Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Flight]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

That'll about wrap up all you'll hear from them until they announce public Beta. 8(

I got 20 bucks says they don't have a beta process resembling anything like that which we are used to. The whole 'Beta' thing just has so many drawbacks and not much good going for it.


The interesting thing is going to be the release schedule. There's no major MMO due out in the next year then I have five penciled in (just my guesswork) for Fall 2010, including this one, each of which I am very much looking forward to. Oh, and Diablo 3, unless that makes it out this fall.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Beta is fine, when it's used as an actual beta. The problem is that far too many companies, especially MMO companies, have been using beta as an alpha phase and then the first 3 months of release are the actual beta.

[Flight]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Beta is fine, when it's used as an actual beta. The problem is that far too many companies, especially MMO companies, have been using beta as an alpha phase and then the first 3 months of release are the actual beta.

Well said.

The other problem is that the vast majority of players and fans either do not understand what a beta should be or do not approach it the right way. Its all about getting an advanced preview, playing for free and gaining competitive advantage.


All said and done, yes, games need proper, phased testing, in the sense you describe, but it can't possibly be called 'beta' from now on without setting false expectations. Also, the size and scope of a lot of betas up to now have been counter productive.


If a 'beta' test is efficient, scheduled times working on known problems and on development are going to produce masses of discontent and negative PR from anyone who doesn't understand and commit to what testing should be. A lot of education and reinforcing of those issues has to happen among any testers from the general public, if it is even worth using any testers from the general public.

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Beta is fine, when it's used as an actual beta. The problem is that far too many companies, especially MMO companies, have been using beta as an alpha phase and then the first 3 months of release are the actual beta.

There is no possible way to use a public beta as it was originally intended. Beta is an alpha release whether you want it to be or not. The process of testing MMO's in the public space no longer resembles anything like what it used to be. The blame can go both ways, but mainly resides on companies lack of recognition that players viewed it as an 'early release' far in advance of companies seeing they did.

When you go 'public' with ANY game play, you better be sure that product is ready to play and as bug free as you can make it, because a MASSIVE portion of your audience will make the decision to buy your game (and their friends will as well) based on the 'version' they play, be it an alpha or beta.

[Miele]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

There is no possible way to use a public beta as it was originally intended. Beta is an alpha release whether you want it to be or not. The process of testing MMO's in the public space no longer resembles anything like what it used to be. The blame can go both ways, but mainly resides on companies lack of recognition that players viewed it as an 'early release' far in advance of companies seeing they did.

When you go 'public' with ANY game play, you better be sure that product is ready to play and as bug free as you can make it, because a MASSIVE portion of your audience will make the decision to buy your game (and their friends will as well) based on the 'version' they play, be it an alpha or beta.

Pretty much what I do. After doing the good boy beta tester a few times and seeing no effects at all in the final release, I said to myself "why bother?". I use betas as free previews now, which is basically what they are.

[Caliane]

Ideally, they should stop being called betas. As while the above is true, the portion of the testers that do recognize what a beta is supposed to be, identify issues, bring them forward. And when these issues are not addressed also get frustrated from what seems to be a lack of communication.

[Zehn - Vhex]

The original intentions of the public beta were unrealistic to begin with. On top of that, I don't think many companies are prepared to deal with what data they get from it. At least in a meaningful timeframe to the playerbase which is why, well, yeah, you need your shit in place before you ever go open.

Besides, open beta implies that you'll get what's still broken fixed in some miracle patch in the 24~48 hour period between when open beta ends and public release begins. Which to date, has never happened.

Edit:

I have a mixed track record with reporting bugs. But I was fortunate enough to be in some early alpha's where they were still listening to the playerbase. I talked with a guy in early WoW about how I was able to force crash zones with Mind Control and that got fixed in a few days. By contrast, I also reported a mining node that was spawning underground and therefore unreachable and to this day it has yet to be fixed.

[Tananthalas]

Originally Posted by Miele

After doing the good boy beta tester a few times and seeing no effects at all in the final release, I said to myself "why bother?".

Tell me about it. The most aggravating case I had of this happened while I was beta testing Vanguard (big surprise there I know). I was invited in like Beta 3 I think and I had found a harvesting exploit. This exploit allowed you to interrupt a harvest but still get skill upgrades even though you wouldn't get any resources after interrupting. Anyone familiar with how Vanguard's harvesting system works would know this was a semi serious deal. It worked very similar to EQ 2 or AoC. Instead of taking days to level your harvesting skills to the next tier it took minutes. I /bug and /report this til I was blue in the face, finally in beta 6 it was changed so you couldn't do it as easily, but was still possible to do. At release this exploit was still in the damn game, now I know that this was Vanguard and in hindsight there is no surprise that it wasn't fixed but it has since really colored my opinion on beta tests and development teams.

I don't know if there is really a solution to fixing the "beta free preview" logic that exists. A possible solution might be to do very selective inviting. Once Copernicus gets information out there and the official forums go up, keep a close watch on the posters and invite the people who seem like they have beta experience or can keep quite until the NDA drops. Another idea would be to have employees invite people they know are reliable from other games they play or invite a couple guilds with proven track records for beta testing.

Even if you only get a couple hundred reliable beta testers you can still mandate a certain amount of time in focus groups looking at specific areas of content, fine tuning that content, and moving on to the next. I have yet to see a beta test utilize focus testing as much as possible to make the most out of what that can provide.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Lonin

That's a huge risk/tiny reward mechanic. It could ruin the game for 90% of the player base at its worst, and maybe add 10% more players at its best. Would not be a wise decision IMO.

I hate this attitude but I'm not going to single you out because there's a ton of people who would agree with you -- likely including Ngruk and the staff at 38 as well as the boys at Blizzard, SOE and most other game studios.

