Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Slayder]

Well, I certainly don't think the names of spells, etc is the defining thing that made EQ and other games of that ilk immersive, but they are part of it. I also don't think the lack of creatively named spells/abilities makes your game non-immersive, I'm simply saying the existence of them is a small piece of adding to that immersion.

Take Ice Comet for example. I remember in the early days of EQ when the mere mention of Ice Comet made Wizzies wet themselves. Would Frostbolt rank 9 have done that? The world may never know...

I don't want to derail into a WoW vs. EQ discussion, because god knows there's been enough of that. But part of WoW's immersion-less qualities stem from it's art direction, death mechanics (as you say), and overall ease of access and travel times (or lackthereof).

Would EQ have been just as immersive if it had used the WoW spell model? Probably. Vice versa would probably also be true.

All I'm saying is that when your trying to create a rich, believable fantasy world, you add in those little details as much as possible. It may not make a difference to a lot of people, but for some it does.

[Cybsled]

The art direction in WoW is fine. EQ1 is a prime example of art direction gone wrong, IMO. You can still goto the old world zones in WoW, and things still look like they mesh with the rest of the gameworld. That, imo, is good art direction. WoW is subtly able to improve how the game looks, while at the sametime not changing how they look in relation to old assets. In EQ1, going back to the old world after a couple expansions was rather jarring in terms of how things looked...it was like seeing a Broadway play in the newer zones, then going back to the old haunts and it had all the realism of a 2nd grade school play. Especially when they began the model upgrades for players, yet left the 20 polygon gnolls running around still and the simple texture homes/trees.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Immersion is a bullshit term anyways since everyone has their own definition. I find WoW to much more immersive because of the things you claim impede it. Yay for arbitrariness!

I remember in the early days of EQ when the mere mention of Ice Comet made Wizzies wet themselves. Would Frostbolt rank 9 have done that?

Ice Comet made us wet our pants because it did 2x the damage of the previous damage spell and almost 5x the damage of the previous spell rank. If frostbolt rank 9 was a 5x damage up over frostbolt rank 8 sure as shit I would wet myself.

We ultimately end up acronyming it all anyways so it doesn't really matter.

If you want it to be more immersive, (which is a meainingless word to begin with but fuck it I'll roll with it), they need to work on how you get the spells. Not what the fuck you call it. You could name a spell "Mike Phelps mighty bong hit" but it wouldn't mean dick if all I do is go to a trainer and buy the spell after killing 300 antelope or whatever other retarded wildlife creature developers eventually start phoning it in with.

Edit:

Which brings me to another topic, one I've briefly covered before. ENOUGH WITH MUNDANE CREATURES. Go to the fucking store, get a DnD monster manual and start stealing shit. If I have to kill one more fucking wolf, bear, deer, cat, tiger, boar, giraffe or any other such creature I will begin to stab your staff, in real life.

There is no excuse. None. If you go, "But we have this cute series of quests where..."

No. Stop it right now. I don't give a shit if I'm level one and you want to express how weak I am where my first quest is to go kill garden snakes, I want you to go off yourself because the gaming community will be better off without you. You have made a terrible game decision and should be goddamn ashamed of yourself.

That's your homework assignment for Tuesday Curt. You go to your staff, you ask them "Hey, has anyone started implementing anything that involves killing wolves or boars or other boring shit like that?"

Then you come back here, the answer better be no or you need to go and slap some fools.

[Azrayne]

This man speaks the truth. There's no real reason to have gamers wandering around slaughtering wildlife.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Wolves are only boring if poorly implemented.

Don't fuck with wolves.

[Cadrid]

Amen.

If I ever have to kill a_giant_rat or a_honey_badger in an MMORPG I'll fill said MMORPG's HQ with the rodent in question. In WoW, I started as a human warrior, and killing kobolds for newbie quests was infinitely more appealing than punching snakes and rats in the face as a monk in EQ; then I rolled a Druid and my time was wasted killing "rabid" bears and wolves in Darkshore, instead of quelling a gnoll armie in EQ's Blackburrow.

