Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

On the entire instanced/non instanced ordeal, I'd have to say fully non instanced except for bottleneck content like say, long quest chain end fights that can be griefed. This can still contain an open world context where said expedition giver is on a repop and despawns on creation.

The current show on Tlp with everything being instanced, is that ZERO gear seems rare and unique. On Quellious in 1999/2000 when I first saw the glowing fists with particles coming off of Kitana, the level 60 Monk, I instantly wanted to be like him with his AWESOME Robe of the Whistling Fist and his Celestial Fists. You knew this guy was a top tier player and put in effort for his character.

With everything being instanced, or pick zoned, the mystique is lost. Everyone has BIS item #2145 and their "epic" because of the instancing allowed.

An old school MMORPG needs to have the element of envy when seeing someone who has put in the time, figured out the quests, killed the giant dragon. This cannot happen when everything is instanced. This cannot happen when casualplayer#4096 kills BigDragonWorldEater for the 30th time with no danger because there's Noone except his guild in the instance.

Even in Wow I've never felt like a unique character and just another cog in the wheel, because my gear and achievements were duplicated over 500,000 other players.

Holly said, "casuals shouldn't get to kill Nagafen" and I stand by that 1000%.

S Secrets and I almost went to WAR over instancing content on Legacy of Norrath, and it effectively killed the server because it flooded the game with rare items.

TLDR instancing is bad, and you should feel bad for instancing anything.

Rant over.

MazeEq said:

An old school MMORPG needs to have the element of envy

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And which MMO doesn't have this? Every single MMO that I can think of has this in one way or another.

Ya, every MMO under the sun has things people have envy over, instanced or not.

I will say that instancing content did free up development time for other uses.
So for a hobby it's probably okay to instance shit especially when it's about 80 nerds across 3 guilds.

If you're getting paid and have a proper team to police lawyerquest, an open world game is extremely feasible.

I can't recall the last time Daybreak ever had an intern step in to yell at a nerd for doing anything other than calling someone a racist term during a raid or training... so I mean... the system works. But is it truly enjoyable and do you have RPG style character progression while having these inane rules that are made to suit 5% of the overall playerbase that's at endgame and raiding?

Anyone claiming instancing is bad for server popluations, the YEARS of WoW player base being in the millions laughs in your fucking face. If you want to argue instancing is bad game design for other reasons, go right ahead. But that particular argument is finished and sealed. WoW proved beyond any doubt that instancing does NOT hurt server populations in the least bit and anyone arguing otherwise is either retarded or simply denying reality.

I think the most common issue people talk about is that there's going to be griefers and there's going to be poop sockers. Tailoring the game towards open world puts the favor in that sides court. I think it's possible to have an open world no instance MMO today if the game can be designed that the collective casual dads and 12 year old squeakers can somehow turn the tables every now and then. EQ kinda tried to do that with group content and raid content where basically the groupers would be 1 expansion behind the raiders in the same era. They kinda shot themselves in the foot when they locked group content behind raid content (PoP) though. I don't have the ideas but thats what is needed to break out of this cookie cutter MMO bs we have these days.

Kaines said:

Anyone claiming instancing is bad for server popluations, the YEARS of WoW player base being in the millions laughs in your fucking face. If you want to argue instancing is bad game design for other reasons, go right ahead. But that particular argument is finished and sealed. WoW proved beyond any doubt that instancing does NOT hurt server populations in the least bit and anyone arguing otherwise is either retarded or simply denying reality.

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Then go play WoW, and the very second you're done playing, go fuck yourself. This game (if it gets made) is for people who don't want to play Warcraft. I don't understand why fuck sticks like you have to come into every forum about a game that doesn't want to be WoW, and tell them how they have to copy WoW.

etchazz said:

Then go play WoW, and the very second you're done playing, go fuck yourself. This game (if it gets made) is for people who don't want to play Warcraft. I don't understand why fuck sticks like you have to come into every forum about a game that doesn't want to be WoW, and tell them how they have to copy WoW.

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There is no point in making a p99 clone. In my other post I pointed out why, people aren't going to leave p99 to play p99 with a monthly fee. Having Instancing doesn't make a game WoW. WoW is quest based, dungeon crawling. They have already said camping will be the main focus of N. They have already said single group content over raiding. They have already said the pace of combat will be slower, which makes this game neither 99 EQ or WoW. What exactly is wrong with instancing/sharded zones when the population of that zone exceeds it's limitations, like you have in EQ live, TLPs. "picks".

If they really wanted no instancing, a simple fix would be to have multiple zones with comparable loot, camps, and similar ease of access. Example, Your group heads to Crushbone, everything is camped, okay, np, you just take your group and head over to Butcherblock for a comparable zone called Drushbone filled with dwarf Skeletons. This zone also has a comparable quests to Crushbone Belts, called Drushbone Bones, etc.

etchazz said:

Then go play WoW, and the very second you're done playing, go fuck yourself. This game (if it gets made) is for people who don't want to play Warcraft. I don't understand why fuck sticks like you have to come into every forum about a game that doesn't want to be WoW, and tell them how they have to copy WoW.

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I wasn’t saying make another ther WoW clone you illiterate jerk off. I was saying the argument that instances hurt server population has been wholly and completely debunked by WoW and idiots who keep trying to argue it are denying reality. There may be other valid reasons to argue against instances (no one has successfully done it in this thread yet) but hurting your server population is NOT going to be one of them.

So go fuck yourself.

I've always wanted a game where player actions shaped the world in a variety of ways and if you were late to the party then so be it. Something like the players not being the center of the universe and instead the NPC factions are the movers and shakers as they manage their lands and battle one another for meaningful gains. The player's role would be to shift the balance.

