Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[nu_11]

Originally Posted by Quince

Oh and while we are on the subject of content and expansions bigger is not always better. I would rather have a smaller area with tons of content then a large open world like Vanguard. Sure it looks realistic and what not but riding a horse forever to get to the next grinding spot is no good

Grinding, period, is no good.

I don't know if it can be solved, but I hope folks at 38S have a way to soften/hide the blow.

[Rythonn]

Originally Posted by gnomad

So since you seem to be a business expert, just how much NET do you think Blizz is actually making per month lets say?

They probably have a building full of a gold like Scrooge Mcduck, and spend their lunch hour swimming in it.

[spronk]

Originally Posted by gnomad

So since you seem to be a business expert, just how much NET do you think Blizz is actually making per month lets say?

Bet it is way less then you think with overhead and other business expenses. Also since you are so experienced in writing MMORPG's just how much does it cost to make an expansion?

No clue?? Well I'll be damned, never would have guessed.

They have reported financials (public company after all) previously and it was around $500 million a year in profit in 2007.

~5 million US/EU subs x $15 = $75m/mo or $900m a year, they have another $40-50m in box sales, plus some revenue from Asia, so easily topping $1 billion a year in revenue. 50% net margins on that sounds about right.

Add that up over the years WoW has been in business (ramped up, since they didn't start with 5m subs) and its easy to see why everyone says WoW is the most profitable game in history.

btw activision/blizzard reports earnings for latest quarter tomorrow afaik, first time as a combined company.

[Lourdin]

Originally Posted by nu_11

Grinding, period, is no good.

I don't know if it can be solved, but I hope folks at 38S have a way to soften/hide the blow.

Actually, if the lastest EQ2 exp. taught anyone anything is that some people actually prefer to have grinding as an option to questing for leveling. EQ2's only valid means of progression in the latest expansion was questing and after a while is became it's own form of grind. Some potentially great zones like KC, a dungeon, were empty because there were only 5 quest in there and the exp per kill was useless.

Sometimes logging in and just mindlessly wacking the crap out of things is not a bad thing.

[Quince]

Exactly. Just because it is a quest, it doesn't mean that going here for this or killing this many mobs is overall better.

What I would like is a healthy mix of them all. Sure you can do runner quests for exp, do a really long drawn out quest for more exp and a better item, or just pop yourself in Tim Deep and quad kite the hell out of the raptors with your "Click Stick" and BoF

Good god I really aged myself with that comment

[nu_11]

Originally Posted by Lourdin

Actually, if the lastest EQ2 exp. taught anyone anything is that some people actually prefer to have grinding as an option to questing for leveling. EQ2's only valid means of progression in the latest expansion was questing and after a while is became it's own form of grind. Some potentially great zones like KC, a dungeon, were empty because there were only 5 quest in there and the exp per kill was useless.

Sometimes logging in and just mindlessly wacking the crap out of things is not a bad thing.

Actually, I don't believe a large amount of people enjoy grinding. To achieve a better success than WoW, something will need to be done.

Grinders can find skip quests or any other mechanism that may be put up at their leisure for all I care. Grinding doesn't have to be bad exp as well (AoE classes).

[Zehn - Vhex]

Experience points needs to go away anyways. Another outdated mechanic. Quests are valued only because they grant significant experience over other alternatives so people find the highest xp-to-quest-time-ratio.

If you used EQ's AA's, WoW's talents, LOTRo's virtues and new/spells abilities as the reward for completing quests you'd see a whole new outlook. Suddenly that quest that takes 30 minutes is no longer pointless bullshit because it's the same XP as a quest that takes 2 minutes.

Nothing to say you can't have achievements or whatever that aren't geared towards just logging on and whacking mobs either. You could have entire series of 'mob slayer' achievements or whatever. Kill 50 goblins, get +2% damage to goblinkin. Kill 200 goblins, critical hits that do more then 30% of a goblins life in one hit now cause them to cower in fear for 3 seconds. Kill 500 goblins you gain the goblinslayer title. Do similar shit for all sorts of creature types.

Anyways...

Ultimately makes more sense to me then, "Hey, I just killed 1000 rabid raccoons, ding!"

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Experience points needs to go away anyways. Another outdated mechanic. Quests are valued only because they grant significant experience over other alternatives so people find the highest xp-to-quest-time-ratio.