If you want to make a player feel like a hero you shouldn't look to the Orkin commercials for inspiration. Either use the mythology or come up with your own, but stop making snakes kick me to death outside of Qeynos' walls!

Originally Posted by FoghornDeadhorn

Wolves are only boring if poorly implemented.

So wolf t-shirts should be end-game loot?

[Slayder]

I agree with the animals comment. However, i've noticed it seems to bother me less if there's a variation of NPC models in the starting areas. I hate with theres only 2-3. But if you vary the encounters to where your not killing things 9x in a row, it never seemed as bad.

Also, along these same lines. I hate...hate...generic item names. Maybe I'm alone on this, because I seem to be alone on the spell-naming thing, but I really hate it when theres little or no creativity invovled in the creation of items/gear.

If I see anymore items named as if they were plugged into a RNG like Black Gloves of the Bear/Wolf/Eagle, etc in any future games I'm going to be sorely dissapointed. Items always seemed to mean more to me when they were somehow related with the mob that dropped them. But maybe that's the RP plug in me speaking.

[Pyros]

The wolf being boring when poorly implemented is exactly why wild life usually fails terribly. IF the AI could support interesting mechanics, you could have interesting wild life. Wild life that kills each other, hunt in packs(not group of mobs with social aggro, but real packs with mobs surrounding you and getting bigger hits in your back and retreating when low hp while snaring the shit of you) and stuff like that.

But you see wolves standing next to deers, and when you attack a wolf that's wandering around in some shitty woods, looking like he ate some shrooms and has no idea what going on and runs up to you then melees you even though he has not a chance of killing you, yeah it's retarded.

Might as well have a goblin, or whatever. The issue I guess is you can only create so many monsters, and while there's a fuck ton of possible monsters, you then run into immersion issues if you use a too wide selection, for example greek/norse/egyptian mythology have tons of monsters, but they don't always fit right with your universe. You can make your own version of those mobs obviously, like blizzard did with Minotaurs. Nowadays you show a minotaur to random joe, and he'll say it's a tauren.


However the big advantage of using animals is pretty obvious. They're easy to make. You have tons of illustration, and you don't have to make sure they look "right", since you just copy the real thing. Making an imaginary monster look "right" can take more time. You can also use sounds from a premade bank and stuff like that. You know like the crocodile wow sound that's the same as the UO fizzle. Or UO crocodiles for that matter. They also somewhat add a "real" feeling to your woods and stuff, when there's wolves and bears. It looks retarded, but still fits because most people are used to the image. It's like armored bikinis. Stupid, but ultimately fits.

[Palum]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

That's your homework assignment for Tuesday Curt. You go to your staff, you ask them "Hey, has anyone started implementing anything that involves killing wolves or boars or other boring shit like that?"

Here's the thing: you can create interesting and interactive story regardless of mechanics. In WotLK, there are very deep quest lines whose mechanics are very shallow and they're worth it for the lore alone if you're a fan. The question is how do you make content that engages the player in such a way that they're actually playing a *gasp* RPG in the day of database sites and rampant spoilers.

Many devs have gotten lazy and given up trying to one-up the dataminers and include all information inside the game. Look at WAR, which came with what you'd normally alt-tab to a database site to find built into its journal. People want to stop alt-tabbing to play MMOs, but I think many companies assume that means making everything stupidly simple instead of coming up with a way to serve fresh content you don't want to alt-tab for.

I think truly the only way you can continue the quest-leveling paradigm that has become dominant since WoW is to randomize chain quests based on a preset number of events and then use metadata to chain them together in a coherent pattern. In that way database sites would only include the constituent parts (which locations/mobs within those could be randomized too) and not a full walkthrough. The trick is designers have to be willing to award critical thinking and problem solving just as well as killing. If you have a 'solve a mystery' quest line which takes actual effort and lasts 2 hours, it should award just as much if not more exp than 'kill 30 wolves/dire wolves/wolfmother/felwolves/wolfgod' chains.

