Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO
- Thread starter gogojira_sl
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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!
Brad McQuaid @Aradune
Kickstarter video will be an interview w/ me. We want to include questions from all of you, so this will be a good format.
I hope there is more but that doesn't sound hopeful.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
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The game had neither of those things. I am not sure what you were playing.Sadly it was dropped some time around Beta 2So was a lot of stuff. They had a slow tactical almost turn based combat system that got cut too
The "body location" thing was just an ability named something like "head strike" that stunned. There was no more a body location hit system than there was in say WoW, where of you used "Hamstring" you hit someone's "leg" and they were slowed.
The "more tactical" combat was changed because it wasn't more tactical. It was a whack-a-mole game. The game itself told you what to do, with no decision making on your part, and that wasn't good game design.
Some of the better vestiges of the chain/counter system were kept around, but very few and only the ones that worked.
When he's saying more tactical, I'm pretty sure he's referring to how combat was originally unveiled (or at least that's what I think of). Maybe it was bad, but I do recall seeing clips at some event where the shit was much slower paced and you had to react based on your enemies attacks. It looked weird in motion, but it was interesting in theory. It's been way too many years to recall in detail.
No I mean before the game came out, and even before beta. Like in the alpha and their Friends & Family events, they had a completely different combat system that was MTG inspired. You could target different body parts, and every move and melee chain would be queued up by the mob and players and you could see what was in the queue so you could react and plan something ahead of time. Apparently it was slow paced and very unfamiliar to people, some people wanted them to follow it through to the end, but there was a section of the company who just kept pushing for a WoW clone. In the end the second group of voices were louder.
There are still writups out there you can find which talk all about it and there were some screenshots showing it all, but most of them are on the SV gallery which is now closed.
There are still writups out there you can find which talk all about it and there were some screenshots showing it all, but most of them are on the SV gallery which is now closed.
Yeah, that's what I'm referring to. There were some clips on IGN or something waaaaay back in the day.
Yeah the screenshots are hard to find unfortunately :/ Seen a few writups that survive though.
Here ya go this is shortened quotes:
Question for Fozz and everyone else too. - Page 3 - Silky Venomfozzik on silky venom_sl said:
There is a lot more but its hard to find. I've seen Oloh on this forum a few times, I bet he has a lot of info stored away somewhere because he managed to get in to the early alpha/f+f stages and he was one of the few people allowed to do writups of the game that early.
Sounds to me like it could have been a really cool game if only SGO had the backbone to really go straight for that target audience they had originally. But by giving in to the naysayers and noobing it down to take some of the WoW pie, they ruined the whole thing. That's more or less what gives me hope this time, because fool brad once... shame on you... fool brad twice? Then maybe its time to walk away. But I hope he will nail it this second time.
I imagine it'll go beyond him just fielding questions. It'll likely be interwoven with art and assets, things of that nature. No doubt that it'll be in an extremely early phase, but there will be more than just a dude in a chair answering questions.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
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It sounds cool but it was a miserable failure, which is why it was mostly cut. There was no dumbing down or WoWing up of the combat system to please "noobs", it was removing something that wasn't even remotely fun, a good internal decision. This is why developers don't or shouldn't talk about mechanics they aren't sure about, because they get spun up in people's imaginations and when something that doesn't work is taken out you don't hear the end of it.
I just wish you'd stop talking about it like it was more than an experiment that didn't work out.
Laura
Lord Nagafen Raider
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It doesn't matter if he failed before or not.
The problem for me is; when was the last time I cared about an MMORPG being developed?
SWTOR when Bioware CEO said something about "adding the 4th element to MMORPGs, the Story Element." I face-palmed and knew I wouldn't care for this title.
GW2; having no class-roles.
EQN; the presentation was probably everything I don't want in an MMORPG. The Cartoony approach to EQ (Madagascar Lion?) was just adding insult to injury.
At least Brad is planning to make a game like EverQuest and he clearly stated that.
