Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

  • Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and give us your nominations!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!

Palum

what Suineg set it to
26,500
41,207
Corpse runs sucked, but they did two things that separated WoW from EQ for me.

1. They added that layer of danger/suspense that you always had to be on guard or your dungeon run would hit a major speed bump
2. They helped foster a community as people had to develop friends/relationships. Where as WoW's instancing and Ghost mechanic removed all that. You only ever needed your guild for raids

I was a paladin in EQ and loved knowing that I just saved someones day because I was running through Lguk to solo some stuff and found a dead person/camp and rez'd them all so they didn't have to run/rebreak. Those are the kinds of interactions that build friends/community that WoW removed. Now corpse runs don't need to be full EQ dick punch, but WoW went too far in the other direction
Hence why AC had the best middle ground.
 

Quaid

Trump's Staff
11,782
8,267
TBH, disagree. It's not 1999 anymore. I think it's fine to make death that impactful only when the game isn't super rng and structured properly. If you're going to have the sort of old school hijinks like chaotic pulling mechanics, trains, wacky threat tables, etc. then that just doesn't make sense to me. I think there's a better balance if dying sets you back in the content not potentially ruins your night/week/forever on a character because of a lag spike.

It's the same with having no vendors or painfully small bag space but everything stops piles of trash items.

I don’t think it’s the same at all. A necro can summon your corpse, or a cleric can rez you. You can literally lean on other players and leverage your relationships with them, and the in-game tools they’ve been given, to solve the problems presented by death.

The best you can do with the vendor issue is get a SOW and make it 25% less absurd.
 

Kaines

Potato Supreme
17,830
49,655
I don’t think it’s the same at all. A necro can summon your corpse, or a cleric can rez you. You can literally lean on other players and leverage your relationships with them, and the in-game tools they’ve been given, to solve the problems presented by death.

The best you can do with the vendor issue is get a SOW and make it 25% less absurd.
I already know my Bard will be sitting next to the "wrong" vendors advertising to buy gear slightly higher than the vendors will but still below optimal price of the "correct" vendors. Now to just find some Selo's Drums...
 
  • 2Worf
  • 1Like
Reactions: 2 users

Palum

what Suineg set it to
26,500
41,207
What were AC's mechanics?
You lost items weighted based on value and lost a number based on your level, and got a stat penalty. Better items tended to have higher value, but not always. So you could carry really expensive but useless items so if you died there was a higher likelihood they would drop. This also made high quality items that were low value (not jewel encrusted in other words) very sought after.

Stat penalty was based on earning addl xp.

So for an average player that was well prepared and died once, you could kill some stuff before going back in to recover stats and likely had most or all your gear. Importantly, good DIs were themselves very valuable because they were low encumbrance and high value, so you still wanted to recover them. If you died too many times you just stripped your character.

So basically it's a balance of risk vs reward, but if you died in a weird place that wasn't recoverable (like off the edge of a cliff) it was at least not a death sentence for your character.
 
  • 3Like
Reactions: 2 users

Control

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,974
7,855
I don’t think it’s the same at all. A necro can summon your corpse, or a cleric can rez you. You can literally lean on other players and leverage your relationships with them, and the in-game tools they’ve been given, to solve the problems presented by death.

The best you can do with the vendor issue is get a SOW and make it 25% less absurd.
Depends a LOT on which era and level range of EQ we're copying. Early-mid levels in vanilla were rough. Ironically, EQ was hardest in the early game before you got the gear/skills (and the friends) to really deal with shitty situations. I bet few things ended more subscriptions to vanilla than the well in Befallen.
 

Ukerric

Bearded Ape
<Silver Donator>
8,308
10,281
Corpse runs with full loot drops are dumb anyway. Either it's "realistic" and you have permadeath or it's just a game and why do you need stupid concepts that just waste time. AC did it much better with death items, quest items being bound mattering, and stuff like that.
Or make it a choice.

You died. The rest of your team didn't, and they rez you; you lost 4% XP and are back in action, yay!
You died and the rest of your team did (or you were solo). You now have 30min to get back to your corpse. If you do, you recover 50% of the lost XP, and you're back in action, yay!
You died and don't think you can do it. You wait at the cemetery for 30min. Your corpse suddenly pops, and you've lost definitively all the XP, but you're finally back in action. Yay, I guess?

(and of course, if you do the corpse run, and fail to get it before the timing, well, back to town you go. That's where the "Death Running" debuff timer is useful - it doesn't do anything, it just tells you how long you have)
 

Control

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,974
7,855
I already know my Bard will be sitting next to the "wrong" vendors advertising to buy gear slightly higher than the vendors will but still below optimal price of the "correct" vendors. Now to just find some Selo's Drums...
Or groups split up loot based on type then each person only has to run to one vendor to optimize, or people stop being packrats and insisting on looting every fucking thing because spending more time killing versus playing inventory management leads to faster progress, or etc. etc. The implementation may still be shitty, but it doesn't sound like a problem in principle imo.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Palum

what Suineg set it to
26,500
41,207
I don't need things to be casual, just not insultingly wasting everyone's time if it's "just a game". If you're going to build a game around a deep story in a game, you have to address the mechanics with that in mind but also with respect to it's existence in the world.

Ok so you make it so in the world there's magical stones that store your soul and can recreate your body, but not items. Ok well, clearly there's going to be services and towns that build up around these things. If there's a world population of 85% "adventurers" dying in combat to save your village, it's not realistic that randomly a naked dude shows up at your magic stone and the villagers just stare and then get has to go off into the dungeon again alone.