Anyone else feel that quest rewards should mainly be about the time investment the quest requires? If I get a fedex that has me running from Desolace to Stonard it sure as heck better not be 1100 xp because that's what fedex quests are worth.

I have felt at times that rewards were horribly done or unoriginal in implementation because it felt to me like someone slapped value X on a specific quest type and all of those type quests got me the same reward. No matter that one of them took 4 hours and the other 7 minutes.

[rangoth]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Anyone else feel that quest rewards should mainly be about the time investment the quest requires? If I get a fedex that has me running from Desolace to Stonard it sure as heck better not be 1100 xp because that's what fedex quests are worth.

I have felt at times that rewards were horribly done or unoriginal in implementation because it felt to me like someone slapped value X on a specific quest type and all of those type quests got me the same reward. No matter that one of them took 4 hours and the other 7 minutes.

I'm actually with Zehn on this one...

Quests should be about something. Access to an area, getting a new spell from your master at the city, learning a secret to kill goblins(+2% dmg to goblins or whatever), being sent to a new area which then allows you to travel there via whatever speed system is in place.

I dont mind grinding as much as some do on these boards, but I prefer to level in groups doing instances or whatever as opposed to using QuestHelper(wow addon that sets up routes for most efficent questing) and just mindless running around and/or killing shit.

I think one problem with rewarding "long" quests with more xp than "short quests" is that people will always find a loop hole, always. I don't care how you build the system, count on it. So eventually you have alts being ported around, or whatever the case may be doing the long quest in 1/4 of the time but getting all the xp. New fastest path to max leaving normal, regular players in the dust.

As said before, and evidenced in every game ever released people will always find and take the path to least resistence(in general, yes there are many players who just enjoy whatever natural path the game lays out....like the 8 million new players to wow). And I am of the firm opinion that making all quests fun is impossible.

[Mymn]

Im a fan of grinding xp, to me its the best social aspect of MMO's. Hours spent grinding decent xp, getting the occasional named to spawn for loot and bullshitting the night away with friends or making new ones was the greatest draw for me in EQ.

The way things went with WoW et al and the quest for xp thing drove me nuts and drove me away from those games. Form group, decide on a quest to do, 30 minutes later and one or more folks disband without a word. Glad I could help on that quest fella! Completely anti-social behavior in those game, for me.

[Grave]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Anyone else feel that quest rewards should mainly be about the time investment the quest requires? If I get a fedex that has me running from Desolace to Stonard it sure as heck better not be 1100 xp because that's what fedex quests are worth.

I have felt at times that rewards were horribly done or unoriginal in implementation because it felt to me like someone slapped value X on a specific quest type and all of those type quests got me the same reward. No matter that one of them took 4 hours and the other 7 minutes.

I definitely agree. I've been leveling a new character on WoW lately and, since it's something that interests me, I've been paying a little more attention to the design of certain areas, quests, and compensation. In particular, the items awarded for nearly all low- to mid-level quests are absolutely terrible and not worth the time. Then there are the quests like you mentioned where they take far longer than other quests with similar objectives, yet give the same amount of experience.

Anyway, I don't have a problem with experience points. I find it satisfying to level. My issue is with the way quests are currently done in a very back and forth fashion. You do one quest and turn it in, that gets you another one, so on and so forth.

I'd rather see quest chains involve the player a little more. By that I mean, say you're given a quest to explore the inside of a cave and see what might be disturbing the animals of the forest outside it. Rather than stepping a few feet inside, getting your quest completion dialogue, and then running back to the NPC, why can't you just analyze the situation yourself and act? Quests with multiple stages should just update for you, rather than requiring further interaction with the NPC (except in cases where it makes sense from a story standpoint). Each stage could grant exp so you feel rewarded as you go along.

Using the same example: You go into the cave and complete the first objective when you see some zombies ambling around inside. You recognize that they are wearing tattered clothing similar to that of the villagers nearby. This auto-completes your "see what is disturbing the animals" quest, as well as one you got earlier in the village to "seek out the missing villagers". Rather than turning back though, you get two new quests immediately that tell you to seek out the source of the zombies and look for any live captives. You go on and eventually find a tribe of hex-weaving goblins and a witchdoctor are behind the whole mess, and your quest updates telling you to slay X amount of them and the witchdoctor himself. So you've been getting exp the entire time from completing the different objectives, and then you finally go back and inform the original questgivers of the result and get more exp + item rewards. Sounds a lot more fun to me.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Mymn

for me.

