Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Gaereth said:

One of the the things that would suck folks in nicely would be a functional EQIM type of deal. It was a great idea and worked decently for what it was.

Click to expand...

Honestly, that along with being able to do inventory/mail/ah micromanagement would be a blessing.

And farm mats/grind faction during lunch on your phone.

Ngruk said:

You aren"t going to make a full blown MMO on a cell phone, however you can make applications to enhance an MMO world, and a players experience in that world. There"s a virtual plethora of stuff you can do, but if you do it from jump street with the game fleshed out and the cell phone ideas being thought of as game enhancers and ways to keep players in the world I think you can do some great things.

Click to expand...

While for a lot of people this would be somewhat redundant, a web interface that lets you do similar things would also be useful.

The one thing you have to be careful of is giving people too much power to affect the game while not in the game. Cell phone interface to chat in game or something is cool, but letting people get into bid wars in a WoW-style AH is probably too much. It takes away from that being there and catching it at the right time feeling.

Twobit Whore said:

The one thing you have to be careful of is giving people too much power to affect the game while not in the game. Cell phone interface to chat in game or something is cool, but letting people get into bid wars in a WoW-style AH is probably too much. It takes away from that being there and catching it at the right time feeling.

Click to expand...

In order to keep the balance, then, players could simply be allowed to manage their own auctions, such as re-listing an item for a lower price if it isn"t selling, while being unable to place bids.

Yeah stuff like that could work, I was just giving examples. I just don"t think you should allow people not in the game to do anything that supercedes anything someone actually in the game does.

Ngruk said:

. . .We have some extraordinarily good PvP players in house fleshing out our PvP and some of their ideas have hit the bullseye imo because they make me, as a non-pvp player, want to experience it.

Click to expand...

The biggest problem you are going to have is balancing that gear when you create a pve/pvp game. Yeah there is skill, but gear is always > than all.

Twobit Whore said:

Yeah stuff like that could work, I was just giving examples. I just don"t think you should allow people not in the game to do anything that supercedes anything someone actually in the game does.

Click to expand...

What? This doesn"t make any sense. If the game ships with a cellphone interface to the AH and everyone knows about it -- what"s the problem?

The cell phone interface is part of the game. The guy on the cell phone and the guy on his computer both interfacing with the AH are both "in the game".

I agree with Tad. Who cares if you do stuff on your phone or on your computer? I don"t think it makes a difference. Since when are people complaining about unfair bidding wars? Yeesh. You sound like THK about EQ2 Housing.

Yeah it was just an example and I stand by the premise. Why should someone at school or work be able to dial up, click a button and supercede someone who is actually in the game? They shouldn"t... it promotes not playing the game because you can accomplish just as much out of the game. Not everyone has a cell-phone or a PDA or even people with a cell-phone may not have web functions etc. The thing about games is that they are an equalizer. Everyone logs in and has a keyboard and a mouse.. everything done within is dependent on your skill, knowledge and ability to play the game. Not your ability to afford the latest hi-tech gadgets.

If they"re using their cell phone to play, they are "in the game." Why does not using a keyboard and mouse stop it from being an MMO? How on earth can you say that using a PC is an "equalizer" when some people are running at 5 FPS, some people are running at 30 FPS, some people are using a G15 keyboard and some people are running three clients at once?

But are they playing? Can you do a dungeon crawl on a phone? If so, that would be quite amazing and probably worthy of a stand alone game itself.

If they are just bidding on an item in the AH while stuck in traffic, then that isn"t really playing. Of course this is all using existing mechanics as reference and something new that incorporated this would likely use new mechanics.

I"d prefer to see eBay style bidding in an AH over cell-phone accessible bidding. Being able to set the max price you will pay and auto-bidding X + 1 so you don"t have to sit in the AH would be nice.

Using a cell-phone to check game mail, see what you have won.. relist your own auctions if they expire.. that"s fine. Dialing up at a red light and winning a bid 2 seconds before an auction closes is not.. just imo of course.