If you just want to make a game and make a bind point because that's a mechanic games have, then putting in loot drops or anything else is just mechanics and if it's a waste of time it's a waste of time.

Either you make an (mmo)RPG, or you make an MMO with character mechanics and a theme. That's the difference.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Valorath

Blackwing Lair Raider
1,036
1,854
I already know my Bard will be sitting next to the "wrong" vendors advertising to buy gear slightly higher than the vendors will but still below optimal price of the "correct" vendors. Now to just find some Selo's Drums...

Tangential topic here, but this reminded me of a dude who was quite the entrepreneur in early EQ.

I played on Cazic-Thule server, maybe someone will remember this guys name, cause I can never remember it. Anyhow, there was this Ogre that would come to Cazic-Thule zone and he’d buy all your fine steel for 5 plat a piece, and he’d sell food and drink.

This dude coming to the zone with refreshments and helping keep your inventory in check was awesome. Really helped with those long grind sessions trying to farm Rubicite armor. Never did score a bp to complete the set, but had everything else.

Anyway, it was really cool and had always stuck with me that this dude found a way to make some money and me and my buddies loved that we had a “vendor” coming to the zone we were farming. Being a good-aligned race, there wasn’t anywhere close to sell.

Ah, the memories. I loved EQ. Hope this game brings some of that feeling back.
 
  • 4Like
Reactions: 3 users

Quaid

Trump's Staff
11,782
8,267
I don't need things to be casual, just not insultingly wasting everyone's time if it's "just a game". If you're going to build a game around a deep story in a game, you have to address the mechanics with that in mind but also with respect to it's existence in the world.

Ok so you make it so in the world there's magical stones that store your soul and can recreate your body, but not items. Ok well, clearly there's going to be services and towns that build up around these things. If there's a world population of 85% "adventurers" dying in combat to save your village, it's not realistic that randomly a naked dude shows up at your magic stone and the villagers just stare and then get has to go off into the dungeon again alone.

If you just want to make a game and make a bind point because that's a mechanic games have, then putting in loot drops or anything else is just mechanics and if it's a waste of time it's a waste of time.

Either you make an (mmo)RPG, or you make an MMO with character mechanics and a theme. That's the difference.

Bro wtf are you talking about ‘realistic’ lmfao
 

Quaid

Trump's Staff
11,782
8,267
I just don't want ludonarrative dissonance in games.

Weed Bong GIF
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Kirun

Buzzfeed Editor
19,234
15,625
Man, if only this whole "corpse run" thing being difficult, dangerous, and death meaningful, while still not something insanely frustrating/wasteful had been figured out by a group of developers...
 

Quaid

Trump's Staff
11,782
8,267
You lost items weighted based on value and lost a number based on your level, and got a stat penalty. Better items tended to have higher value, but not always. So you could carry really expensive but useless items so if you died there was a higher likelihood they would drop. This also made high quality items that were low value (not jewel encrusted in other words) very sought after.

Stat penalty was based on earning addl xp.

So for an average player that was well prepared and died once, you could kill some stuff before going back in to recover stats and likely had most or all your gear. Importantly, good DIs were themselves very valuable because they were low encumbrance and high value, so you still wanted to recover them. If you died too many times you just stripped your character.

So basically it's a balance of risk vs reward, but if you died in a weird place that wasn't recoverable (like off the edge of a cliff) it was at least not a death sentence for your character.


Holy shit i just realized that in Monsters & Memories, with the dropping your spell book on death… if you die deep in a dungeon you have to fight back SOMEHOW naked with no spells hahahaha
 

Siliconemelons

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
11,855
17,809
I get what you all are saying... but how is this different than a melee fighting back to their body without weapons / armor - like in EQ? Is it bad now because it applies to casters as well?

I was a SK in EQ, I had an entire CR armor set in the bank- only had to use it a handful of times in raid situations...usually back in the day PoF breaks heh.. but so did a lot of the guild. Heck there sometimes was a 2nd loot bid call for CR sets rather than twink/alt/rot

I also get, we - as in 99% of the consumers - are used to many many QoL solutions that have become "standard" - so is it wrong to not?
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

Kirun

Buzzfeed Editor
19,234
15,625
I get what you all are saying... but how is this different than a melee fighting back to their body without weapons / armor - like in EQ? Is it bad now because it applies to casters as well?
It's fucking retarded for melees so let's make it retarded for casters too! Huh?

Our whole point is the idea of CR in EQ is antiquated and annoyingly pointless. There are better ways for games to handle punishment for dying. Look to said games for inspiration.

Copy/pasting 1999 EQ, only this time with even MORE tedium isn't the answer.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

Quaid

Trump's Staff
11,782
8,267
I get what you all are saying... but how is this different than a melee fighting back to their body without weapons / armor - like in EQ? Is it bad now because it applies to casters as well?

I was a SK in EQ, I had an entire CR armor set in the bank- only had to use it a handful of times in raid situations...usually back in the day PoF breaks heh.. but so did a lot of the guild. Heck there sometimes was a 2nd loot bid call for CR sets rather than twink/alt/rot

I also get, we - as in 99% of the consumers - are used to many many QoL solutions that have become "standard" - so is it wrong to not?

Didn’t SKs… have spells?

My argument is not one of ‘fairness’ between classes. I couldn’t care less about something so silly. I’m saying forcing an unnecessary time sink for the sake of a time sink is a bad mechanic. There is zero purpose behind making a player do that.

So now actually to your point, you have a situation where caster classes will be expected to make a bank run before fighting back to a wipe location. Melees will just run back and sit.

Nothing was solved. Nothing was gained. The game is less fun. The population got smaller. Lose all around.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user