Bondurant
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Totally, whenever "glory" is acquired or not, you don't really care about your server / community / guild, you just care about your personal achievements. This kills the fun.
The Elder Scrolls Online
- Thread starter Anomander Rake
- Start date
Abefroman
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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You need a persistent world that is fucking massive with no instant travel. You need to make it impossible for a guild or alliance to take over the entire server. Basically just copy EvE. You really need to proced generate the world to make it massive. If the world is too small and you allow a guild to dominate everything then you create the haves and have nots, the later will leave and that's when the game dies.
I don't think broadening the PVP goals in the same static manner really will help any MMO much. The simple truth is PVP in and of itself is only good in small doses. Even with an organized guild a la PRX, which can drag a mediocre game into being fun, it still doesn't change that games based on fighting and PVP for any static goals lose their luster really fast. The best PVP experience of the last dozen or so years remains DAOC, and it's at the top simply because PVP had meaning and spilled over to PVE with relic bonuses, Darkness falls, and the fun of keep defense. Other games seemed to have more allure for Organized Zerg Forces or Ganker types without a ton of PVE meaning. The problem is the normals who really prefer PVP are playing FPS or DOTA type games for their fix, since it has the fun without the tedium, griefers, or zergs.
I'm still waiting for a game to add a valid PVP experience with meaning on top of a PVE MMO with sandbox elements. I really hope we move towards integration of the two, and lose the gimmicks.
Oh, and for the love of god please lose fixed factions and balancing PVE based on PVP combat....
I enjoyed DAOC and I'm looking forward to what MJ has for CU but I wouldn't say its the best PVP system to date. While it might have been the first to do it well the static nature of that type of PVP needs to DIAF. Especially the 3 hard coded factions and separate servers.
I'd have to give the nod to Eve's system, one server, no hard coded factions, plenty of room to spread out and plenty of reason to want to control an area. Probably the single best economy of any MMO.
Now Eve had a ton of issues like its actual combat kind of sucking, steep learning curve and dumb ass skill acquisition but the core design, economy and general ideas need to be adapted to a fantasy style MMO stat. Shadowbane classes. Tera Combat (minus animation lock).
Take my money.
I'd have to give the nod to Eve's system, one server, no hard coded factions, plenty of room to spread out and plenty of reason to want to control an area. Probably the single best economy of any MMO.
Now Eve had a ton of issues like its actual combat kind of sucking, steep learning curve and dumb ass skill acquisition but the core design, economy and general ideas need to be adapted to a fantasy style MMO stat. Shadowbane classes. Tera Combat (minus animation lock).
Take my money.
Bondurant
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 3,877
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I'd agree with you but I wouldn't give MJ a banana and wait for a fancy icecream. MJ is the main culprit over Warhammer Online's "hey please pay the game while we're still coding it" massive fuckup. Whether that guy (along with Matt Firor, Elder Scrolls Online Director) has a shiny credits past or not, I don't think you can wet your undies over some kickstarter PR with 3DS cloak tech demo. MMO development is a team job, and MJ proved he can't manage for shit. EA was never Satan on this, they just gave the guy free credit, and he fucked up on a stellar level.
He basically had wild card money for Warhammer and he ended questioning everything during development without adding anything creative design wise. He should have been more involved on actual development than forum fanservice. He's a talentless hack milking DAOC credits like he hardcoded the damn game himself, mostly what Matt Firor is doing with Elder Scrolls Online right now. These past glories remind me of Scorsese when The Departed got released "I tried to depict how modern society is nowadays". Bitch, you just were sitting somewhere and some intern sold you that Infernal Affairs asian cop drama. Stop pretending you're reinventing the wheel, you're just sucking that cheap teat some nameless fuck brought onto you.
You should stop wetting your pants over namedropping, especially when those names have to beg upon kickstarter to get money. I'm all about independant scene when it's about innovation. But when you come at us with your former fame and try to sell me your game years before it got released, not so much. We're in a free market, not some fucked up Kolkhozes. Of course I have the choice to buy it or not, but who gives a damn ? By definition we're the guys buying entertainment. Well, we didn't really buy your last product, so now you directly come at us ? Well fuck you, Hollywood's latest blockbusters were major flops, it's time you start doing some innovation there, instead of selling us nostalgia.
