Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

TJT

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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Tedium for the sake of tedium is not something I really see as good design for anything.

Just as an example. If there is something cool about being a tradeskill guy, like the Prayer Shawl that came in Velious or the later enhancements that had all tradeskills make items that would be worth the grind some people will be inclined to climb that hill.

If that hill exists not because getting rare recipes or ingredients from going out in the world but because of all the shit you have to simply buy off merchants or get from underspawning mining nodes (which is itself a Warcraft inspired feature) then you are just calling tedium a wortwhile hurdle.

  1. Going to the ends of the game world to tediously camp rare spawning mobs or remote areas for rare gems, or ingredients for a recipe that you can craft because you spent time hunting down an ancient potion recipe in a quest you discovered. This potion is some neat heal over time effect that is very desirable and you will be one of the few who can craft it.
    1. Good Tedium.
    2. By all means also have failures destroy components.
  2. Sitting around and spending gold and painfully putting in combine after combine so you can raise your skill up to 85 when you can start making something remotely useful. Then going out and tediously camping stuff that's just overcamped or annoying to get.
    1. Bad tedium.
 
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TJT

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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Quaid said:
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.
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Dead necro can't summon anyone's corpse on a CR without his spellbook now can he. Sucks to suck Necrofags!
 
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Siliconemelons

Siliconemelons

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Necros (or SKs when we got it) couldn’t summon anyone’s corpse without an item… jade inlayed coffin / tiny jade inlayed coffin - sk could only uses the big non stacking ones… so run to the bank happened anywho

And as a SK most of my spelled helped me. Our DMF was self only, invis self only…… lol so we were self sufficient in many cases but, yeah.

I get the point, not saying its a good thing to make casters like fighters need to bank run a cr set…but its similar.
 
Kirun

Kirun

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TJT said:
Tedium for the sake of tedium is not something I really see as good design for anything.

Just as an example. If there is something cool about being a tradeskill guy, like the Prayer Shawl that came in Velious or the later enhancements that had all tradeskills make items that would be worth the grind some people will be inclined to climb that hill.
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You mention the prayer shawl as a "cool" item worth the reward of grinding and yet...
TJT said:
  1. Sitting around and spending gold and painfully putting in combine after combine so you can raise your skill up to 85 when you can start making something remotely useful. Then going out and tediously camping stuff that's just overcamped or annoying to get.
    1. Bad tedium.
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You realize this was basically EQ crafting, right? Camping mudmen for ores/clay. Camping spiders for silk, camping lions for pelts, etc. And once you spent an entire day camping all that shit, you get the super extra bonus spin of the game just deleting your shit on combine because fuck you.

Again, countless Korean games have done shit like this. Western players check out shortly after launch and Korean players pay money to skip/circumvent it.

I really wish MMOs would just drop the idea of tradeskills entirely. If you don't make the game FULLY supported via a tradeskill economy, ala Albion Online or something like that, it's always a complete fucking waste of dev resources to make items that aren't as useful/time efficient as shit you can just get from a dungeon/raid. You have to cater to the dungeon players as well, since they are the majority of your playerbase.

So, it always ends up as just some side system for casual Andies to waste their time on because they don't know any better about what a waste of time it is.
 
Arden

Arden

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Fogel said:
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
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I know I'm not the only one that had their entire guild wipe on a Fear run and then had to go beg another guild to all stop what they were doing and come help us get our corpses back. That's next level fostering community right there.
 
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Kriptini

Kriptini

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Siliconemelons said:
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?
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Melees can have spare weapons in their bank. It doesn't seem like it's possible to have a spare spellbook in M&M (unless I missed it)
 
Ukerric

Ukerric

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Arden said:
I know I'm not the only one that had their entire guild wipe on a Fear run and then had to go beg another guild to all stop what they were doing and come help us get our corpses back. That's next level fostering community right there.
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Oh, I also remember being the ONLY cleric on a pickup raid there (since it didn't drop our class armor). Three "insertion rounds" and I'm suddenly sitting down with a pile of corpses in front of me while bards sing and necros twitch, trying desperately to tell people to FUCKIN SEPARATE YOUR CORPSES, BECAUSE EACH TIME I REZ A CORPSE THAT'S ALREADY BEEN REZZED, WE'RE LOSING TIME PEOPLE!

Finally, a high-end guild cleric came with his stick (I got mine almost half a year later) to speed up the process.
 
Flobee

Flobee

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I'm not sure why this hasn't been addressed yet...

Go back to WoW you casuals
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K, as you were.

