only one drawing "serious" numbers out there is WOW.

and numbers mean what? The most popular anything is rarely the best, with AOL and McDonalds leading the charge.

I hate the class system, bring on the skills.

Maxxius said:

To what serious MMO? Only one drawing "serious" numbers out there is WOW.

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Bongk said:

and numbers mean what? The most popular anything is rarely the best, with AOL and McDonalds leading the charge.

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You"ve got to admit that WOW is the most developed and most put together MMO out there to date, like it or not. VG and EQ2 can"t hold a candle, neither can LOTRO or CoX. The only game that can come anywhere close to the quality of play and in game support and mechanics is EVE. Lets not talk about graphics for a second and just on game play in the MMO market. WOW has it"s faults but it"s an over all solid game. There"s a reason that I spent most of this year trying out all the other available MMOs out there and still came back to WOW a month or so ago.

Perhaps theres another game on the horizon that will also be fun and well designed. I hope so. But it won"t be a game with 30 different niche classes, that I can guarantee you.

An easier solution is to tailor the current encounter to the current class mix. MMOs would play much better if you could bring together 5-10 people, of any class/spec, and then the instance would shift to be a challenge to that group.

10 DPSers go in? No problem, you get mobs who can be interrupted, bashed, etc, don"t hit hard, but perhaps have high HP or spawn multiple waves so you have to DPS quickly.

10 healers go in? No problem, mobs have high mana pools that need draining, focus on just one person and hit hard, every point of damage they do drains 2x damage to them, etc.

It would be highly refreshing if MMOs would focus once again on groups of friends coming together to spend some time together, rather than the ass-backwards way of an instance requiring X,Y,Z and a group of friends trying to figure out how to make A,B,C = X,Y,Z.

I have no idea how hard/easy that would be to code, if thats even possible. It seems that it would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

But it is kinda the way things are going...someway, somehow. Either the content will change or the characters will change, it has to change.

People want variety within their similarities. The want to change up what they do, or how things appear to them, anything and everything. Classless may be an answer, or templates with skills on top, or something new and interesting.

-shrug- Who knows. Whatever it ends up being it just has to be hugely customizable and changable damn near on a whim.

The high hitpoint, high damage mobs came about as a method of progression. It was a way to make the content harder, nothing more. That is the quintissential rat with a million hitpoint problem..it does nothing to really further the game play.

The game play itself has to change and in the process the characters and their actions will change as well. If the game play stays the same then we will have the same issues and problems 10 years from now.

Twobit Whore said:

That"s like 30 classes that could just as easily be condensed into 10.. do not want.

Having more just for the sake of more is a pretty terrible idea. I"d really love to be the guy responsible for balancing that shit.. or no I wouldn"t. You are going to end up with a handful of those classes being optimal for most situations and those will be the classes the majority plays. Everyone else will be useless.

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Listen you dipshits (I refer to you and Drag) as noted several times already balancing WoW"s 3 talent trees/class is no different than balancing 27 distinct classes with specific sets of abilities. There is no fucking difference between balancing 27 classes with one set of abilities and 9 classes with 3 talent trees.

The main advantage of 27 classes v 9/3 is that (a) other players know who and what the fuck they"re getting when you join a party w/o asking your spec and (b) you get to feel like more of a_special_and_unique_snowflake as one of 27 named classes rather then just hunter_334.

And of course you"re going to end up with classes that are optimal in different situations. The point is to mix up the content so different classes are optimal in different situations. Take the CC classes there are different CC abilities based on mob type (I cheated and just used WoW"s mob types: elemental, demonic, humanoid, undead, animal -- but of course you could do more -- add angelic, slimes and vegetable). A character with demonic/undead/elemental CC will be better when you are facing demons/undead/elementals. The trick is to have some areas with D/U/E and others with humanoids/animals/whatever.

That is the way to make content interesting and challenging.

Ultimately the game is rock/paper/scissors right? You can build parties that are optimal against certain types of mobs: say demons. However you build dungeons so there is no all-demon, all-the-time dungeon. Your optimal party vs. Demons goes into typical_highend_dungeon. It has an easy time facing the demon encounters in wing A but then it has to fight elemental, humanoid or whatever in Wings B and C. Of course the party can disband and fly back -- but then the incur extensive downtime. They can instead take on the other wings and if they are moderately skilled they should be able to get through those too. Similiarly optimal party v. Humanoids easily beats Wing C but then must fight the demons in wing A or elementals in wing B.

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I don"t fucking care if you don"t like my ideas (lets face it 2bit would hate almost any idea of mine just because its mine) but just say you don"t like my ideas. Don"t come up with bullshit reasons like it"d be impossible to balance.

Finally with your "having more for the sake of more" comment. You are flat out wrong. More can be mo" betta. I note that in life interesting things can happen when people are faced with a challenge. Balancing and creating content for 27 classes (or 9 classes with 3 talent trees) isn"t particularly easy (one of the reasons I think why WoW is always late with patches and etc) -- but sometimes when the challenge is met you get a great game. A much better game than if you tried for something less. Of course you can always fail spectacularly (hello VG and three continents). But lets face it that"s interesting too (though from a more can"t help to stop and look at the carwreck point of view). Fuck making safe choices or keeping things small. Safe choices are for losers. Second place only gets you a set of steak knives.

Draegan said:

I have no idea how hard/easy that would be to code, if thats even possible. It seems that it would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

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WoW already uses a formula to measure item strength, so extend that system to do the same for player classes/builds & group makeup. When the group enters an instance it does a scan of the players & the group makeup and assigns a group rating. The instance then runs the appropriate scripts based on that group rating.

The hard part is designing the instance with certain "group ratings" in mind since it would need to be scalable rather than having fixed values for everything from mob stats to number of spawns to the loot tables to the AI scripts the mobs use and even respawn rates. Of course the advantage of such of a system would be the ability to make a 5/10/20/40/xx-man instance out of any instance that is designed.

But that is probably be a radically different approach to mob & dungeon design compared to what is currently done and would take a brave developer to attempt to build a game around such a system. Since if it doesn"t work out then essentially everything on the PvE side of the house is hosed.

If EVE had a more ingaging combat system (read more twitch) it would be the top dog MMO out there imo.

EVE would instantly have more subs if you could actually improve your character through game play rather than sitting in a space dock waiting for your skills to tick complete.

Tad, WOW doesn"t have 27 classes with talent specs thats just dumb. Each of the classes has inherent strengths and skills you"re looking for. For example, Mages and Warlocks. Each spec has some form of CC and DPS no matter what spec. Rogues are the same, so are hunters. The only roles you have to make sure you understand before making a group are the Tank/Healer/DPS roles of classes like warriors, paladins, shamans and druids. And thats easy because all you have to do is whisper the person and ask their spec.

It would be nice in the /who list or LFG UI to have the spec by the persons name. Should be easy since they do it in the Armory already.

Draegan said:

Tad, WOW doesn"t have 27 classes with talent specs thats just dumb. Each of the classes has inherent strengths and skills you"re looking for.

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Yes is does in many cases, you are saying a ret pally and a holy pally fill the same role? In many cases your wow spec completely changes your role making you effetively a different class.