[Fog]

Just take away the carrot. Find a way to make an MMORPG where the Single Solitary Important Thing in the game isn't primarily getting max level, and people won't speed through your content to get to max level.

As-is, a big chunk of the population of WoW isn't playing because of sweet quests and lore. They are just playing because they want to get real big numbers; level 80, purple gear, tradeskills maxed, a high arena rating, and once they get the big numbers, they can attack the hardest content, which means they "win" the game in some sense. You are never going to get people like that to pay attention to your leveling content unless you make it interest them more than big numbers and winning, which may or may not be possible in the sort of game we're acclimated to as a "MMORPG."

[bobyab]

Originally Posted by Fog

Just take away the carrot...

I would say your argument is severely flawed, but I am not even sure I know what you are trying to say. It's like this... I do not need to share a world with mouth breathing retards to experience quests and lore. I can pick up a book, I can play 100's of different console games, or do what ever the fuck gives me "OMG, I'm in another world jollies".

So ya, remove the carrot from your MMO... that’s a great idea... what exactly are you trying to design a game for? Plants? Animals? How many of dandelions or dogs do you know that will put up $15 a month to play your game? Being a person... I have feelings such as pride, ambition, and greed. Sure there are other reasons to play mmo's, but 10 years of experience tells me these are what keeps people logging in more than any other reason.

Oh you might be sitting there thinking how WRONG I am... You're thinking, "I am not a greedy person... I just like to have FUN!" How fun is it to run Naxx for the 30th time, when you got all the gear you could possibly want on the 10th run... but you do it. You do it because even when the game fails you in providing that next carrot, we create our own in the form of DKP, or being the top of your class in the guild leaders mind.

I need to back peddle just a bit... There is a miniscule subset of people out there that the current crop MMO's does fail. These are the people you describe. They don't need carrots. They don't give a damn about getting the next level. They are like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction... He believes he is enlightened, he is above it all, and he is going to remove himself from the rat-race and live a life of wandering. But thankfully we have John Travolta there to cock slap him back to reality. That reality is that he wants to be a bum.

So as you see, people that read quest text, clearly are bums.

[Miele]

There are some very valid points in the last posts, I'd like to comment about:

Monster variety: I played D&D for 21 years, pretty much with the same people and one of the things we really love, is fitting the most weird monsters in our adventures. Goblins, bugbears, ogres have their place as usual, but I can tell you that the monster manual is big enough to amaze even the most veteran players in most adventures.

There is no need to go out of the way, campaigns must mantain a certain feeling to them, but be them random encounters or dungeon end bosses, rare monsters spice up stories a lot more than the usual "dragon in the lair".

Since monsters can scale just as players, why limit yourself to lvl 1 snakes and lvl 20 golems+lichs? It's possible to scale down (or up) most monsters, give a theme feeling to a campaign and still produce kickass content.

---

I'm still sold on levelling, and not so hot on skill-based system (ala UO so to say), because in the end all these things are just a skin you lay on character progression and I like the levels more. What I don't really like is the constant +10 level for each expansion, it doesn't make sense to me, but I guess it's the lazy way out to have people consume the oh-so-cool levelling content.

Taking for example WotLK: what about having major questlines give new spells/skills as reward, thus "forcing" people to do them? Damn, you saved Undercity, good job pal, learn this new spell and enjoy it for the days to come.

---

Classes: I can't wait for a non-asian MMO to implement the job system. I'd really like to keep playing one character, but I'm quite an altoholic, yet it pisses me off to no end that I'm losing all I got with my previous char. The same deal for professions: why the hell I must be limited to 2 professions and thus forced to level a new character to raise 2 more?
I understand the need for devs to promote replayability, but I can guarantee that a truckload of players would feel more compelled in levelling all classes/professions on a single character, rather than rerolling new ones over and over.

