Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Genjiro]

CoH was a fun game, it just needed the endgame. It actually now has some nice loot in the form or epic quality enhancements, shame their development team were such morons early on and lacked the funding/manpower to take the game in the direction it needed to go. Still has better animations and smoother gameplay than pretty much any game on the market for as dated as it is.

[Flight]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

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.

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.

Actually (base damage numbers) :

Lightning Shock lvl 37 570 damage
Conflagration lvl 43 900 dmg
Rend lvl 47 855 damage
Ice Comet lvl 49 808 damage


What was special about it was casting time and the fact it was based on Cold resist with a neg check on cold resist. The majority of mobs in early EQ were more resistant to the Fire and Magic damage type than cold,


But, like you, Ice Comet has always been THE skill in pretty much any MMO in terms of standing out in the memory. Part of that was and is down to the name, for me at least - plus, like you and Foghorn are advocating, the way you got it. It was one of the few abilities you had to do a lengthy quest to achieve - Tartons Wheel (I seem to recall it was also a rare drop off Vox).



I wouldn't want to see the majority of spells and skills achieved by questing - well, actually, I would - because it would have a major drawback. The amount of times you would have to spend questing for your skills or abilities would mean most people would either skip the majority of them or spend no time adventuring and all their time questing for them. There would be more of the former than the latter, as people would choose to forgo most of them.

I would like to see key spells and abilities quested for a la' Ice Comet.


edit : the other reason Ice Comet stood out, at least once they later enhanced it, was the superb and unique graphic they gave it.

[XadionDarkborn]

Originally Posted by Flight

Actually (base damage numbers) :

Lightning Shock lvl 37 570 damage
Conflagration lvl 43 900 dmg
Rend lvl 47 855 damage
Ice Comet lvl 49 808 damage


What was special about it was casting time and the fact it was based on Cold resist with a neg check on cold resist. The majority of mobs in early EQ were more resistant to the Fire and Magic damage type than cold,


But, like you, Ice Comet has always been THE skill in pretty much any MMO in terms of standing out in the memory. Part of that was and is down to the name, for me at least - plus, like you and Foghorn are advocating, the way you got it. It was one of the few abilities you had to do a lengthy quest to achieve - Tartons Wheel (I seem to recall it was also a rare drop off Vox).



I wouldn't want to see the majority of spells and skills achieved by questing - well, actually, I would - because it would have a major drawback. The amount of times you would have to spend questing for your skills or abilities would mean most people would either skip the majority of them or spend no time adventuring and all their time questing for them. There would be more of the former than the latter, as people would choose to forgo most of them.

I would like to see key spells and abilities quested for a la' Ice Comet.

Much life lifeleech was for SK's - I used it till the 60+ taps came out- and still busted it out for long lifetap rotation set ups and dueling. The quest involved was fun, got you into your class some more and was generally enjoyable.

[Gnome Eater]

They revamped almost all spells - icecomet used to hit for 1200+.

[Flight]

Originally Posted by Gnome Eater

They revamped almost all spells - icecomet used to hit for 1200+.

Yeah, but that wasn't recent, it was early on. Even after changes it remained memorable and stood out.

[Gnome Eater]

Originally Posted by Flight

Yeah, but that wasn't recent, it was early on. Even after changes it remained memorable and stood out.

This was like well after Kunark.

To give an idea of how amazing Ice Comet was, Sunstrike, which was the top Kunark spell, used to hit for 1600, and that was considered amazing, and that's a 1/3 upgrade.

[Caliane]

Originally Posted by bobyab

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.

He has a point.
Content is King.

Look at WAR, for a moment.
When it first came out people were purposely NOT leveling into t4 because t3 pvp was more enjoyable.
Create a game that has real extended content at all levels, and people won't feel the need to max out to "end game", if end game exists on all levels.

Look at how many people play twinks in wow, etc. And what is really potentially interesting about this, is the "casual" gamer is given content at all levels as well then.



The other topics;
no more wildlife. lol.
Immersion is very important. There are Role playing games for a reason. A balance of immersion and fun needs to be achieved however. Permanent death is immersive, but not very fun, for example.
Rng loot is brilliant imo. Getting something you want, then being able o keep going on the chance of getting a better version of the same item is a great way to add replay, or what is effectively a soft cap. (This requires no raid timers, or the like.)

[Gnome Eater]

People here have absolutely no clue about design. Do you really think you can create enough content so that people always feel they are 'levelling up'?

The ratio of time spent at the level cap versus levelling up is completely out of wack if you consider the amount of time creating content for the level cap versus content levelling up.

[Caliane]

Originally Posted by Gnome Eater

People here have absolutely no clue about design. Do you really think you can create enough content so that people always feel they are 'levelling up'?

