38 Studios Copernicus, Mercury and other stuff

[Erronius]

I agree on griefing, but I feel I must put much of the blame to rest at the developers feet - they enable certain behavior with their design decisions. While I might hate having some asshat wait until I pull mobs and get low on health to "PWN" me, then corpse camp me, I realize that that behavior is made possible due to the game design itself. Don't even have corpses per se, leave a corpse image and have you respawn back at a GY or spawn point after a very short time ready to go again. I'm not a fan of death penalties tied to PvP either, I'd much rather respawn and track my enemies down. Have multiple spawn points so it's harder to camp rez/spawn points. Make the PvP centered around world regional control, screw battlegrounds and arenas in the ass. Avoid the "PvE in my PvP" game altogether by simply not having any pure PvE - no bullshit mobs to grind, if you want loot tie it to the players however you want, or have some other system to handle it. If I want to kill mobs, experience tank/heal/DPS or raid, I can go play any number of PvE games.

I am well aware that I'm dangerously close to espousing an FPS MMO, but to be honest I think there are a lot of good ideas to be had across the various FPS games out there. I think a Fallout MMO would be interesting with an open world FPS-style PvP gameplay (or post-apocalyptic in general), and I would kill for a WW2 setting FPS type MMO. I'm sure it wouldn't be for everyone, but for God's sake, it would be a nice change from artificial PvP settings, pointless rankings and gear when you don't actually fight for something, raiding ad nauseum and impossible to mend mixtures of PvP and PvE.

I'd also sport a huge boner if I could melee with a shovel while hitting hotkeyed insults in German. Fuck a bat, that shit's weak.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Next Everquest... 09-17-2009 01:16 AM Your manlove for WOW is unparalleled in its homosexuality.

This is what I was talking about Mr Element. Goliath is trolling the shit out of the EQ: Next thread, posts some stupid shit about how EQ was the greatest game ever because you could kite mobs. I point out that many games allow you to do so, then post three videos from WoW to show him that kiting and exploiting pathing is very much alive and well if you're not bad at video games. I then go on to say that EQ has some of the best dungeon design ever and that WoW pvp is a slap in the face.

What's the result? Some random moron calling me a WoW fanboy when even a cursory glance at my posts reveals that I'm not exactly the biggest lover of WoW's mechanics.

Ah well, retards will be retards I suppose. Hopefully I finish flushing the few remaining ones out of hiding so we can go back to discussing how to make games better rather then vehemently defending our precious baby of choice and condemning anyone who doesn't like it as a WoW fanboy.

Can't wait for the day someone calls me a faggot WoW fanboy when I'm ragging on WoW and that if I don't like WoW I should fuck off back to WoW. <3

Originally Posted by Erronius

If I want to kill mobs, experience tank/heal/DPS or raid, I can go play any number of PvE games..

Planetside did it, but you'll never reach mass appeal with that. All a persistent world really adds is region control, and even that's a bit of a double edged sword. Yeah it's fun at first, but what the fuck is the point? If it gives you an advantage, everyone is going to want to flock to the side that has all the advantages.

What's funny is then people without any hint of irony will say "Well then to balance out the population you should give the losing side perks to incentivize people to switch to the losing team!"

What then exactly is the point of region control giving you an advantage if it's immediately nullified by the losing side getting perks as well? Region control quickly becomes as routine as earning points or ranks and everything else we've become accustom to. Especially when all the shit you spent all afternoon capturing and earning is lost overnight to some Euro guild or the rang rangs.

Anyways...

Any way you slice it, an FPS MMO has numerous technological and basic design issues to overcome first. LPB's being one, especially if you have a heavy focus on PvP. The skill gap is another. I like a faster paced game and can routinely maintain 100ish apm in SC while we have posters on this board who complain about WoW because hitting one ability every 2~5 seconds prevents them from chatting. Which of us are you going to design more towards?

On top of that, why buy the cow when you're getting the sex for free? I doubt you'll ever convince people to pay money to play TF2 month to month, even if you made it a persistent world, unless you created a hefty amount of PvE content as well.

[Ukerric]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

That being said one of the things that annoys me most about GC is that he claims players would have a hard time adjusting to spells doing multiple things if they had different rulesets for PvP and PvE.

