Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Or, and I think this is the case, they for some reason made a design decision wherein new spell names were thought to be the 'least desirable' of the outcomes?

Yep. It's called simplicity vs. a completely pointless RP feature.

[Azrayne]

I think the biggest thing with obtaining skills isn't so much picking one particular route as it is putting some variety into it.

In my ideal system you would have class hubs with trainers and so forth, which you can access (a mage tower for mages, a rogues den, necromancer coven, warriors training centre, etc). From here you can purchase your basic skills. You can also access a resource (it can be a trainer, a library, whatever) which will guide you in your quest for greater power. So once I hit a certain level I might find out that there is a tribe of monsters living in a certain zone who's casters have the ability to conjure powerful elementals. So I can go to their zone, do a nice quest chain for them (preferably relevant to them teaching me the spell, and not just a random quest with it tacked onto the end), and they teach me how to summon elementals.

Or the trainer/library/whatever can tell me there's a rumour that a powerful boss in a certain dungeon who's spent his lifetime researching teleportation. So I go to this dungeon and as I'm there I come across pages from one of his books, drop off mobs, find them on the ground, whatever. Once I have all 10 pages or whatever I combine them together into a tome that I can use to learn how to teleport.

They don't need to be as complex, don't need a 2 hour quest chain for every new AoE or nuke. Some of them can just be one off drops, or require me to search out a trainer in an obscure location, or world drops, or crafted. The idea is to add some more immersion to character progression, stimulate the ingame economy, create a setup of class specific content and encourage players to explore out into different parts of the gameworld. While simultaneously through the trainer/class hub giving players the information they need to seek out their new skills so they don't have to resort to resource websites.

It also helps differentiate between characters and increase replayability, since each class will have it's own set of quest chains for it's new major abilities as class specific content. Great for the roleplayers.

I think there's just a lot of untapped potential when it comes to obtaining skills. I think the genre took a huge step back when we went from EQ's scrolls to WoW's trainers. Trainers kill a huge amount of class identity and sense of progression, going up to an interchangeable NPC, clicking a button, losing some gold and gaining a skill is so boring, it feels like a bit of a cop out.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Not having a class quest since 40 is ridiculous. I'm saddened by the fact that a touted feature has been so readily abandoned.

[Caliane]

Originally Posted by FoghornDeadhorn

Yep. It's called simplicity vs. a completely pointless RP feature.

Yeah, I'm going to have to agree.

Fireball 1-15 is lame. But its also really easy to understand, as well as keep track of upgrades.
If theres only 3-4 versions sure you could get away with Fire, Fira, Firaga, or Blaze, Blazemore, Blazemost.

One of the weaknesses of a War constant upgrade is each level is minor, and easy to overlook.

[Ninen]

Originally Posted by Ukerric

EQ's 8 spell limit was an attempt to reproduce the basic of AD&D spellcasting where you memorise spells. The original didn't work well in a MMO setup who is faster paced than a pen-n-paper campaign where you can refresh spells between most encounters, so the limited slot+mana bar was an attempt to reproduce the dynamic.

Which is made humorous with the mmo-like direction spell/skill use has taken in AD&D 4.0. Once per attack/fight/day very closely mimics your mmo spell cooldowns. No combat ability flat out fails, they simply don't work as well if you flub your roll.

I'm sure this is a much more lucrative direction to move, as has been time tested by the likes of Blizzard. At least since its a pen and paper game, if this level of pussification isn't your thing, you can still play an older edition.

[Azrayne]

Speaking as someone whos sole experience with D&D is through the RPG adaptions (BG & IWD series, PS:T, ToEE, Pools of Radiance, etc) I always found the memorization system incredibly asinine. The whole idea of having to memories a set quantity of spells every day always seemed really bizarre from a lore point of view and cumbersome from a gameplay point of view. Maybe there's something about tabletop RPGing that makes it work really well in that context, but I never understood it personally.

[Ninen]

The idea was that, out of the 3000 possible spell options you *could* have, multiplied by the number of times your stats/level let you cast them a day; you had to make hard choices and/or accept limitations.

Do you waste one of your precious spells for the day on something which may or may not be useful (a very specific damage type, or a limited utility spell). Like say some form of water breathing. If your adventure is set on a ship or in a sunken temple, its a no brainer. But what if you're just on the coast? Underground? etc.

There was also the whole Husbanding spell use mechanic. Is this fight big enough/important enough/late in the day enough for me to blow *everything* on it?

Sometimes you guess wrong and drown or end up poking things for 1d4-3 damage. And it sucks, but it was all about choices *you* made, and living with the consequences.

