Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

OneofOne said:

This hadn"t occured to me, but that"s a very good point. Reminds me of the Simpson"s WoW episode. Marge logs in and talks to the quest giver right in front of her. "Bring me the sacred blah blah stone. It"s lost and very important!" Marge turns around and it"s lying on the ground.

Why are these "quests" so apathetic?

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Because Draegan told the devs to cater to retards (and it worked!).

Dennadyne said:

EQ1 (this is where you say go play eq1)

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EQ1 nowadays isn"t even hardcore - unless you count the tedious AA grind and sparsity of other players/groups progressing up to 70/80, then yes. It is hardcore.

MrGraham said:

The next game that comes out that caters to the "hardcore catasses" like EQ will get my subscription dollars.

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This is what people said when Vanguard was coming out.

ruination said:

EQ1 nowadays isn"t even hardcore - unless you count the tedious AA grind and sparsity of other players/groups progressing up to 70/80, then yes. It is hardcore.

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I was thinking more Kunark thru Gates of Discord. (Fast travel will be necessary in any mmo nowadays, imo).

Traldan said:

This is what people said when Vanguard was coming out.

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Yes and VG turned out to be a pile of crap that was trying to copy EQ2.

When you find a *working* game, that didn"t try to emulate a softcore game, then you might have a valid point.

Dennadyne said:

Because Draegan told the devs to cater to retards (and it worked!).

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I don"t think I voiced a personal opinion, I"m just talking business sense. What"s going to make you the most cash.

Dennadyne said:

EQ1 (this is where you say go play eq1)

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What makes EQ1 > WOW? What, in your own opinion, makes one better than the other?

1. Quests that give you a vague hint on where to go and you must go out in the world and search for the answer?

2. The time it takes to reach max level?

3. The dependence on others to complete all forms of content?

4. ???

I"d like to see what makes EQ1 more hardcore WOW and would make a good game.

What elements of the game would you take and put in your new MMO?

Dennadyne said:

Because Draegan told the devs to cater to retards (and it worked!).

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Draegan is wise.

Traldan said:

This is what people said when Vanguard was coming out.

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Any attempt at being Hardcore was the least of VG"s problems.

I"m sure if a well polished "hardcore" game came out it would still field 100,000+ subs. Whether people like to believe it or not, there"s still a sizable portion of the MMO community that likes the catassery. The key is that it has to be a genuinely good game beyond its play style, that is the major roadblock that developers seem to have a hard time overcoming these days.

Rezz said:

Twobit, from earlier - There are "some" of those types of quests in WoW. Being that I"ve played half a dozen characters to max level, I"m pretty familiar with wow"s quests. The -vast- majority of quests in WoW are 100% mindless kill quests with the sole intention of gaining xp and completely forgetable stories to go along with them. I"d say less than 10% of all quests in wow have any sort of "epic" culmination to them of any kind. Granted, that definition itself is up to debate, but WoW"s quests that do what I describe are the exception, not the rule in that game. My point of contention was that those aren"t really quests, they"re quotas.

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True enough, but seeing how WoW has literally thousands of quests it is unreasonable to expect the majority of them to be epic. The alternative is to remove all "task" quests and have people grind. Would that be preferable?

Plain and simple, you cannot have every quest be a lifelong epic quest. It"s unfeasible in a large scale game.

Draegan said:

I don"t think I voiced a personal opinion, I"m just talking business sense. What"s going to make you the most cash.



What makes EQ1 > WOW? What, in your own opinion, makes one better than the other?

1. Quests that give you a vague hint on where to go and you must go out in the world and search for the answer?

2. The time it takes to reach max level?

3. The dependence on others to complete all forms of content?

4. ???

I"d like to see what makes EQ1 more hardcore WOW and would make a good game.

What elements of the game would you take and put in your new MMO?

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First thing i"d put in is Aradune is Stinky. EQ really hit the nail on the head with that one.

Have fun trying to find a big-hit hardcore* (Most people on this board seem to define hardcore as "takes me 2 decades to get out of the noob levels and when you die, a rusty pair of pliers rips off your fingernails + you are forced to watch a Mrs. Doubtfire marathon). Most companies have realized that certain gameplay elements just aren"t popular.

Lonin said:

I"m sure if a well polished "hardcore" game came out it would still field 100,000+ subs. Whether people like to believe it or not, there"s still a sizable portion of the MMO community that likes the catassery. The key is that it has to be a genuinely good game beyond its play style, that is the major roadblock that developers seem to have a hard time overcoming these days.

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I know I would, MMO"s are to easy right now and it makes me sad.