My justification for this remains the same. 2 people check an auction one morning.. one bids and leaves for work. The other bids right after and leaves for work. The first guy checks it while on the bus/subway/whatever and sees he got outbid and bids up. The second guy doesn"t have that functionaility and loses. I don"t think that is right. Now Mr. off-work today bids and gets it.. great. He was there and he got it. Right time-right place is a big component of online gaming and removing that entirely will remove just one more "thrill" from the game.

Draegan said:

All the freedom of EQ was from shitty coding.

Click to expand...

Draegan said:

Your freedom is just broken mechanics Tad.

Click to expand...

That"s true, but once you find out you should honestly think about making it a feature instead of fixing it. Those EQ bugs turned out to be pretty good for the game after all.

tad10 said:

What? This doesn"t make any sense. If the game ships with a cellphone interface to the AH and everyone knows about it -- what"s the problem?

The cell phone interface is part of the game. The guy on the cell phone and the guy on his computer both interfacing with the AH are both "in the game".

Click to expand...

As if the time investment portion of MMOs weren"t bad enough for busy people, now they"d have to manage their in-game purchases throughout the day. By allowing people to place bids from their cellphones it makes a person with no responsibilities far more effective than a person who can"t check up on a bidding war they"re in every 30-60 minutes.

Furthermore, if the game allowed you to place bids on the AH from your phone there would be no reason for you to ever visit the AH on your PC/console. Why make the trip when you can just pop in on your mobile and do the same thing while saving time? Considering not everyone has a mobile device capable of web access it would be a very unfair and imbalanced mechanic.

Currently people with less responsibilities are far more effective in these games. Or, those that can spend more time are generally further ahead than those that can spend less.

If anything, this allows those folks that can"t get to their computer to manage some of the in game situations easier. It actually increases the effectiveness of those that are situation limited while not really changing much for the no lifers.

Cadrid said:

As if the time investment portion of MMOs weren"t bad enough for busy people, now they"d have to manage their in-game purchases throughout the day. By allowing people to place bids from their cellphones it makes a person with no responsibilities far more effective than a person who can"t check up on a bidding war they"re in every 30-60 minutes.

Furthermore, if the game allowed you to place bids on the AH from your phone there would be no reason for you to ever visit the AH on your PC/console. Why make the trip when you can just pop in on your mobile and do the same thing while saving time? Considering not everyone has a mobile device capable of web access it would be a very unfair and imbalanced mechanic.

Click to expand...

Unless of course it was through a web interface, allowing you to do it from a pc or a phone...

fuffalo said:

Unless of course it was through a web interface, allowing you to do it from a pc or a phone...

Click to expand...

Again, we"re back to people with no responsibilities having a huge advantage. Timmy the Schoolboy could get into a bidding war at the school library, but a parent chauffeuring their kids around, running errands, only able to play in the evenings would end up getting screwed over on a consistent basis. They"re already at a disadvantage with their time constraints, why should more power be given to those ahead of the pack in the first place?

As long as these extras don"t imbalance the game I"m all for them, but when certain people have their play negatively affected as a result the mechanic need to be called into question.

And again...Timmy can already spend more time with the game than a parent working full time. You are saying that it is NOT fair that some people have more time to spend with the game than others. This would somehow be new??

Those that can spend more time can get more done. Time is the coin of the realm in these games and whomever has more of it has more opportunities. Its nothing new and adding even more accessibility doesn"t change it in any way. In fact, adding more accessibility might enable Bob the soccer dad a bit more time to do things in game than he had previously.

These games have been about time vs reward since the beginning. To say it is somehow a problem now is silly.

Honestly, does someone with 16 hours a day actually accomplish more in a game like WoW than someone who plays 4?

You can log on, raid and be done in 4 hours.. or you can log on, do some BGs and arenas and log out whenever. Playing more may get you some gold.. but do you need it? All you need is a few hours of daily quests or harvesting once a week to cover repairs and everything else doesn"t matter.

Not to mention potential security issues with allowing people to affect the game with remote devices.

Well, I don"t really get your side of this cell phone argument. If MMORPGs were ever a "fair playing field" in any sense they stopped being fair when anyone could buy characters and gold on ebay and pay for multiple accounts and better hardware. I don"t think there are enough people playing MMOs who don"t have cell phones to make it an issue of fairness.