Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Bongk]

Originally Posted by Draegan

You're not listening to what 2bit is saying. He doesn't care that there is a swimmer skill that you can learn. He and I want to know how you can develop a skill based system where you don't gravitate to dps, tank, healer, nuker and create content that keeps you from doing it. Saying there's a swimmer skill doesn't do that.

are you really saying you cannot figure that out yourself?

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by Bongk

are you really saying you cannot figure that out yourself?

I say it's impossible to do and keep the game interesting. No matter what you're still going the majority of the player base gravitate too a few specific builds that might as well be classes. Can you give me a scenario where this does not happen?

So no, I can't figure it out for myself. So why don't you tell me.

[Vagoo]

Just because you are 0% Explorer doesn't mean that others (such as mysefl) would rank Exploration very high up there in things I like to do in MMOs. Indeed I rate it higher than killing mobs.

exploration replayability is pretty low

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by FuckYou

exploration replayability is pretty low

Furthermore, I bet the number of people who buy a game because they think it would be cool to run around and look at stuff approaches nil.

Or you could just take a Bartle test and have it decide you are an explorer and go with that...

[Gaereth]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Combat *is* the whole game, or at least most of it. That's what these games are based on. If you want to break the mold and forge a new genre.. go ahead. Wait, they did this.. it's called the Sims Online and Second Life.

What you want are virtual worlds that are engrossing to a few and boring for the masses. So go ahead use that climbing skill to climb that mountain.. then what? Combat? Or do you just stand on the peak and plant a flag?

RPG's aren't solely about combat. I will tend to agree that the MMO portion of the games seems to have sunk to a level where combat is the primary focus...but it doesn't have to be and shouldn't be.

Sure, everyone wants to storm the castle and fight the baddy. But does that mean you can't have meaningful content getting to the fight?? Or more dynamic fights? Or the opportunity to avoid the fights all together if you can?? These games are currently about the destination, lets make the journey worthwhile without delving into the world sim crap.

Why don't alarms sound if you don't do everything right and the whole dungeon or instance re-aligns because of what you did?? What if your climbers go in the back, the swimmers go in another way then you take your big hammer and go knock on the front door?? Why don't we have teams with specialties infiltrating with stealth??

Why not tackle that bandit lord, hogtie him, then attempt to return him to the town alive rather than just his head??

The options are as varied as imagination and technology. No one is doing much very imaginative and the technology is there to do a lot more than we have now.

I still want more of a game than a world simulation but I would prefer more an RPG slant rather than a FPS slant but you can do both. I just don't want to continue looking at it like its black and white...you enter, you kill stuff, you loot stuff, you repeat. Thats the Doom method. You walk in with your BFG and blow the crap out of everything. Hell, your entire raid walks in as a group together.

Lets get a little strategy involved, lets get a multi-pronged attack going where someone takes the gates, someone disables the warning claxon, etc, etc.

You can do both types of content. The hack n slash big hammer method, the alternate stuff, a mix of stuff, etc, etc. Its not about just one or the other its about how can we make what we do right now more varied and interesting, engrossing, fun, dynamic, entertaining and all that crap.

Right now we approach these games with hammers. A tank hammer, a healer hammer, a dps hammer. The main reason that it works is because that is how the content is designed. To change to a multi-tool would require a change in how the content is designed as well. You don't switch in the new content with the old hammers and you can't put the old hammers in the new content. It has to be a synergy between the two.

[Draegan]

Usually those types of things only work in single player games. We don't have the tech to create a dynamic world where you can effect and change your environment on a permanent or semi permanent basis.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Draegan

Usually those types of things only work in single player games. We don't have the tech to create a dynamic world where you can effect and change your environment on a permanent or semi permanent basis.

That's what I've been saying.. and people don't get it. They think you can just implement all this crap and it's no big deal.

The industry does not lack ideas. None of this shit is original. Smarter people than any of us here have come up with the same things 100x over. The issue is implementation.

Yes, in a perfect world you would have a virtual planet, complete with metropolises, civilizations, frontiers and wilds. Oceans and mountains and plains. Everything would have its own set of challenges and require its own solutions. Everyone would be unique and useful and never run out of new and interesting and dynamic content. This is not a perfect world.. and this isn't possible right now.

[grimsark]

Originally Posted by Draegan

I say it's impossible to do and keep the game interesting. No matter what you're still going the majority of the player base gravitate too a few specific builds that might as well be classes. Can you give me a scenario where this does not happen?

So no, I can't figure it out for myself. So why don't you tell me.