It's definitely a your mileage may vary thing. Don't get me wrong. I did the marathon xp camps with friends in EQ as well. The thing is I was having fun with my friends. We could have been playing Starcraft, Counterstrike or just hanging out in IRC. All EQ did was offer me a button to hit while I waited for people to reply to me.

It's like looking at porn while talking to friends on AIM honestly.

Anyways...

As far as grouping goes, one thing I've seen a lot of is that developers are designing grouping as something to do besides soloing. The content is almost without fail seperated.

I don't like this.

What I'd like to see is...well it's hard to put in words. But I think we all know the concept. For exampe when doing quests, if you group with someone and that someone completes a quest you helped them with, you should get some kind of bonus. Whether it's a faction boost or a temporary buff or, shit, while we're on the subject, "Momma's little helper" achivement where if you help other people complete 1000 quests you get some bonus, like 5% bonus faction earned or whatever. You get the idea.

Grouping should be an alternate means of accomplishing the same shit, but only you get a bonus on top of it.

I guess one way to explain this is like early WoW after the raid-quest nerf. You could still raid dungeons, but you couldn't complete the quest. So while you could get the loot by being in a raid, you didn't get quest completes. I'd like to see something similar.

So while you can flip a switch and spawn a solo/duo version of a dungeon, completing it in the normal group mode gives you more. Quests may require that you complete the group version or achivements may require group completions.

Well, I like to think that made sense. The game shouldn't be 50% solo content, 50% group content. It should be 100% solo content but you get more for doing it in a group.

[Maleficence]

Now that we're on the topic of quests, please make it so that quests are completed when you do the objectives, even if you weren't on the damn quest. I absolutely loathe having to go kill Big Orc Boss mob again, because I wasn't on the damn quest.

"What do you mean, kill Big Orc Boss? I already killed him like 5 minutes ago!"

Same with the stupid kill 100 rabid raccoon quests. If I've already killed 100 rabid raccoons, why should I go kill another 100?

[Grave]

Originally Posted by Maleficence

Now that we're on the topic of quests, please make it so that quests are completed when you do the objectives, even if you weren't on the damn quest. I absolutely loathe having to go kill Big Orc Boss mob again, because I wasn't on the damn quest.

"What do you mean, kill Big Orc Boss? I already killed him like 5 minutes ago!"

I agree with this in some cases, but it depends on what kind of story needs to be told. But, yeah, there's no reason you couldn't loot his head even if you weren't on the quest and get some small dialogue saying "Someone in town may be interested in seeing this." You take it to the Captain of the Guard who mentions the trouble with the orc leader and his goons, and you're like "Oh? This orc leader?" as you hold up his head.

Of course, on the flipside it could prevent the player from experiencing the quest storyline the way it was meant to be told. For example, if there happened to be 2 or 3 quests leading up to taking out the orc leader, you'd have missed out on those. It would be difficult for the developers to make that work right.

I do get what you're saying though, it's a bummer when you want to help someone you met with their quest and then later you realize you have to do it again for yourself because you didn't have the quest yet.

[Rako]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Experience points needs to go away anyways. Another outdated mechanic. Quests are valued only because they grant significant experience over other alternatives so people find the highest xp-to-quest-time-ratio.

If you used EQ's AA's, WoW's talents, LOTRo's virtues and new/spells abilities as the reward for completing quests you'd see a whole new outlook. Suddenly that quest that takes 30 minutes is no longer pointless bullshit because it's the same XP as a quest that takes 2 minutes.

Nothing to say you can't have achievements or whatever that aren't geared towards just logging on and whacking mobs either. You could have entire series of 'mob slayer' achievements or whatever. Kill 50 goblins, get +2% damage to goblinkin. Kill 200 goblins, critical hits that do more then 30% of a goblins life in one hit now cause them to cower in fear for 3 seconds. Kill 500 goblins you gain the goblinslayer title. Do similar shit for all sorts of creature types.

Anyways...

Ultimately makes more sense to me then, "Hey, I just killed 1000 rabid raccoons, ding!"

I agree completely. A lot fewer quests, with a lot better and more interesting rewards would be awesome. In WOW you go to town and talk to everyone to pick up 11 quests as fast as you can without reading them or even caring about them. WoW is just so dull like that.

I would rather I spend my time every night doing 1 or 2 long quests that immerse you and when you finally finish it is more than worth it as you will be showered with XP, Loot, Access to area, and anything else that makes sense.