My impression was...
"Hell, it's about time!"
Whether he manage to successful execute this project is unknown.
Frankly, ANYONE in this industry can mess up an MMORPG in production. Brad included.
The problem for me is; when was the last time I cared about an MMORPG being developed?
SWTOR when Bioware CEO said something about "adding the 4th element to MMORPGs, the Story Element." I face-palmed and knew I wouldn't care for this title.
GW2; having no class-roles.
EQN; the presentation was probably everything I don't want in an MMORPG. The Cartoony approach to EQ (Madagascar Lion?) was just adding insult to injury.
At least Brad is planning to make a game like EverQuest and he clearly stated that.
My impression was...
"Hell, it's about time!"
Whether he manage to successful execute this project is unknown.
Frankly, ANYONE in this industry can mess up an MMORPG in production. Brad included.
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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This shouldn't be overly hard for Brad. He just needs to borrow from VG and EQ. He needs to look at what was fun and worked and run with it.. What made Guk so fun? Figure it out and go make a similar zone.. Anazlye then implement. Don't be afraid to copy things that were fun.
Hogwash. This is what people say who never even gave it a chance. Its STILL a great game. It failed on its reputation, which is to say the horrible word of mouth. It failed because MMO players are very involved, and you don't fire an entire staff in the parking lot. We remember this shit. It failed because of its glitchy engine. It failed because it was rushed out the door a year early, but mostly, it failed because no one ever gave it a chance. You can have the greatest game ever made, but if you log in and there's only a dozen people logged in on the server, who is there to group up with? Everyone who tried to give it a chance ran in to this. Its a game dependent on grouping but not enough people online to even form a group. The launch killed the game before it had a chance. It was NEVER unplayable. EVER. And I got in on beta 2, I think. It was an early beta but I wasn't there for the first round of invites so I know the state of the game since before launch. It was rough as hell, but still playable. I was there for launch. It was rough, but still playable. The main reason I left was, there wasn't enough people to play with. And credit where credit is due. Sony made a ton of improvements to make it even better. Then they cut the staff down to, what was it, two devs? Then one, then it was flat out ignored for over a year. Its still a fun game and you can see the potential. But Sony will never revive it. Shame.
Tmac
Adventurer
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I guess my experience with the game was the exception then. For me, it was so broken that I literally couldn't play it. Latency, server instability, crashes, graphical glitches, etc.
However, I'll assume that the reason it got such a bad reputation was because my experience wasn't the exception, but rather, the rule.
However, I'll assume that the reason it got such a bad reputation was because my experience wasn't the exception, but rather, the rule.
Soygen
The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
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Vanguard failed because it ran like dogshit. It could have the best ideas and gameplay in the world, but if you can't get it to run even halfway decent on powerful machines at launch, people are not even going to stick around to experience those features.
Aside from hitching in the major cities it ran fine on my system. Granted, I built a new system just to play Vanguard but it wasn't a super machine or nothing. It was just a good, not great system. I would guess I had around half a dozen CTD total. The only real crapper was the hitching and that wasn't a factor once you got out into the world.
zzeris
King Turd of Shit Hill
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Not only that but people were paying every month for very little improvement. It was fun to see SOE care so much to have just two devs so why would I keep paying if they don't give a shit? When they went FTP but neutered the options so badly that no new players would even try it. This was a buggy mess and from start to finish. If this game was so awesome right now...more people would be playing it. The industry is in a dormant time where people have spare time to try other games. Yet, people still aren't playing this game. Pretty damning indictment.
The new game may end up fixing Brad's image. It's way too early to tell but I'll give him a chance just like last time.
Games started failing for me when my time got a lot more valuable . LFG for long time periods , corpse runs , xp loss and other things that were tolerated in earlier mmo's simply do not and will not work for my available play times.
Soygen
The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
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I agree that I can't do it any more either, but I also resign myself to the fact that a certain game "may not be fore me" and would still like to see those games get made.