I will be taking you up on that challenge here shortly... still typing it up.
Slowly but surely.

[Gaereth]

Originally Posted by Draegan

Usually those types of things only work in single player games. We don't have the tech to create a dynamic world where you can effect and change your environment on a permanent or semi permanent basis.

Soo...in an instance heavy game like WOW you can't do this fancy crap?? I can understanding not doing stuff like it in Karnors back in the day...you had 50+ other folks in there doing crap. I can understand you don't want to dynamically change something outside that a bunch of people are playing on.

But today?? Karnors would be a small instance that one group or a few groups at most go raid. You could do everything that I mentioned to it because its a personal instance. Instances ALLOW for stuff like this...instances are there because it makes stuff like this possible.

[Twobit Whore]

If your game is 100% instanced you are going to know what you are facing when you go in and you are going to take a group with you. Unless you think it's easy to just randomly generate terrain.. and sometimes there is a mountain and sometimes a lake.. yet the instance still represents what it is supposed to be?

Imagine zoning into Stratholme, but instead of a burning city its an open field.. how does that work again? All continuity would be lost and there would be no sense of permenance or persistance within the world.

[Draegan]

You do stuff like that on a limited basis with some WOW quests. Chase around a mob and get him to 50% and you talk to him again and he give you an item then disapear, this item is "SuchandSuch guy all tied up". It's gimmicky.

What do you want? A scripted event in an instance where you go in and perform the same point and clicks to win? Wheres the challenge in that? Theres nothing fancy. I see stuff like that in WOW and all I think of is free experience when I'm questing.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by FuckYou

exploration replayability is pretty low

Probably why I never last more than a year at any one game.

* * *
In any event 2bit even combat doesn't require tanks, healers, dps, cc (well not in the EQ/WoW sense of those words). Certainly none of those classes make sense in some hypothetical WWII MMO (it'd have a far different type of tank).

You seem to be tripped up into thinking that a fantasy MMO has to have tanks, healers, dps, cc. This is just not the case. I'm not bitching about the standard archetypes -- the reason why they're standard is that devs can use them to make reasonably interesting content: boss mobs that hit hard (requiring tanks and healers) that might have trash spawns (requriing CC). Additional limitations on mana (limited healing) make dps a requirement (to kill mob before healer hits 0 mana).

Change the encounter types and you change your class system. As discussed eons ago -- you could make a true pulling class (i.e. monk) as absolute a requirement as a tank or healer or etc by designing encounters to require a pulling class just as now most encounters requie t/h/cc/dps. Same thing with buffing and debuffing.

Same thing with actual skills. Taunting exists as a skill solely because of the everpresent hate table right? If there was no hate table would true tanks need to exist? The mob might use intelligent targeting -- hmm that guy in the funny hat is nuking me for 1k -- maybe I should eat him instead of this guy in tinfoil that is dinking me for 10 pips. Of course why the fuck mages have to wear cloth -- well that's Gary Gygax's fault and doesn't have to be that way.

I guess my main comment is that for once in your life think outside the box 2bit. You're always ready to shootdown an idea and stick with the status quo. What the fuck is that about? This thread is supposed to be HypotheticalMMOcraft not whywowisperfectcraft.

[Twobit Whore]

So pulling is thinking outside the box? Personally I think 'pulling' in the EQ sense is a rather shitty mechanic and I would never design my own game with it in mind, and I probably wouldn't play one that had it as a core mechanic.

Buffing and debuffing is always good, but how is that different than what we have now?

You like to use that box phrase, but you aren't thinking outside of the box at all, you are just crushing it in on one side and expanding the other to change the shape.

I'll just say that I think a game that has nothing but DPS and "attack" classes and no support classes would get boring as shit pretty quick.

[Wodin]

Same thing with actual skills. Taunting exists as a skill solely because of the everpresent hate table right? If there was no hate table would true tanks need to exist? The mob might use intelligent targeting -- hmm that guy in the funny hat is nuking me for 1k -- maybe I should eat him instead of this guy in tinfoil that is dinking me for 10 pips. Of course why the fuck mages have to wear cloth -- well that's Gary Gygax's fault and doesn't have to be that way.

Man, you realize that this kind of argument has been done over and over again. Designers explained why monsters don't use "intelligent" targeting - it's easy as hell to do, and if they did it would be the most unfun experience for the player ever, because you'd never win. Without those artificial constraints of things like threatlists, the "fun" breaks down very quickly.

And fucking Asheron's Call showed exactly why mages wearing plate was a bad idea.

[Draegan]

Wodin speaks the truth.