And sometimes, glorious times, that one wasted spell slot on something goofy and stupid gets you out of jail and single handedly saves the adventure.

It all comes back to: Does your fun come in pure, undiluted strength, such that you become addicted to it and *that* level becomes the baseline of Blah; requiring ever higher amounts of excess to get your rocks off? Or do you take the whole experience, good times AND bad times, and perhaps Earn your fun?

Hint: while damn near every human WANTS option 1, very few of us are wired such to not be effected by the stated drawbacks.

[Grave]

Originally Posted by Azrayne

I think the biggest thing with obtaining skills isn't so much picking one particular route as it is putting some variety into it.

In my ideal system you would have class hubs with trainers and so forth, which you can access (a mage tower for mages, a rogues den, necromancer coven, warriors training centre, etc). From here you can purchase your basic skills. You can also access a resource (it can be a trainer, a library, whatever) which will guide you in your quest for greater power. So once I hit a certain level I might find out that there is a tribe of monsters living in a certain zone who's casters have the ability to conjure powerful elementals. So I can go to their zone, do a nice quest chain for them (preferably relevant to them teaching me the spell, and not just a random quest with it tacked onto the end), and they teach me how to summon elementals.

Or the trainer/library/whatever can tell me there's a rumour that a powerful boss in a certain dungeon who's spent his lifetime researching teleportation. So I go to this dungeon and as I'm there I come across pages from one of his books, drop off mobs, find them on the ground, whatever. Once I have all 10 pages or whatever I combine them together into a tome that I can use to learn how to teleport.

They don't need to be as complex, don't need a 2 hour quest chain for every new AoE or nuke. Some of them can just be one off drops, or require me to search out a trainer in an obscure location, or world drops, or crafted. The idea is to add some more immersion to character progression, stimulate the ingame economy, create a setup of class specific content and encourage players to explore out into different parts of the gameworld. While simultaneously through the trainer/class hub giving players the information they need to seek out their new skills so they don't have to resort to resource websites.

It also helps differentiate between characters and increase replayability, since each class will have it's own set of quest chains for it's new major abilities as class specific content. Great for the roleplayers.

I think there's just a lot of untapped potential when it comes to obtaining skills. I think the genre took a huge step back when we went from EQ's scrolls to WoW's trainers. Trainers kill a huge amount of class identity and sense of progression, going up to an interchangeable NPC, clicking a button, losing some gold and gaining a skill is so boring, it feels like a bit of a cop out.

This would be great. It would add a definite feeling of meaning to the quests you are doing, rather than just grinding out stuff for exp.

And I agree, just going to a trainer and throwing some gold at them is kind of lame all things considered.

[Slayder]

Originally Posted by Northerner

As another aside, I don't know what asshat (ok, I do but I willl still be a dick about it) went with the Fireball1 through Fireball15 or whatever system but I shit you not, when I saw that in beta I actually assumed it was just for beta.

Give new spell/ability ranks fucking names. To do otherwise is not only lazy but seriously missing an easy obfuscation opportunity. Your mouth-breathers will always just use *new spell* and you can have that 5-10% love for those that figure out a rain beats a lure or whatever it might be. More imprtantly though, the grind hides better when it isn't all just bullshit abilty.v.x stuff.

I agree. On Day 1 of WoW this really turned me off. I have since come to terms with it, knowing that WoW is far from an RP-based game. The truth is, 90% of WoW players could probably give a shit less what their spells are called, as long as it produces the required level of 'pew pew'.

That being said, I suppose it just depends on the context of the game. A spell ranking system of 1-15 like WoWs would have been shoddy in an RP-heavy game.

If your game concerns itself with immersion (which WoW clearly dosen't) then having auxiliary RP features such as creatively named (and obtained) spells, abilities, and to some extent items only improves that goal. I always liked the RP direction, so my hope is that the 38S project has emphasis on it. Don't get me wrong, I love WoW, but "Jaina's Immolating Blast" as an alternate name for Fireball Rank 3 wouldn't make much sense with the WoW approach.

[Quince]

One thing that I really liked about Vanguard playing Psionicist was the idea of Gasalts. What they basically were is a big rock stuck in the ground with a magic rune on it and when you clicked on it, you would get a certain spell if you met the level requirements.

What I really liked about it was they scattered them all over the world and you had to travel and quest to find out the locations of them.

If you were lazy you could just skip them as they weren't class defining skills but "extra" skills that did something a little different or maybe had a minor effect but if you took the time to find them all and get them all, you were better prepared, and thus more desirable, in a group.

