Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Fythis]

Originally Posted by kcxiv

Isnt that the truth. I went from a Necro in EQ for 6 years, to a tank in VG. You have to pay 100 percent attention. Its alot different. It took me a bit before i got adjusted to main tanking. Its definately fun and you have to be tons more alert. No more sitting in the back playing xbox while killing mobs.

Don't I know it... You kept on dotting my mezzes, you bastard!

[Tropics]

Originally Posted by Fythis

Don't I know it... You kept on dotting my mezzes, you bastard!

Correction, you kept mezzing the mobs he was about to DOT.

Angelico De'Monico
Necromancer
TZ

[random]

I don't know if these guys are actually advocating having a hardcore raider design your content. But having one as a consultant to explain tedium vs engaging. More important the balancing act to keep the mechanical complexity required to keep raiders engaged and not make them bland or boring.

Genjiro is right, wow is a pop culture creation. It just also houses a relatively innovative raiding environment. Is it perfect? lmao, no but it does offer the closest thing raiders are looking for(imo). Raiders are a different breed and we offer content someone can choose within a game when they get bored of simple grouping or questing. Whether it be casual or hardcore raiding has become a staple portion of mmo's to provide that next big challenge.
But when you've never been near the top or at it you don't know how things like class comp, group switching, REAL healing assignments or a thousand other little things play into the players experience. All these examples are geared towards wow and your game will have it's own mechanics and philosophies but the principle is the same. If your base mechanics are great for grouping or questing but will translate into some tedious or mundane when grouped with 15-30 of your closest ebuds well then this is where a lack of experience comes into play.Now substitute base mechanics in the previous sentence for any number of 100 things, ui,debuffs,reagent cost,death penalty, buff duration,trash timers etc...... Anyone of these things can hamper a raiders experience and in all cases there as simple things that could be implimented to ease the unnecessary burden on a raider and not effect the casual players experience. People who can see these pitfalls and warn you of them ahead of time would to me seem to be invaluable.
the real trick is doing all these things while keeping the gamer feeling like everything was not pre-planned for them.

[Agraza]

Originally Posted by kcxiv

Isnt that the truth. I went from a Necro in EQ for 6 years, to a tank in VG. You have to pay 100 percent attention. Its alot different. It took me a bit before i got adjusted to main tanking. Its definately fun and you have to be tons more alert. No more sitting in the back playing xbox while killing mobs.

I've been tanking now for 10 years, and I'm fucking tired of it. Designers refuse to make it fun and/or allow tanks to stack efficiently. It's a cornerstone of grouping and raiding, and it consistently gets no love. For the amount of work you have to put into being a tank you just don't get enough out of it. I'm playing an irresponsible ranged DPS these days and I love it. The only thing easier is botting a cleric for CH.

I mean, I would barely even look at the screen and still rank 1st or 2nd in my group's DPS, top 5 in my raid's. This experience has only driven home the idea that ranged dps are retards worthy of pity, and that their role needs to be re-worked so that the good dps takes more skill to obtain.

[kcxiv]

Originally Posted by Tropics

Correction, you kept mezzing the mobs he was about to DOT.

Angelico De'Monico
Necromancer
TZ

haha, necro back up. Nice. Plus internets for that.

[Antoine]

Originally Posted by Agraza

I've been tanking now for 10 years, and I'm fucking tired of it. Designers refuse to make it fun and/or allow tanks to stack efficiently. It's a cornerstone of grouping and raiding, and it consistently gets no love. For the amount of work you have to put into being a tank you just don't get enough out of it. I'm playing an irresponsible ranged DPS these days and I love it. The only thing easier is botting a cleric for CH.

I mean, I would barely even look at the screen and still rank 1st or 2nd in my group's DPS, top 5 in my raid's. This experience has only driven home the idea that ranged dps are retards worthy of pity, and that their role needs to be re-worked so that the good dps takes more skill to obtain.

That's funny, it's my feral druid that seems brainless compared to my shadow priest and lock back when he was affliction. Destro is another matter but nobody actually wants to be destro, we're all forced into it.

[Agraza]

Tanking = Warriors in WoW. The pretenders are less intense.

[TwiNCannoN]

I don't think you really need to be very experienced to make "good" (and I think a lot of people are here are defining "good" as "difficult") raid content. The balancing of it would be pretty boring I imagine, just statistics.