Funnily, Horde on my server has no problem adjusting to the fact that they always function in Wintergrasp under a fairly good tenacity buff (I don't think there is one single ally character with the "win WG with tenacity" achievement here. Not one).

[Camerous]

On my last server, the Ally would control WG during the day, because all the kids were home from school for the summer, and at night the horde would destroy them, because all of us working people got home.

Has anyone else noticed this trend? That younger players will gravitate to the favored side and the more mature people will gravitate to the under dogs? Same thing happened in DAoC with Albs and Hibs... kids would play Alb side with it's percs and most of us played mostly hib with some Mid.

[vynde]

oops

[vynde]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

The second argument griefers like to give is "well if only a ~good~ game had griefing it'd do well!" without a hint of irony. The whole point of griefing is to dominate another player so badly he quits. Not exactly a business model any company is going to put large amounts of cash into.

Fortunately for the griefers that keep claiming griefing pvp is what keeps the world exciting and dangerous and blah blah blah, this is one area where you can have your cake and eat it too.

I don't know if you lumped me as a "griefer" because of my post, but all I meant was that FFA pvp servers worked. I didn't mean that the whole game should be like that, UNLESS, if there is a mechanic to flag yourself for open pvp. Now there is that mechanic in WoW, but no perks for flagging yourself.

Originally Posted by Camerous

Has anyone else noticed this trend? That younger players will gravitate to the favored side and the more mature people will gravitate to the under dogs?

from what I've heard about Barrens chat, I think the horde may not have as many adults as you think. Frankly, I don't think one side is more mature even if in the beginning one was. WoW is a very pop MMO so, if you have a bigger pool, you're gonna get more idiots regardless. With the new faction changing service, the difference is blurred even more.

[Northerner]

Being a douche in barren's chat is pretty much a tradition at this point though. I'm generally very polite and helpful in open chat channels (if I say anything at all) but the barrens is a special place for asshattery.

[Erumaron]

Originally Posted by Northerner

Being a douche in barren's chat is pretty much a tradition at this point though. I'm generally very polite and helpful in open chat channels (if I say anything at all) but the barrens is a special place for asshattery.

Every time I fly through I troll the hell out of Barrens chat haha. I usually open up with the classics like "wer mankricks wife?!" and then troll from there.

[findar]

Originally Posted by Ukerric

Funnily, Horde on my server has no problem adjusting to the fact that they always function in Wintergrasp under a fairly good tenacity buff (I don't think there is one single ally character with the "win WG with tenacity" achievement here. Not one).

thought they removed that achievement?

[Ukerric]

Originally Posted by findar

thought they removed that achievement?

It appears you're right. I don't pay that much attention to achievements in practice (even though I'm the 2nd highest ranked in guild).

Anyway, a squishy horde clothie in WG around here probably has 30k+ hp in average pvp gear. And commensurate nukes.

[Ngruk]

In keeping with the other thread I wanted to ask a question.

What's the option more appealing to an MMO player?

60 dollar game, 19.99 a month, free content upgrades?

50 dollar game, 15.99 a month, payment of 5-15 per content upgrade?

[Twobit Whore]

EQ2 tried that content pack crap and failed.

And I freaking knew you were looking for a way to increase the industry standard pricing.

If you want to charge more than every one else you better be damn sure you are offering more than everyone else and what you offer better be.. well better than everyone else. Do that first then determine how much more you think you can charge because if you slip up one bit people are going to hang you on it.

[Linus]

I'd prefer $60 up front plus a larger month fee if it means more content deployed more regularly without any cost to me. The other issue with charging $5-$15 for a xpack is then you have to balance it for those incredibly cheap people who don't buy them.

[Palum]

EQ2 failed because their content packs were useless tiny pieces of crap. You can make any payment plan work if you have the product to back it up. If you're releasing a new mini-continent for 10 bucks every 3 months in addition to normal bug fixes and moderate content like in WoW, people will jump on it. If you use your dev time to exclusively make 10 dollar micropayment dungeons then you're probably going to fail.

[Araxen]

It would be much better to just do $20 a month. Too many cheap people that won't buy those little packs. Like mentioned above it failed in EQ2.