The world would be loosely guided by a team of writers and devs devoted to managing story lines in real time to create a more immersive experience. But that would require too much effort I suppose.

Gask said:

I've always wanted a game where player actions shaped the world in a variety of ways and if you were late to the party then so be it. Something like the players not being the center of the universe and instead the NPC factions are the movers and shakers as they manage their lands and battle one another for meaningful gains. The player's role would be to shift the balance.

The world would be loosely guided by a team of writers and devs devoted to managing story lines in real time to create a more immersive experience. But that would require too much effort I suppose.

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Horizons Empire of Istaria was like this. Crafting was a community effort and it unlock new cities, places to grind, and paths to new areas. Everyone would work together to add what they could to community projects and it changed the world for the better.

ili said:

Horizons Empire of Istaria was like this. Crafting was a community effort and it unlock new cities, places to grind, and paths to new areas. Everyone would work together to add what they could to community projects and it changed the world for the better.

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That's pretty cool stuff.

Horizons always lives in my memory as “most ambitious MMO design document ever”, but the actual game only delivered on like 5%, if that.

ili said:

Horizons Empire of Istaria was like this. Crafting was a community effort and it unlock new cities, places to grind, and paths to new areas. Everyone would work together to add what they could to community projects and it changed the world for the better.

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Great idea on paper. It's a traditional, RPG-style progression system with an end goal. In reality, not as good as it sounds when you consider the 'current-day MMO' player doesn't like the niche of working together with other people.

The anime Sword Art Online had this where they had to band together and defeat the boss on each floor. But in an actual, current-day MMO, it's nothing more than a gimmick. Making an actual MMO designed around this concept is unsustainable for indie teams, as it requires developers to constantly work on new content to add.

Hell, the SAO example is based on 'everyone not being able to log out and they're stuck in the game or will literally die and everyone who was ever interested in the game is already in it', and that in itself should be a good enough reason to discredit the design.

There's also the notion of, 'players get stronger and the catchup mechanic becomes harder to get to current content'.

WoW has the worst example of this in recent history.
BFA in WoW has what, 3 different raid tiers across 3 patches? If there's one thing I disliked about that, it's that the Uldir, CoS, Jaina, and Eternal Palace raids are no longer relevant anymore, and if you're not doing N'Zoth content, you're wasting your time - however, while other players are doing the current content, you're forced to do story content that explains the game up until N`Zoth.

You have to rely on third party checklists to see what quests you have done. The game just assumes you'll be doing quests endlessly until you catch up to everyone else, when in fact some of the shit you're doing at the same time provides no context and is a waste of your time.

If the game is designed like this, it needs to be more than just a gimmick you attach to a game like EQ. That's why I hated the concept of Storybricks in EQN; anyone who is a developer and has played a game in the last 20 years knows that compelling game design comes from non-artificial, non-gimmicky content. Storybricks claimed to add 'repeatable, engaging dynamic content.' That's not to say that it isn't possible to do so. That *is* to say, however, that it most likely won't be fun.

Look at EQ2 in 2005-2006. They added climbing as a feature to sell their expansion, Desert of Flames. It was an absolute gimmick. Sure, it's cool, but it's not a major selling point to a game - and wouldn't it be better if you found out about climbing randomly in the game by attempting it and letting players document the feature?

If you take shortcuts and add 'infinitely repeatable content' with a gimmicky design like climbing or content that creates itself, that means that you're admitting the players are completing your content too quickly because you half-assed the design. I've always hated shit like climbing as a feature, or 'destructible walls' - these are features that are likely cool to the developers creating the systems. They're engaging pieces of tech/art that you're proud of, and it's alright to show those features off - just keep the bragging internal, please.

And yes this is a sharp jab at Pantheon. I know FoH has some level of sensationalism and overblown the concept of climbing in Pantheon, but also look at it from the players' perspective: These are things that, while cool, are best left as something a player 'figures out' due to compelling design. If you're making a game like EQ1, and then tell players every secret and what to expect, you've already alienated your niche of players you are targeting for the sake of broad appeal.

Developers must be humble and admit that their idea is best left discovered on its own, and when a player sees how something is done before it's even released, it spoils the mystery of the product. So stuff like the community bonding together to take down something? It's a great idea, but only if the content wasn't designed that way and that players decided to do that on their own autonomously. Having that as a core game feature and as the 'intended way' to do something isn't what EQ was about. EQ was all about breaking the game in the ways the developers did not expect. Kiting, Bard AOE pulls, pet pulling, FD pulling, pathing issues, killing bosses designed to be unkillable - these are byproducts of a flawed game that players took advantage of. But players *love* that shit. They love finding something broken and then feeling like they 'beat' the developers. Look at Rextroy's YouTube videos about how PvP scaling in WoW was broken, and how he continues to break the game even with its removal. The Sleeper was supposed to be unkillable, but the sheer autistic willpower of people on a server designed for killing each other bonded together to take him down, pissing off the devs in the process. Which ended up being a plot point for the EQ/EQ2 time split.

So I mean, really - there's tons of ways to approach game design. From my experience, this isn't one.

Finding broken game elements frequently becomes a one-off, though, as most dev houses now remove those broken elements once discovered

Cybsled said:

Finding broken game elements frequently becomes a one-off, though, as most dev houses now remove those broken elements once discovered

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It depends on the severity of the one-off, but kiting, root rotting, etc, were kept in as accidental game mechanics. Stuff like Rextroy? Probably can do without that.

Kiting was an accidental game mechanic? How actually stupid were the EQ devs? I get there are always unintended side effects but any dipshit with more than 1 brain cell could see what snare effects would be used for.

Giving players multiple ways to beat an encounter intended or not is a good thing.