Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

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Denaut

Trump's Staff
2,739
1,279
Designers' really are just glorified project managers, in my outside the industry opinion. I've talked to a bunch of them and I have yet to see what they actually bring to the table. They are like liberal arts majors pretending to have real marketable skills.
Design and Project Management are separate skills that are distinct from each other and on par with programming and art in difficulty and time to learn. A good designer or good producer is just as valuable to a project as a programmer or artist, especially on a project that grows above even a tiny number of people.

That being said, in the industry the state of both those professions is in tatters. Instead of being treated like skilled professions they often end up as dumping grounds for the unintelligent, incompetent, and lazy. It becomes a downward spiral where the designers/producers are useless because useless people are made designers/producers therefore reinforcing the idea that designers/producers are useless so we can make anyone a designer/producer, and so on.

Compounding this, because design isn't respected as a skilled profession, designers suffer massive interference from executives and production. So even if you happen to luck into hiring one they aren't able to fully do their job and prove that having a good designer, and trusting them, is an extremely important aspect of game development.

In my opinion the vast majority of games that fail, fail because of bad design. Without getting into another spiel about it, a colleague of mine is fond of saying "Well designed games are well produced games." So design and production are closely related, but not because they have a similar skillset for the people responsible for executing those roles.
 

ixian_sl

shitlord
272
0
The only issue is it's easy to find coders in offshore locations dirt cheap. The nice advent of broadband and video conferencing has removed most obstacles to hiring there if one is a smart small startup. Plus, no benefits. Gotta love the global economy.

'Designers' really are just glorified project managers, in my outside the industry opinion. I've talked to a bunch of them and I have yet to see what they actually bring to the table. They are like liberal arts majors pretending to have real marketable skills. Every time I see one post I get this vibe, which is the same thing I get from Mcquaid:
At my previous job (not in the gaming industry, but still a decent-sized tech company) we brought in some offshore programmers because we were having problems finding people with C++ experience. The majority of the people we hired performed excellent in interviews, but were lackluster when it came to the actual project. I don't want to portray this as the common outcome (and as I said, only the majority were bad, there were some really awesome people), but I don't think it's as easy as you say. There was also the management nightmare of dealing with people on the other side of the world, which was one of the large contributing factors to my friend eventually quitting that job.

Your view on designers seems oversimplified. I can't speak for every company, but the designers I know have to be able to script to actually implement the stuff they want to do.
 

shabushabu

Molten Core Raider
1,408
185
Great post!

Only ... what did I say?



Also, a bit melodramatic much? CALL OF DUTY HAS A LEVELING SYSTEM! MUST NOT BE A SHOOTER! STARCRAFT REQUIRES TWITCH, MUCH NOT BE A STRATEGY GAME! All successful games have a mix of elements. Successful MMOs have both multiplayer content and solo content. This is especially important for games with subscriptions. F2P is a different animal.

Lastly, the games that YOU say failed only declined after their endgame got stale and development didn't keep up (Rift did well for a good while, but it turned out that their group content was too hard/grindy for a lot of people and so people quit in the first couple of months. Those that were good enough burned through the content and then had nothing else to do). SW:TOR is actually making a LOT of money right now and is growing, so that game didn't fail. ESO is brand new, so TBD on that one. DDO is doing well. LOTRO is doing well. Honestly, maybe STO isn't doing well? I don't know. Atari made money by selling Cryptic, so there is that. NWN/Tera I don't know about. TSW/AOC failed because of lack of content/polish (on a lower budget!). WAR failed because it sucked past level 20. GW2 was successful for NCSoft. Defiance isn't doing well, which was a very different type of experience altogether, so I hesitate to put that in the same bucket as the rest.

When it comes down to it, MOST MMOs have been successful for their investors/publishers! Not "billions flushed".
RIFT suffered from lack of content, there was no reason to ALT at all with 1.25 leveling paths.
 

Convo

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
8,768
617
I didn't know the general consensus was people quit Rift because of difficulty? The game just got stale.. I wouldn't point to the group content. that was actually the more fun part of the game.. But maybe my memory is foggy..
 

Vandyn

Blackwing Lair Raider
3,656
1,382
I didn't know the general consensus was people quit Rift because of difficulty? The game just got stale.. I wouldn't point to the group content. that was actually the more fun part of the game.. But maybe my memory is foggy..
Boring as shit comes to mind when I think of Rift. Lore, gameplay, races, you name it.
 