He basically had wild card money for Warhammer and he ended questioning everything during development without adding anything creative design wise. He should have been more involved on actual development than forum fanservice. He's a talentless hack milking DAOC credits like he hardcoded the damn game himself, mostly what Matt Firor is doing with Elder Scrolls Online right now. These past glories remind me of Scorsese when The Departed got released "I tried to depict how modern society is nowadays". Bitch, you just were sitting somewhere and some intern sold you that Infernal Affairs asian cop drama. Stop pretending you're reinventing the wheel, you're just sucking that cheap teat some nameless fuck brought onto you.
You should stop wetting your pants over namedropping, especially when those names have to beg upon kickstarter to get money. I'm all about independant scene when it's about innovation. But when you come at us with your former fame and try to sell me your game years before it got released, not so much. We're in a free market, not some fucked up Kolkhozes. Of course I have the choice to buy it or not, but who gives a damn ? By definition we're the guys buying entertainment. Well, we didn't really buy your last product, so now you directly come at us ? Well fuck you, Hollywood's latest blockbusters were major flops, it's time you start doing some innovation there, instead of selling us nostalgia.
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Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
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Is this really the thread for make a fantasy version of EVE? But since you brought it up, I'd love a fantasy version of EVE. No pvp/pve segmentation but just a world you play in, and if some guy is stealing from your mine you switch from crafting to PVP, if you run across a band of orcs while carrying your ore home you have PVE, and if you are actually the jackass jumping the guy trying to defend his ore you are back at PVP. Either way, this has nothing to do with TESO or any other game in development afaik. Except EVE.
The closest we've had to EVE would be AC2 and they lacked the patience to grow the game properly.
As cool a design as EVE is, I really wonder if it would float in a fantasy MMO world?
Interesting post, and very different from what I've read from the post mortems from various players at Mythic/EA. Regardless of the issues, Warhammer was no Vanguard and the game wasn't that bad. I guess that might have been your point comparing it to The Departed which is a really good movie. Warhammer had a lot of good things initially.
The biggest problem with Warhammer is they went the opposite route of WOW. Instead of focusing on fun and content, they nerfed and tried to add to the grind to keep people subscribing. Public Quests, RVR, and PVE in the game was really good. The funny thing is this game at release was far better than SWTOR, outside of the novelty of the 'story' stuff.
EVE has alot less random pvp than a game like AC darktide had. EVE does a very good job of not giving all the advantage to the PKs. An alert player has a very high chance of escaping a PKs net unless that PK is really working smart. Same is not true of almost every fantasy pvp game where if you get jumped while in pve you die unless the person you are fighting is massively retarded.
EVE also lets players avoid pvp much more than those other games, in alot of respects its more similar to trammel era UO than anything, the main difference is EVE allows real territory control in the pvp areas and they had a much better progression system for a long term game, even if UOs was fun short term. EVE would have failed long ago if it made RPKing as easy as it is in all the fantasy games, no matter how much lies and BS the pk crowd spews about a game like darktide or UO having any chance at not withering within 6 months.
EVE also lets players avoid pvp much more than those other games, in alot of respects its more similar to trammel era UO than anything, the main difference is EVE allows real territory control in the pvp areas and they had a much better progression system for a long term game, even if UOs was fun short term. EVE would have failed long ago if it made RPKing as easy as it is in all the fantasy games, no matter how much lies and BS the pk crowd spews about a game like darktide or UO having any chance at not withering within 6 months.
I want an MMO where I feel an attachment to my character again. Been a decade since I had that. Working with friends, competing as a guild, hanging out is all good stuff but I lose attachment to a game because - shock - I lose attachment to my character.
EQ1 is still my go back to game for a couple of months a year because I 'feel' my character. I guess that's down to a combination of factors - class differentials, previous progress meaning something, AAs meaning the last time I played isn't redundant, I don't have to pick up the latest expansion to have the most fun, itemization eg Epics. And, yes, no hard coded factions. I guess the biggest thing for me is class differences. I don't want to play a game where the Cleric can tank or the Mage can heal.
Smed has taken a fair bit of stick off me over the years for management practises but damn if he hasn't stood the test of time as a light in the industry. Yes SoE has had its share of fuck ups but they don't try and clone the $$$$ of WoW et al.
EQ1 is still my go back to game for a couple of months a year because I 'feel' my character. I guess that's down to a combination of factors - class differentials, previous progress meaning something, AAs meaning the last time I played isn't redundant, I don't have to pick up the latest expansion to have the most fun, itemization eg Epics. And, yes, no hard coded factions. I guess the biggest thing for me is class differences. I don't want to play a game where the Cleric can tank or the Mage can heal.