I don't have a strong opinion on the merchant issue other than it should probably be a bit more forgiving than it currently is. Regarding corpse runs I 100% support it, even as a lame Dadquester. Modern games lack danger and just because we're all old phogeys doesn't mean every aspect of the game should cater to our lifestyle.

Face it boys, modern day Sebilis runs are for the kids, go take your rightful place as king of casual Blackburrow where your corpse runs will be quick and safe. Or you know maybe the system will be tweaked to get the risk/reward lined up better. We'll see
 
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Kithani

Kithani

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Flobee said:
I'm not sure why this hasn't been addressed yet...



K, as you were.

I don't have a strong opinion on the merchant issue other than it should probably be a bit more forgiving than it currently is. Regarding corpse runs I 100% support it, even as a lame Dadquester. Modern games lack danger and just because we're all old phogeys doesn't mean every aspect of the game should cater to our lifestyle.

Face it boys, modern day Sebilis runs are for the kids, go take your rightful place as king of casual Blackburrow where your corpse runs will be quick and safe. Or you know maybe the system will be tweaked to get the risk/reward lined up better. We'll see
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I dunno man I don’t think this genre is going to suddenly appeal to the next generation of kids. The target audience is basically people who played EQ in the late 90s/early 2000s.

I don’t want some easy carebear game but doubling down on tedium doesn’t seem like a great idea when most of us have grown up and have families/jobs etc. compared to back in the day when we had 5+ hours a day to kill in high school or college. I think there should be room to make a fun game with interesting classes / grouping / interdependence without that.

Corpse runs are fine but I never played EQ and thought “man they should really make these things harder on casters” even when I was 11 and had all weekend to do nothing but EQ
 
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Hatorade

Hatorade

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While that spell book thing is interesting death is already punishing and that added element to casters is shitty. Especially when you factor in gold cost for backup spells, so two of a bunch of spells…

If that persists will likely roll a rogue because invisible against all is king for getting around.
 
Siliconemelons

Siliconemelons

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Hatorade said:
While that spell book thing is interesting death is already punishing and that added element to casters is shitty. Especially when you factor in gold cost for backup spells, so two of a bunch of spells…

If that persists will likely roll a rogue because invisible against all is king for getting around.
Click to expand...

Hehe back when sneak/hide was actually a movement penalty it was funny watching rouge's on CR's "I WILL GET THERE EVENTUALLY!" - and it was true, they did...while the rest of us did all sorts of shenanigans.
 
Flobee

Flobee

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Kithani said:
I dunno man I don’t think this genre is going to suddenly appeal to the next generation of kids. The target audience is basically people who played EQ in the late 90s/early 2000s.

I don’t want some easy carebear game but doubling down on tedium doesn’t seem like a great idea when most of us have grown up and have families/jobs etc. compared to back in the day when we had 5+ hours a day to kill in high school or college. I think there should be room to make a fun game with interesting classes / grouping / interdependence without that.

Corpse runs are fine but I never played EQ and thought “man they should really make these things harder on casters” even when I was 11 and had all weekend to do nothing but EQ
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Don't disagree with anything said here. However I think there are a number of design decisions that can be made to alleviate this problem in other areas.

For example, early EQ largely required you to dive into dangerous high risk areas to progress leveling wise toward end game. As such you would need to have a chunk of time set aside to dedicate to a group diving into say Chardok in order to level, there weren't really alternatives to level in. It doesn't have to be like that though.

A CR mechanic provides a wider risk reward scale to design around. Perhaps there are zones/camps throughout the leveling range that resemble oasis crocs or Overthere ramp camp. Places where it is easily accessible, not terribly dangerous, but with lower loot/xp rewards vs a dungeon dive.

Not everybody can/should access the best spots, only those willing and capable should. If TLP population is any indication there are plenty of us with tons of disposable free time to waste on high risk/reward play decisions. Risk is required to generate interesting gameplay decisions IMO. It doesn't have to be CRs but they're a solid way to do it.
 
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Kharzette

Kharzette

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Really all you need in the secondary book is invis vs undead for the low levels when money is tight. The first dungeons are undead.

The book is an item, you actually see it on the caster's belt.
 
Quaid

Quaid

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Kharzette said:
Really all you need in the secondary book is invis vs undead for the low levels when money is tight. The first dungeons are undead.

The book is an item, you actually see it on the caster's belt.
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the fact

that the mechanic

is easy to circumvent

simply by time investment

is the definition

of tedium

fin.
 
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