Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Zehn - Vhex]

Well, ideally you'd have every spell and it's various path upgrades come via class specific quests. That way when you do go with the job system, each new job does have new stuff to do.

Of course, keep in mind I advocate the abandoning of the traditional "Kill 300 boars, ding, grats 13!" method of character advancement and instead think all character advancement should be achievement/quest based.

I don't mind the spell being called "Fireball." And replacing "Fireball" with "Shanty's Big Flaming Hurled Thingy" doesn't really shiver me timbers in a different manner at all really.

I mean, for your flavor spells, sure why not. But let's be honest, do you really need to come up with a new name for Disintegrate? It's badass enough as is. The only time it should get a new name is when it's a new spell, not an upgrade to an old one. Shitty real life analogies are shitty but I don't rename it "Zehn's stupdendous physics defying whackout" when I learned how to throw a better curve ball.

In the end, I think your players would appreciate slaying the arch-wizard who trained you as a child in your power-hungry mad search for the secrets he held on unlocking the ability to have your ice bolt ability also snare the target at the behest of your new master then killing 500 bear's and turning in the collect bear asses quest and going to a trainer, paying 5 silver and going, "GRATS I AM NOW SMERT +1"

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by FoghornDeadhorn

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

Oh yeah, Curt. Heart to heart on this one. Please for the love of god listen to the EQ necromancer and WoW druid community from the past 10 goddamn years. Should you have a class with a spell that changes what they look like and it's an ability that is typically permanantly up...slap yourself for being a dick.

Nobody likes that shit past the first hour. I was sick to death by the first day that my necro -always- looked the same no matter what I had. Druids are sick to death of the same shit.

As part of the spell casting graphic? Sure, why not. But for the love of god, do not be that guy.

[Daezuel]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Oh yeah, Curt. Heart to heart on this one. Please for the love of god listen to the EQ necromancer and WoW druid community from the past 10 goddamn years. Should you have a class with a spell that changes what they look like and it's an ability that is typically permanantly up...slap yourself for being a dick.

Nobody likes that shit past the first hour. I was sick to death by the first day that my necro -always- looked the same no matter what I had. Druids are sick to death of the same shit.

As part of the spell casting graphic? Sure, why not. But for the love of god, do not be that guy.

I don't think it would be all the bad if all the forms didn't look like total ass...if there is one thing wow really needs to do (ok outside of make pvp not suck) it's improve character graphics. They are just bad.

[Zehn - Vhex]

No, it's bad. It sucks to get a new badass shiny whatever and then..oops nobody cares. Now back to looking exactly the same as every other fucking necromancer. Yay!

[Lumie]

What I don't get is why nobody can do the intelligence/wisdom stats correctly and well most stats in general. This is more important then most designers seem to think since really the game is mostly about your stats and how they affect your ability within the game world. Theres lots of ways that stats could be made more interesting.

In fact the only game that's done it pretty well is Meridian 59

Skill caps and skill increases and amount of skills that can be learned should be directly based on intelligence. For instance an ogre warrior in EQ1 should not be able to have the same skill caps as say a human warrior with equal gear. This would also apply to general skills like swimming, bind wound etc so that sure while an ogre warrior might be stronger and have more health, but the human will be a bit more versatile by having improved stat caps and more versatility with offensive/defensive skills that the ogre couldn't learn.

There should also be a pool of skills/abilities available to you that you can only learn a limited amount of but the more intelligence you have, the more abilities you can learn. This is how AA's/disc's should have been done in EQ. Instead of being able to obtain say every discipline and every AA, you should have been forced to make decisions between certain ones which adds much needed diversity.

[Tonic]

Was anyone else a fan of the way DAoC handled the instanced PvP while leveling up? Granted it was only so successful due to the smaller server sizes, but the idea could be expanded.

[Daezuel]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

No, it's bad. It sucks to get a new badass shiny whatever and then..oops nobody cares. Now back to looking exactly the same as every other fucking necromancer. Yay!

Well ok, but then if you had forms where gear actually made you LOOK different would it be cool?

[Caliane]

Originally Posted by Daezuel

Well ok, but then if you had forms where gear actually made you LOOK different would it be cool?

I didn't take the time to design my characters looks, and get all that gear, to to be stuck in a ridiculous tree, or moonkin all the time.
I was a druid. And I was not happy when moonkin and tree were introduced.

Looking badass is a huge part of mmos. It's very counterproductive considering how much emphasis people put on the looks of their character.

[Caliane]

Which I suppose also opens up the discussion of class gear, and any one set of gear being the absolute best.

Its just as lame when everyone in the game is all wearing the same set of gear because that one set is clearly better then everything else.

Competitive alternate gear/specs within a single class would be nice as well.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Lumie

What I don't get

Who the fuck let you out of FoH general. Get the fuck out.