Smed has taken a fair bit of stick off me over the years for management practises but damn if he hasn't stood the test of time as a light in the industry. Yes SoE has had its share of fuck ups but they don't try and clone the $$$$ of WoW et al.
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Darktide lasted a lot more than 6months, UO I don't remember but they kinda killed the game by themselves with the patches anyway. Also disagree on the "no reaction" thing, that wasn't the case with UO or AC. The assaillant did have an advantage, simply because he was ready to fight and had full stats, but unlike more recent games, those didn't have stuns, slow, roots and other obnoxious CC and damage was fairly constant, plus everyone had access to incombat self heals.
You could escape a PK gank by simply running right away and not stopping, or only stopping for heals when out of LoS. You couldn't outrun them but they wouldn't have been able to catch up(other than in AC if the PK had a higher run stat than you, but that's fair imo, and even then it'd take time to finish anyone who kept running, unless you were a melee) and you would be able to run into safe territory which would be close enough since that's where you're farming. You could also fairly easily turn around and fight if you wanted, as I said there was an inherent downside to being attacked since you didn't start with full stats, but it wasn't anything like most class based games since you would be able to heal yourself to full and the difference would be in longetivity/sustainability, not direct health.
I don't know how much you played AC, but you didn't automatically lose a fight when you were getting attacked while farming, like ever. Drain Life was actually more potent on the victim since it was % based, you could always stam to health or heal, and since besides melee nothing was actually autohit, with good awareness you could dodge all damage including the initial attack so your level of health was rarely relevant.
You could escape a PK gank by simply running right away and not stopping, or only stopping for heals when out of LoS. You couldn't outrun them but they wouldn't have been able to catch up(other than in AC if the PK had a higher run stat than you, but that's fair imo, and even then it'd take time to finish anyone who kept running, unless you were a melee) and you would be able to run into safe territory which would be close enough since that's where you're farming. You could also fairly easily turn around and fight if you wanted, as I said there was an inherent downside to being attacked since you didn't start with full stats, but it wasn't anything like most class based games since you would be able to heal yourself to full and the difference would be in longetivity/sustainability, not direct health.
I don't know how much you played AC, but you didn't automatically lose a fight when you were getting attacked while farming, like ever. Drain Life was actually more potent on the victim since it was % based, you could always stam to health or heal, and since besides melee nothing was actually autohit, with good awareness you could dodge all damage including the initial attack so your level of health was rarely relevant.
Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
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The bolded parts are what's missing in current gen, imo. There has to be a middle ground between going uphill through the snow both ways and being given instant 90s for resubbing. These days I feel more like playing a sports team simulation where I juggle my athletes (alts) between different training routines for optimal stats and then retiring them until the next season (expansion with gear reset), instead of playing an rpg.
One thing I liked about WAR were those tactics (I think they were called) that charged up while fighting, you had at least a little edge when you got jumped. Also true that in EVE you can avoid alot of PvP by being careful but really that's a good thing imo. It allows you to take your chances if you want to risk something. If you have the binary choice of stay in town or die to a wolf pack, you tend to only play when you are part of a wolf pack.
The odds were stacked against you to say the least, if it was even a fair fight. I still think it is a major part of the reason for why EVE does well and the other games lost so many subs so quickly. In eve all those blue players who got pked out of the other games could keep playing just at a slightly reduced clip because they didnt have access to the slightly better rewards in low and null sec. EVE is a great pvp game but a bad PK game, its really pretty boring and not very lucrative to be a PK since it can be pretty hard to find and catch people, thats the recipe for success imo, catering at all to PKs ruins games.
In a game like TSO they try to answer that by making the pvp optional and anonymous and giving you preset teams, which imo is a poor solution because it throws the baby out with the bathwater. Ya the RPKing is gone but at the price of the meaningful guild conflicts and all that going with it.
popsicledeath
Potato del Grande
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Just make a game where the world is challenging, the loot desirable (whether item drops or harvested mats), death that stings... and turn on pvp. It's really not that hard. Have a few different rulesets for flavor and person preference. And when the carebear bluebie sandy-vaginas complain it's too hard and want 'fair' pvp, tell them to fuck off. Good for them WoW and every game since has 'fair' pvp that sucks, because good pvp is rarely fair.