The ratio of time spent at the level cap versus levelling up is completely out of wack if you consider the amount of time creating content for the level cap versus content levelling up.

Yes?
Re-playability is the key.
Pvp tends to be the easiest way to do it.
Look how much time people spend playing the same maps in various FPS's, or in Diablo doing various loot runs. You don't need NEW content if the content you have is worth doing over and over.

Lets use the WAR tiered pvp zones for an example. They aren't perfect by a long shot, but can be used as a model.
Imagine each teir had multiple gear options, and a ladder to keep track of players performance in that teir. You could sit there in tier 1 for months, staying on top of the ladder in that zone if you wanted. Or if each Tier had real objectives that only players in that level range could achieve over time.

Giving people a reason to stay in lower zones is a GREAT way to keep old zones active, and have all the effort spent on them, not turn into people leveling through zones in a week and having 2k people all sitting around in the end game zones.

[UnchainedAcolyte]

Originally Posted by Gnome Eater

People here have absolutely no clue about design.

This.

Nothing like incredibly wrong armchair design early in the morning.

[Gnome Eater]

I'd love to have a nonstop succession of levelling content with lore that kept evolving but yeah, that's not going to happen. It takes Blizzard 2 years to create the levelling/pre-raid game of WOTLK, and you can probably consume that in 2 months playing incredibly casually (I mean see everything, not hit level 80).

[Grave]

Completely agree on the issue of wildlife. Have "critters" as Blizzard calls them for flavor, but I'm not interested in quests involving them. You can make a hunting mini-game out of them for skinning/cooking tradeskills if you want, complete with very rare animals, but leave it at that.

Another related thing that irritates me with this is level scaling. I want to see a game where the level of a creature is actually meaningful, as it is in Dungeons and Dragons. I mean, you run around Grizzly Hills on WoW and you have level 75 bears and wolves and whatnot. Am I the only one that thinks this is kind of ridiculous?

To me, your average human NPC who sells flowers in the city should be level 0, the baseline. Animals, no higher than level 10 for the most badass bear or lion or whatever. It should follow some kind of logic. At level 80, a player should be considered the type of mortal who could ascend to godhood or something.

I dunno, maybe I'm just being too much of a dnd nerd here, but it's just stupid that a wolf in Howling Fjord is higher "level" than C'thun, a god.

[Miele]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

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.

The difference is that instead of doing one quest for every class-talent-aa combo, you do one quest that everyone can use (collect 10 bear asses) and that everyone can convert into their aa-talent of choice. The latter option is quite more appealing from a developer's point of view (and the budget guy too I guess) in terms of time spent designing and balancing all of them, isn't it?

Stupid wow example, because it always fits: a class has on average 27-29 different talents per tree, plus, I'm totally shooting numbers out of my ass, about... 50 spells? Make it 50 for simplicity.

So you would need to set at least 10ish baseline spells (let's define them as the basic fireball of the class, newbie quests rewards if you wish so) and 60+ quested ones if I understood your idea correctly, meaning that in a relatively small amount of classes environment, say 10, you'd have to craft 600+ unique and entertaining quests (and I assume some should take a little bit longer than 10 minutes).

Holy fuck, 600 beatiful and entertaining quests? Where do I sign up with my blood?
After 4 years and some, I can maybe count 60 quests like this in wow (and being generous in labeling them fun/beatiful), I don't think it's remotely feasible to expect 600 great quests on a MMO release, hell, most players would set for 50 great quests shared among all classes, considering most are just plain garbage "bears anatomy inspection" type.

Sure, in a utopistic reality, I'd join you in this awesome world of awesomecraft, but unless a miracle happens, I don't see such plans ever seeing the light, but I'm a terrible armchair designer after all, so I may miss your solution or maybe I misunderstood your basic idea.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

I don't believe anyone should remove general questing from the game as long as it's done well. I think questing merely for the sake of leveling, and having no class identity is just as wrong an extreme as what you've painted.

[Grave]

What do you guys think about the potential of Blizzard's "Phasing" mechanic as a way to answer some of the issues with non-instanced content?

I'm always arguing in favor of a game that has both instanced and non-instanced dungeons, and I was thinking phasing could be an interesting mechanic in regards to making non-instanced stuff work.

Quest-specific mobs could be phased out to people not on that quest. If you're running around the dungeon and see someone fighting them, you'll know they're on your quest and you might form a group. Other players wouldn't be in your way because they don't even see those mobs.

Nameds could spawn and only be visible to certain groups within the zone, then when they are killed the group receives a hidden flag that ensures the same named wont be phased in to them for a certain amount of time, giving other groups a shot at it. This would keep people from just camping a spot and encourage them to move around and find other named or get into other adventures.

It would give you something similar to that old school dungeon competition but would inspire less animosity towards fellow players because the opportunity for griefing is much lower.