In fact, I think being an experienced raider may even hinder you creatively when trying to think outside the box. Look at AoC's poor excuse for raid content, it's all either tank and spank or WoW clone crap and none of it attempts to utilize any of the unique game mechanics the game offers. In fact they've been ruining it by introducing things like Crouch (ignores collision models) and nerfing active blocking.

[Tropics]

So, I cannot read back 258 pages of thread but any word on the direction 38 Studios is thinking about going on graphics?

Do you shoot for as realistic looking character models like EQ2 and AOC did, with huge numbers of modifications to create a unique avatar? Or do you go with WOW's approach of more cartoonish character models with less personalization?

Do you aim to create a world that looks exactly like a real world as much as graphics can push it atm ala EQ2 and AOC? Or do you take the WOW approach and make the world much like the characters with a little less realism?

Personally, the biggest concern for me is that after playing AOC I cannot say all that realism did anything at all for me other then vastly lower my frame rate. The characters for all the slight modifications look exactly the same when you throw a hat and some armor on, the only thing that stood out on my character was the facial tatoo. Seems a waste to create such a finite character creation stage with respect to the looks as EQ2 and AOC did and that WOW kept it simple and it worked.

The world in AOC definately looks more realistic, the water is simply amazing in that game. And yet I have to say when you take into account not only the graphics but the actual architecture of the world WOW demolished AOC. They simply created more character in their zones and more areas of interest that really stood out. Such as the giant dam, huge waterfalls comming down from Felwood, the ruined temples in STV, ect.... WOW's world was just chock full of cool places to see and explore. Not to mention the less linear travel ability in WOW, the forced linear travel of AOC is a BIG fail. At the end of the day the pretty graphics of AOC is wasted on me because there was very little I ever saw in the game that I found interesting or impressive.

Aquillonia or whatever that city was called certainly had better graphics, but the architecture of the city paled in comparison to the cities of WOW. A WOW designed city with the graphics of AOC? That would be something to see.

But if you have to choose one or the other the graphics are secondary to good world and character design in a game for me. WOW impressed me when I went to certain areas of the game. Heck, there are places in EQ1 to this day that impress me alot more then anything I saw in AOC, most of Kunark and the massive Iksar statues for example, now THAT expansion had character and great world design.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by TwiNCannoN

I don't think you really need to be very experienced to make "good" (and I think a lot of people are here are defining "good" as "difficult") raid content. The balancing of it would be pretty boring I imagine, just statistics.

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[Grave]

Originally Posted by Tropics

So, I cannot read back 258 pages of thread but any word on the direction 38 Studios is thinking about going on graphics?

I don't think any solid information on this has been released.

Personally, I'm hoping the style falls somewhere in-between WoW stylistic graphics and more realistic. I don't want them to push system specs like AoC and Vanguard, but I also don't want the game to be overly cartoony.

Luckily, the work that I've seen from some of the artists they've hired is very good and I think the art style may end up falling exactly where I've hoped.

One of the best examples is this rendering of an orc by Brian Jones. He basically took the WoW grunt and redid it in his own style, which is far, far cooler than the WoW version. I've also attached one of his works in progress of a dwarf which I think also shows off his style.

As you can see, it's a bit more "serious" looking than Warcraft, but still looks like it could be done with relatively low polys.

[Tropics]

Originally Posted by Grave

Personally, I'm hoping the style falls somewhere in-between WoW stylistic graphics and more realistic. I don't want them to push system specs like AoC and Vanguard, but I also don't want the game to be overly cartoony.

That sounds just about perfect to me as well. I find the games that try to go for ridiculously detailed and realistic graphics tend to have fairly bland overall worlds because it is so much more work to add alot of intriguing content at that level of detail now. It is a pandoras box better left closed. Would not mind seeing the armor become a little "thinner" and more form fitting, the giant shoulderpads in WOW are a wee bit over the top.

[Fammaden]

Originally Posted by Agraza

Tanking = Warriors in WoW. The pretenders are less intense.

I thought warriors just mashed a certain macro or two over and over and sleepwalked through the job?

And WTF, Curt's guild has 2800 members? Big thread, don't know if that was brought up before. Just went to armory after looking at the sig. That's a pretty insane amount of people, even factoring in alts.

[Draegan]

Noob zerg guilds.

[James]

Originally Posted by Fammaden

I thought warriors just mashed a certain macro or two over and over and sleepwalked through the job?

Yeah you thought wrong. Way, way wrong. That's like thinking the Pope is Gay kind of wrong.