Cybsled said:

Have fun trying to find a big-hit hardcore* (Most people on this board seem to define hardcore as "takes me 2 decades to get out of the noob levels and when you die, a rusty pair of pliers rips off your fingernails + you are forced to watch a Mrs. Doubtfire marathon). Most companies have realized that certain gameplay elements just aren"t popular.

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The problem is too many people see this as a black and white issue, and it"s not. There is a happy medium to be found between what you just described, and the current crop of Hello Kitty Onlines we are faced with today. I"m curious what Warhammer has to offer, but not holding my breathe. VG shattered all illusions I might once have had about this industry.

As a huge advocate for VG before it came out, my opinion at this point is that tedium as a device for making a game "hardcore" is outmoded. I don"t feel that every new game must be EASY, simply that the difficulty should be presented through content, not mechanics. An engaging story that presents a challenge would be a huge draw. To hell if the mechanics aren"t the "hardcore" bullshit you remember from EQ. I shudder to say it, but the MMO industry would do well to look at other genres of gaming in this respect - easy mechanics + difficult goals are more effective and more enjoyable than retardedly-hard mechanics with less challenging goals.

If your hardcore game is not all about tedium and raiding and more about difficult gameplay mechanics I"m all for it.

But if your hardcore MMO just forces me to play with 5 other peolpe 5 hours a day to gain 1/4 a level then I"m gonna have to say no to that, and it wouldn"t be successful.

Draegan said:

If your hardcore game is not all about tedium and raiding and more about difficult gameplay mechanics I"m all for it.

But if your hardcore MMO just forces me to play with 5 other peolpe 5 hours a day to gain 1/4 a level then I"m gonna have to say no to that, and it wouldn"t be successful.

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Well, for one I do thoroughly enjoy the raid mechanics of the past few expansions with original EQ, it is completely different from the raiding days of old. It is a little more twitchy, but not too crazy, takes a lot of coordination. I would like to see that implemented into other aspects of the game, not just raiding.

As far as the time goes, you should get out of a game what you put into it. That is how I feel on the matter. You can do just fine in most MMO"s with an hour or two a night, for a couple nights a week, but if you want to be a "badass" you will need to put in more time.

"Difficult" gameplay mechanics are a dicey issue. You can"t make the game unintuitive, or it"s just bad game design. See WW2 Online for a perfect example of what not to do...you had to do 3 separate things just to fire a fucking rifle.

Lets look at a game like Starcraft. It"s easy to get into, but there"s a huge difference between what some noob who plays Big Game Hunters 24/7 vs. what some gosu Korean player like Boxer or Nada. Does the fact that noobs can play Starcraft detract from the pro league? Not in the slightest. A well designed game has easy to use features in general, but allows for a skilled player to actually take full advantage of them.

Cybsled said:

"Difficult" gameplay mechanics are a dicey issue. You can"t make the game unintuitive, or it"s just bad game design. See WW2 Online for a perfect example of what not to do...you had to do 3 separate things just to fire a fucking rifle.

Lets look at a game like Starcraft. It"s easy to get into, but there"s a huge difference between what some noob who plays Big Game Hunters 24/7 vs. what some gosu Korean player like Boxer or Nada. Does the fact that noobs can play Starcraft detract from the pro league? Not in the slightest. A well designed game has easy to use features in general, but allows for a skilled player to actually take full advantage of them.

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Pretty good comparison. Now how to implement it?

Draegan said:

So you would rather have two sections in a journal or quest log that has "Quests" and "Task" just divide them into two different windows? I think you"re just arguing semantics like you said.

LOTRO did a good job where they had "quests" for each zone. Then "Chapter Quests" that drove the story.

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Nope, that isn"t what I want at all.

If I have a quest journal I want it to have notes on actual quests. Not a list of "Bob the grocer likes bear meat, get him 5". That sort of shit should be more dynamic, for lack of a better term.

I kill a bear. I get a nice fluffy pelt from it. Someone in the city is going to want that pelt, maybe I should go ask someone about it. Maybe there is a trapper NPC out in the wild who will trade me for it. The end result will be the same but instead of "quest 7, retrieve 5 pelts...done!" I get to interact with the NPCs that inhabit the game world. Tie it into faction, get a better price, have it like the stupid curscale quest and get some crap armor from it. Something, anything other than "Bear pelt 7/10" showing up on my screen.

If you"re designing a game for a playerbase that is too stupid to equate bear meat to the butcher in the local village and retain that information then why bother? They already have that game, as has been said previously, it doesn"t need to be duplicated.