El Santo_sl

shitlord
10
0
The only issue is it's easy to find coders in offshore locations dirt cheap. The nice advent of broadband and video conferencing has removed most obstacles to hiring there if one is a smart small startup. Plus, no benefits. Gotta love the global economy.

'Designers' really are just glorified project managers, in my outside the industry opinion. I've talked to a bunch of them and I have yet to see what they actually bring to the table. They are like liberal arts majors pretending to have real marketable skills.
Without knowing who you have talked to, I can tell you about my experience with designers and PMs (aka Project Managers, Producers, or whatever other term for 'schedule monkey/product owner' is being used). Full disclosure: I'm a Producer who doesn't work in the MMO industry, but has put in a bunch of years doing casual/mobile, and can talk reasonably expertly about the difference. First is that if your Project Manager is your Designer, you're doing it wrong.

Designers are creatives, and are on the hook for developing the game systems, potentially doing limited initial art direction to get the artists moving in the directions they are thinking about, and are responsible for the systems behind the product.

The Producer/PM is the not-necessarily-creative who is on the hook to ship shit on time. They are the one sitting on the Designer's neck when they fiddle-fuck around for 3 months and still haven't settled on what the basic game loop is yet. They also frequently are on the hook to work with BD/management to establish the schedule/cost of the project and agreeing on the revenue expectations, and juggling all of that stuff while keeping the project in motion and making quality/time/cost tradeoffs when those things come down.

Looking at those two roles, you may be saying to yourself, "but those two jobs seem to be almost antithecal to one another. Surely they aren't the same thing!" And you'd be right. With a small enough project the Designer can wear the Producer hat, because they're the person who will have the most knowledge about what's been done, what needs to be done, and the order of importance. On a larger project, the producer/PM takes that stuff on, because the designer will be, like, 'designing' full time, and reviewing the design, and making changes as new information comes in, etc, etc.

It's easy to say that Designers or PMs seem like they offer nothing to a project, and in a lot of cases that's not only true, but they negatively impact a project. But a shitty coder or a shitty artist or shitty code pipeline can do the same thing. They may seem like they don't do much, until you get the chance to see a project that has good people in those roles.

If you're outside the industry, I can see why you wouldn't get what the designer role is, or why it's important. Designers outside the game industry kind of don't exist, because most products in software are created by business requirements, and the creativity lives more in the "how do we solve this business need" realm than the "what is a fun game" realm.
 

Sylas

<Gold Donor>
3,686
4,220
I agree, I'm sure something 'EQ like' in an updated engine is doable but all of that costs money.Pantheon has actually proved that if you don't have some capital up front to get the ball rolling, the odds of getting something made are virtually nil.Manpower, server infrastructure, support staff, etc., is a big deal. MMORPGS are huge projects and unlike single player games, required support staff constantly to deal with issues (billing, in game, GM's, etc).
rofl. all Pantheon proved was that a shit KS ran by a drug addict was able to scam 150k from less than a thousand gullible suckers. His only claim to fame was being involved in the completely accidental success of a video game 15 years ago, having burned all his industry bridges with his earlier scam. fool me once, fool me twice, oh wait fool me thrice? lol
 

Habakkuk_sl

shitlord
90
0
so how's that demo coming along
Splendidly. After their epic KS video, can you have any doubts? He is going to turn this failbus right around!

rrr_img_65498.jpg
 

imijj_sl

shitlord
168
0
It's hilarious how you lament about the "hand-holding" present in modern games, yet that's exactly what you're asking for. You feel that game makers should force others to group with you, force others to use your tradeskills, force others to interact with you. It's the same thing you reject in other games, yet you're fully in support of it when it benefits you.
This is the most braindead "point" in this entire thread. Congrats.
 

iannis

Musty Nester
31,351
17,656
I liked Rift. I'd say it was mediocre, that's fair, but it was competent and there were parts of it that shone out. Enough of them to hold my interest. There was fun to be squeezed out of that game if you were willing to squeeze. For a while at least, until they absolutely gave up. I'd have played it a lot longer if they'd had any sort of plan to address their population problems. But when you arbitrarily segregate your pve population at release because of reasons and super important pvp reasons... what happened to Rift is just going to happen to your game. The plan to deal with that dickhurts problem would be to not start hitting yourself in the dick to begin with.