---

Gear: can we get rid of constant upgrades at this insane rhythm? Equipment should be meaningful, not just a stepping stone towards the next piece which I'll obtain in two weeks top. Sidegrades are boring, period. Let me upgrade my own gear through quests, crafting and whatnot, doesn't have to be every 20 minutes nor 12 months, but relying on something that is just not RNG would be an extremely good thing.

Maybe many players wouldn't be that cool with this, but I think an upgraded Thunderfury (for example) to be on your character all the time, would have been a good thing. It doesn't have to be the best sword, it just needs to be exactly as good as the best weapon available once fully upgraded, so there is an alternative for players who missed the MC days, but the old school ones could still keep a TF if they wish so (and new players can go get one if they really want to).

Epic quests: yeah, goddamn epic quests ala EQ1 (just a bit less camping and more epic oriented, please). Coupled with the upgradable weapon feature, this could be something extremely cool to have. No bindings of the windseeker please (or however they were named).

-

Class quests: one every 10 levels, at the very least, don't be lazy, amaze us. I want to feel like I'm progressing in my career, gaining ranks in my order so to say, there is no better thing than class quests at that.
WoW was so cool at the beginning as a druid, bear form quest, poison cleansing, aquatic form... then devs probably got too lazy and just stuck spells on trainers, including cat form (for which I totally expected a quest).

As a rogue it was even worse: I was sent into this hidden cove in the mountains and pretty much nothing came out of it but maybe a stupid new item and a broken quest chain? (can't remember really).

-

Mentoring: single handedly the best feature I've ever used in a MMO (EQ2). The fact I could at any moment, scale down to play with a friend or to help lowbies doing a dungeon while mantaining it interesting, was just nothing short of awesome.

----

I think I rambled about pretty much everything now, sorry for the wall of text.

[Fog]

Originally Posted by bobyab

I have feelings such as pride, ambition, and greed. Sure there are other reasons to play mmo's, but 10 years of experience tells me these are what keeps people logging in more than any other reason.

Oh you might be sitting there thinking how WRONG I am... You're thinking, "I am not a greedy person... I just like to have FUN!" How fun is it to run Naxx for the 30th time, when you got all the gear you could possibly want on the 10th run... but you do it. You do it because even when the game fails you in providing that next carrot, we create our own in the form of DKP, or being the top of your class in the guild leaders mind.

No, I agree. This is exactly what I meant. A whole lot of people are just playing because they want to be the top of their class and get the best gear. That goal doesn't have much to do with lore and quest text, and when content "gets in the way" of their work to become the best (like when they don't immediately know where to go for a quest and have to spend time thinking about it, or when the "fun" quest line gives lousy rewards and the "boring" one has great rewards) then they try to get around the content so they can get back to being the best as soon as they can.

Most MMORPGs have a progression system that totally supports this idea of being the best. In WoW, you can look at your character stats, and know that you really have better gear than your buddy over there and you will absolutely perform better in the game. I don't think it's any surprise that a ton of people pay attention to that and not the story/lore/mystery/whatever "RPG" part of the game as much.

They could take all that out, if they wanted to, and then they would be left with just people who were interested in the content. For a long time, there were a lot of pretty serious virtual worlds with none of that, back when MUDs and MOOs were king. But I don't think as many people are interested in that sort of thing -- I think Second Life is a pretty good representation of the size of that market.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Fog

No, I agree.

Uh...been done.

Edit: And guess what peoples #1 complaint about the game has been. Drumroll if you would please?

BadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadaCLANG

A complete lack of an endgame.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Miele

I'm still sold on levelling, and not so hot on skill-based system (ala UO so to say)

UO isn't what we're talking about. I mean it sorta is, but it also mostly isn't.

Basically, well...I guess the easiest way to explain it is to take EverQuest AA's and instead of just grinding out 400 boars to ding levels/aa's, you attach a quest to each one. Tie that into LOTRO's virtue system/WoW's achievement system and it's just absolute tits.

I'd go more into elaborate detail but it's 5:30 in the fucking AM and I really should be in bed. Even God isn't awake at this hour, fuck.