I also remember play testing EQOA (Everquest online adventure) for the PS2 and one thing I liked about that game too was certain quest rewards were spells. I think it was a class quest around level 8 or so that got my mage root and I remember thinking how cool that was.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Originally Posted by Slayder

I agree. On Day 1 of WoW this really turned me off. I have since come to terms with it, knowing that WoW is far from an RP-based game. The truth is, 90% of WoW players could probably give a shit less what their spells are called, as long as it produces the required level of 'pew pew'.

That being said, I suppose it just depends on the context of the game. A spell ranking system of 1-15 like WoWs would have been shoddy in an RP-heavy game.

If your game concerns itself with immersion (which WoW clearly dosen't) then having auxiliary RP features such as creatively named (and obtained) spells, abilities, and to some extent items only improves that goal. I always liked the RP direction, so my hope is that the 38S project has emphasis on it. Don't get me wrong, I love WoW, but "Jaina's Immolating Blast" as an alternate name for Fireball Rank 3 wouldn't make much sense with the WoW approach.

I can tell you what the point of not having each rank be named is. Can you tell me what the separate names is? What it adds to the game?

A better approach, by the way, would be to learn from Blizzard about ranks of spells (rather than going through all of that shit again) and just have the same spell with class quests to make it more powerful. Best of both worlds.

[Froofy-D]

Well WAR has produced a few things that will be standard in future MMOs. I assume 38 is looking at them:

- public quests and PVP quests
- much better instanced PVP scenarios than WoW (and yes some bad ones)
- public groups/warbands that auto-advertise when you enter an area
- no mana (mana has gone the way of health packs in FPS)
- all classes on a refilling Action Point system (basically all are on the WoW Rogue system)
- Tactics
- Morales

WoW and WAR unbelievably still do not have a decent LFG interface. Still nothing I have seen compares to the EQ1/2 LFG LFG interface. Not sure how that could happen, when getting people together quickly and easily should be your primary job in designing an MMO.

Some things I'd like to see in the perfect combat system. IMHO these would all make balancing way easier.

- uniform stat contribution for all classes (i.e. all classes get X points of Dodge per Y points of Agility, no special exceptions). Applies to everything, Dodge, Hit, Crit, Resists, HPs, etc.

- uniform mechanics for base ability damage, with no difference between caster/melee. You can do that two ways: (1) main hand (wand, sword, whatever) determines base damage of ability for all classes, or (2) ability base damage is fixed, main hand only affects auto-attack (like in WAR).

- a % based resist system for all effects and damage. For example, your resist roll vs. a slow would reduce the slow by 50%. Resist roll vs. a stun would reduce the duration by 50%. 100% resists would be rare and so would 0%.

- Either all classes suffer push back or none of them do.

- No "in-combat" or "out-of-combat".

- No such thing as "procs only X times per Y seconds".

- Either all classes get auto attack, or none of them do. For casters Wand / Staff would be auto-ranged attack.

- All derived stats are vs. same level opponent. Crit, hit, resists, etc...

Some other stuff:

- very,very restricted use of the following: "class only" gear, level limit gear, BOE, BOP. Should be reserved for only the most epic items in the game, or where lore dictates.

- Damage/Healing meters built into the client.

[Froofy-D]

double post

[Daezuel]

Who gives a shit about what the spells name is? What I was disappointed with in WoW's system was more that rank one fireball looked the same as rank thirteen. That's the big deal, I initially rolled a mage in WoW thinking I'd like get to level 60 and see all the cool spell effects in the game. LOL FLAMESTRIKE.

Yeah, I don't care about names, but I do think spells should LOOK more powerful as you rank up with more impressive spell effects to make you feel more powerful. It's all about the "wow that was badass" carrot on the stick imo. (as far as the whole progression of spells/abilities go, I care far more for balance and "fun" than any of that shit)

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Originally Posted by Daezuel

Who gives a shit about what the spells name is? What I was disappointed with in WoW's system was more that rank one fireball looked the same as rank thirteen. That's the big deal, I initially rolled a mage in WoW thinking I'd like get to level 60 and see all the cool spell effects in the game. LOL FLAMESTRIKE.

Yeah, I don't care about names, but I do think spells should LOOK more powerful as you rank up with more impressive spell effects to make you feel more powerful. It's all about the "wow that was badass" carrot on the stick imo. (as far as the whole progression of spells/abilities go, I care far more for balance and "fun" than any of that shit)

Could be worse. You could be a pet class or Druid.