It'll happen to Wildstar too. You'd honestly think that after 10 years they'd stop intentionally making the exact same mistakes.
 

Furious

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,948
5,032
How did this thread turn from epic brad posts to this "I want a mmo to be like this" ?

No one here will ever agree on what makes a good mmo. Fuuuuuuuu

Need more brad drama.
 

Convo

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
8,768
617
How did this thread turn from epic brad posts to this "I want a mmo to be like this" ?

No one here will ever agree on what makes a good mmo. Fuuuuuuuu

Need more brad drama.
Seems like the sides are firmly split now. I know there were talks of a meeting, but I don't think it happen.
 

Quaid

Trump's Staff
11,794
8,155
We all agree on Quaid's MMO.
ZOMG RACIAL CITY LORE DROP GIMME 800k

Between the black of the west and the light of the east lie the jewels of the Earth. The seven races, caught in the eternal tipping of the scales, splitting the night and the dawn. The immensity of The Grey Peak looms overhead, silently watching the ages turn. Inside, The Grey Council stands in eternal stasis, shining a beam of light skyward through the heart of the mountain, bursting from its peak for all to see. The Underway below twists and shifts - the ancient and gnarled roots of the world.

Red - blood - Men (The Adria) - A culture forged in war and struggle against the dark - city: Morning's Blade, the last city of men whose empire once stretched far further to the west. While much of the technology that gave The Old Empire it's strength is lost, the human city still contains limited examples of it. A hub of trade and travel for all the races, the city stands atop a giant cliff at the base of The Grey Peak. A great river flows over the edge of the cliff and around the base of the city, cascading past and creating a mighty waterfall. It is contained by three concentric walls, each taller than the one before it. At the centre of the city rises the inconceivably tall Spire of Adrial, where the red crystal softly hums, and The Lord of Men governs his realm.

Orange - fire - The Z'ag - insectoid, beetle-like, malevolent - city: Z'agduun, built in a great magma chamber out of shining obsidian bricks. The sharp angles of the architecture contrast against the flowing lava and hardened walls of molten rock. Lava flows through a sort of aqueduct, delivering light to various parts of the city. The city is a horseshoe, with a cave system dug into the walls behind it. At the centre of the horseshoe, an immense rock thrusts into the centre of a great plaza. The orange crystal shines at its tip.

Yellow - ether - The Vinti - ornately feathered, tall, lithe, beautiful, xenophobic - city: Sky Reach. A massive gnarled tree twisting from the side of The Grey Peak. Suspended in the air by giant knotted ropes hangs the city. The ancient tree's roots dig into the mountainside and partially wrap around the immensity of the pulsing yellow crystal.

Green - earth - The Ordo - short, bulky, gorilla-like. rock, grass & moss men. Wise and pragmatic - city: 'The Mouth of the World', a great crater whose walls rise high from the land, creating valley with a river bisecting it. The inside lush with trees, and among the crater walls is built the city. In the centre of the round crater, the river parts briefly exposing an island that glows with the light of the green crystal.

Blue - water - The Finari - amphibious race, fish-like, highly religious, largely indifferent to the other races - city: Loshe Tor - on the rocky cliff shores of the Eastern Light, through a wave carved split in the stone, an immense city stands, built within an ancient coral reef in a massive domed chamber. The blue crystal protrudes downward from the centre of the dome, casting its light on the walls of the chamber.

Indigo - steel - The Diggar - massive, lumbering, coldly intelligent, bio-mechanical beings - city: The Shaft - a massive open pit in the world, perfectly cylindrical, continued since an ancient age that predates the sentience of their race, when they were simply mindless slaves constructed by men. The bio technologically advanced city is constructed vertically along the walls of the shaft. Causeways and bridges cross from side to side. At its deepest limits, the massive pit opening can barely be seen, and it is here the Indigo crystal that gave them intelligence beats in silence.

Violet - magic - The Riki - small, quick, spiky, gemstone crusted, multicoloured - city: Shimmerstone - an expansive cave deep in the heart of The Grey Peak. The whole city is reminiscent of a giant geode, with structures hewn from crystals that seem to drip with magic. The Riki have harnessed magic to provide light in the depths of the mountain's heart, and it dances off the crystals everywhere you look. In the centre of the city rests a perfectly still mirror-like pool, and at its bottom, the violet crystal glows eternally.