Less money and dev time trying to design a pvp map/zone/warfront/battleground system, and more money/time spent just creating a game world that has things like loot and drops and mobs that are worth fighting over.
Less money and dev time trying to design a pvp map/zone/warfront/battleground system, and more money/time spent just creating a game world that has things like loot and drops and mobs that are worth fighting over.
The problem with a fantasy MMO like EVE is space and assets.
EVE is just empty space, literally space. There isn't consant terrain. There are randomly generated 'items' out there but not a constant draw.
To get an open world MMO of that vastness you would need to have a TON of assets on the end users PC. You can't randomly generate mid game or it just doesn't work.
It would be interesting to find like a 10 man team to look into the feasability of randomly generated zones though and try to emulate EVE into a flat world. I just don't think we are there with the resources we currently have.
It could make millions of dollars if the gameplay was even half decent.
Can you imagine WoW with one server and you had to spread out and take over land slowly but surely. You would probably need to work on a seamless transition from PVE to PVP stats and vice versa and put a lower level cap into play. You would fight more over resources and crafting plans for your "keep" than nonstop miniscule armor upgrades up until max level. This is all just armchair development and spitballing here.
Suffice to say I just don't think we are there yet but if we were it COULD be amazing.
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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Uh? Why not. The thing with procedural generation is that, if you have the same procedure and same seed number, it generates the same things on the server and the client. It's done all the time with Minecraft, people see a nice vista/location/village/whatever, post their world ID and the loc, and everyone can go there on their own PC and see the stuff. And Minecraft generates the world in 16x16 chunks whenever you get close - and yet, the same mountain is on everyone's PC, regardless which direction they came from.
But you have to have the world fully generated by the procedural system. None of that "the world is procedurally generated, then our level design staff goes in and puts the finishing touches". And yes, that means sometimes you get weird stuff. Which is fine; it creates some legendary talk about the most funny vista one can find. In fact, those little imperfections give character to the world.
(alternatively, you can have a GW1-type system, where any zone you've never encountered is streamed to your client during the "Loading, please wait" phase, and stored locally on the cache)
You can't generate mid game for a flat game because things have to tie together and you need the entire map fleshed out. EVE is fleshed out (except wormholes) but the "junk" and asteroids etc in each area will randomly generate. That is ok because if it randomly generates in the middle of space there is nothing it will hurt.
For a flat game with an actual world the client needs a zone file of some sort with current technology. HUGE issues with z-axis exploits if you randomly generate. If you want to see an example of a game that tried random generation in an already established world look into Star Wars Galaxies. The stacking of random things and the all around bugginess of their random generation might have been because of poor coding or previous limitations but that was still done on a fleshed out planet and you were just randomly generating entities in it. We want a world that isn't small and boring and cookie cutter though.
You could make it work but you need to figure out how you are going to handle blooming file sizes and z-axis I think first of all.
Like I said it would be interesting to get a 10 man team together to just code that portion of an "MMO" and see how it would flesh out. Just the ability to generate an entire land of HUGE proportions and do a flyover and see how well it fleshed itself out. You get that working you can pretty much just toss that into any engine and let the mechanics work with it. You need to flesh the game around the open world eventually.
Right now the way we MMO isn't quite conducive for your fantasy MMO.
Here are some of the forseeable issues that may arise.
1.) Z-axis bugs/sploits, whatever.
2.) Long distance without any travel points for quickly moving. Imagine a world the size of EVE you traveled on via horse ....
3.) File allocation and chunking on server and client.
4.) World "too large" it feels dead.
5.) PVE or PVP or both, you need to figure out how you are going to deal with that especially super long distances.
6.) How are we going to do resources, are we going to do mines, how are we going to randomly generate that.
7.) Do we do one server for the entire game? If so do we do a mix between randomly generated and then fixed up? That could work good.
None of these are insurmountable alone and probably not combined but I just don't think we are anywhere near this for umm 5-10 years I think.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
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a_skeleton_03, you are completely wrong. It is very, very possible with current technology.
It isn't a fix-all solution however, as procedural games have their own set of challenges that are no more or less difficult than a non-procedural game, just different.
It isn't a fix-all solution however, as procedural games have their own set of challenges that are no more or less difficult than a non-procedural game, just different.
Yeah, I am fine with being wrong but I don't see the technology out there for a flat world the size of EVE Online. Do you have some kind of examples? A game that isn't 45GB on your drive or at least a proof of concept?