Originally Posted by Daezuel

Well ok,

Eh, at that point it's a time-investment feasibility question. Dev's try to occam's razor shit. The shadow priest scenario is borderline as is. If nothing else, just add an interface switch/command line switch/different spell line that has the same effects minus the graphic (which is what Necro's in EQ were asking for. Lichform without the Lich), minor glyph, etc...

There might be some people that still enjoy the form look for whatever reason I suppose. I'll admit sometimes I did like turning into a skeleton. But I'd like to have been able to turn that shit off as well.

[Daezuel]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Eh, at that point it's a time-investment feasibility question. Dev's try to occam's razor shit. The shadow priest scenario is borderline as is. If nothing else, just add an interface switch/command line switch/different spell line that has the same effects minus the graphic (which is what Necro's in EQ were asking for. Lichform without the Lich), minor glyph, etc...

There might be some people that still enjoy the form look for whatever reason I suppose. I'll admit sometimes I did like turning into a skeleton. But I'd like to have been able to turn that shit off as well.

I get you, though time-investment wise I'd have to think a lot of it on Blizz's part is just laziness. They have more money than god to employ graphics artists. Yeah, treeform is pretty gay...maybe it'd be a lot cooler if you transformed into a tree to do your uber amazing top of the line spell or something and it only lasted 30 seconds or whatever.

I mean shit, we're wearing t3 again...son of a...I do kinda love what they did in EQ2 with appearance slots, that's an idea that needs to be copied. (though ok, in pvp it's nice knowing by sight what kinda gear someone is wearing at a glance) What needs to be done is a crafting/drop system where you can have crafters DESIGN gear with a system with the flexibility of COH's char creation system.

I'm actually quite surprised that hasn't been developed in an MMO yet, customization of your gear/avatar would be a HUGE draw imo.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Blizzard operates in a different time-space continuum however. 2 years for us is really only 3 months for them. That's why when we spend several months pointing out something is broken it still takes them about a year to fix it.

[Azrayne]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Oh yeah, Curt. Heart to heart on this one. Please for the love of god listen to the EQ necromancer and WoW druid community from the past 10 goddamn years. Should you have a class with a spell that changes what they look like and it's an ability that is typically permanantly up...slap yourself for being a dick.

Nobody likes that shit past the first hour. I was sick to death by the first day that my necro -always- looked the same no matter what I had. Druids are sick to death of the same shit.

As part of the spell casting graphic? Sure, why not. But for the love of god, do not be that guy.

This is the sole reason I've never been able to level a druid. Always wanted to play one, but the idea of being stuck in form almost the entire time I'm playing turns me off completely. Doesn't help that both tree form and moonkin look lame as hell.

[Slayder]

Originally Posted by FoghornDeadhorn

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.

The point in having creatively named spells/abilities adds immersion to your experience, as I said in my earlier post. In a game like EQ (moreso in the early days) I'd argue that having the players immersed in their world was more of a priority than implementing fun and interesting game mechanics. They wanted to take that high fantasy genre of Tolkien, Jordan, etc and give it the full 3D treatment.

That being said, having ultimately the same spell (i.e Fireball) that scales throughout your entire characters career is pretty anticlimactic in a RP sense. The point of the name is to reflect your character's rising power. The name (in addition to the added spell effects) made you feel that you were making strides with what your character could accomplish. It's adds something more interesting than going up to a trainer and training Frostbolt rank 11.

The problem with this is that, there are only so many synonyms. Once the game ages several years, it requires some stretched creativity at the least to think up an alternative to "Fireball." Hell, just go look up all the different names for a druid damage shield in EQ now. WoW saw that and knew it would be one less headache to have one spell and rank them to infinity. I can appreciate that, so you're probably right in the sense that you need to strike a healthy medium.

At the same time though, I think it depends on what you want your game to be. As a developer, do you want your players to be drawn into your world? To make it as palpably real as possible? If so, then the auxiliary details of the game need to compliment that. As I said before, Blizzard wasn't concerned with that, which is why many of it's aesthetics are more mechanical than immersive.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

I agree with a certain amount of what you say but I disagree on what made EQ or immersive or WoW non-immersive. While I think WoW has really jumped the shark in some ways regarding respect of its game world as a world rather than...whatever it is...it is the overall design that is at fault for its lack of immersiveness. The lack of consequences for death, lack of meaningful travel, etc. It also constantly breaks the fourth wall now which pisses me off to no small degree.

I disagree with Yahtzee at least once or twice in every review but I think his definition of "immersion" here is pretty spot-on:

The Escapist : Video Galleries : Zero Punctuation : Oblivion

And yes, the problem with having special snowflake names for spells is it isn't forward-looking. Fire/Fira/Firaga was great and all that but it was easy to figure out and tended to stop at the third iteration. MMOs aren't that finite. I also think it's pretty transparent when Spell B is just Spell A with more damages and mana costs. How about we just say 'fuck the whole thing' and actually make people quest for their ability upgrades? When did association with your class stop being meaningful? Why is it not OK for someone to do a quest chain to gain a level or unlock a tier of them?

ETC.