* * *

One of my favorite (non-game) anecdotes about fear of the new is American Idol -- Freemantle presented it to every major broadcast (save Fox) and (IIRC) cable network farmously hitting ABC up twice -- before Fox final bit. Nobody else 'got' the concept -- Fox was leery but made the bet and was handsomely rewarded.

* * *
What pisses me off the most is that if you go back through this thread you'll see people pissed off over current game mechanics - but nobody wants to take the next logical evolutionary step.

As for the risk/reward - most guys are collectors -- CCGs and a CCG/MMO targets that wallet-opening need in men.

Some Basic Assumptions
1. Everyone has their 8 standard class-based abilities on one hotbar: taunting, healing, dps, CC, pulling (e.g.feign for monks). Leveling improves these basic abilities,

2. In game, 'cards' are rare to very rare drops off of most mobs. There can also be a physical retail version of the CCG that has cards (abilities, creatures, enchatments not just chrome mounts) that can be used in the game (via scratch off digital key on the card or what have you)

3. There is a lot of variation in all cards that are just chrome - that is you might have 5 different creature cards that all have roughly the same combat abilities (I'll use MTG terms since most of us are familiar with the game) -- that is there might be: 2/2 Wolves, 2/2 Bears, 2/2 Lions, 2/2 Artic Wolves, 2/2 Desert Wolves, 2/2 Jungle Wolves 2/2 Snakes, 2/2 Beavers, 2/2 Jackalopes, etc. (see #5 though -- with typical CCG card restrictions you're gonna want a bunch of the same type of cards to fill out your deck).

4. The 'card' combat system is designed in such a way that cards remain useful throughout the leveling process: that is the 2/2 wolf you got at level 1 is still useful at level 50. This is via either (a) automatic improvement of the card stats or more likely (b) the availability of additional dropped cards that add (again using MTG terminology) enchantments or instant effects to the 2/2 wolf (example: the wolf card is a rare drop off of level 1 wolves in Wolf Valley, the 'giant growth' enchantment card is a rare drop off of level 50 witches in Witch Valley. The giant growth enchantment when played on the level 1 wolf turns the level 1 wolf card into the equivalent of a level 50 wolf card).

5. There are the usual CCG restrictions in terms of # of particular cards, severe limitations on powerful cards, and deck size limitations.

6. Smart mobs get their own decks in addition to their abilities.

What does it add?

1. Variation. The key thing it adds is variation to each toon. In one sense it almost acts like a job system in that ideally there is no limitation on what kind of deck a character can build. A healer can build a deck with all direct damage cards: lightning bolts, fireballs, etc. A tank can build a deck with crowd control cards: armageddon, balance, etc. A dps-er can build a deck with a bunch of healing/creature cards.

2. PVP. Whether or not there is world PVP. A CCG-combat system is natural for PVP. Instead of having healer with mostly same set of abilites fighting a healer with mostly same set of abilites in the Arena. You have two healers with potentially very different decks going after each other. Same thing with group combat just moreso.

3. Class balance. Becomes much less of a worry - as long as all classes have access (via grinding, questing, killing) to most cards - what matters is card balance not class balance. Of course there may be various class/faction/diety restrictions on cards - but these should be the exception not the rule.

4. Roleplaying. You can be Wolfie the Ranger who builds an all-wolf/all-the-time deck with timber, dire, forest, jungle, ice-covered and of course volcanic wolves. Probably not a super effective deck - but as long as Wolfie is having fun playing the game who cares?

5. Encounter Replaybility/Flexibility. Since the cards come out in random order - there is more variation in mob/raid encounters. Instead of taking on a mob 300 times hoping for the perfect play by all your players - there's flexibility - the right cards at the right time can allow an under-geared group to defeat a mob/raid mob they shouldn't be able to in a pure Diku system. Giving smart mobs/raid mobs their own cards (and a decent AI) means that encounters are going to go differently as well. Things are going great until the raid mob plays his Armageddon.

I'm not going to beat the dead horse anymore this week -- maybe after Copernicus gets released and people start bitching about how it's the same WoW/EQ/EQ2/VG Diku system I'll bring it up again.

[Northerner]

Originally Posted by tad10

* * * but nobody wants to take the next logical evolutionary step.

Well, there may be a market for a CCG MMO and in fact, there probably is one. It sure as hell isn't the next logical evolutionary step though and if I were to pick a descriptive word it would be "niche".

[Azrayne]

None of that shit would appeal to anyone except the tiny portion of the MMO market that also happen to play CCG's. If you're looking to be anything more than a 'very' niche game, it's a horrible idea.

[Grave]

Originally Posted by tad10

5. Encounter Replaybility/Flexibility. Since the cards come out in random order - there is more variation in mob/raid encounters. Instead of taking on a mob 300 times hoping for the perfect play by all your players - there's flexibility - the right cards at the right time can allow an under-geared group to defeat a mob/raid mob they shouldn't be able to in a pure Diku system. Giving smart mobs/raid mobs their own cards (and a decent AI) means that encounters are going to go differently as well. Things are going great until the raid mob plays his Armageddon.

This is what I was saying would annoy me. You only brought up an example of the good side of it - a scenario where under-geared groups defeat a difficult encounter due to luck of the draw. What you don't mention is the guild who wipes 5 times to the same encounter even though they should be able to defeat it just because their tank has bad luck that night on his cards.

The other points you mentioned are alright, but I'm of the opinion that a company would need to create a wildly successful card game first. There's no way you could just launch a new MMO alongside the physical card game and expect people to eat it up and throw all that money at it.

Originally Posted by Ukerric

Why randomness? You can have a CCG mechanism without the randomness.

The following is a design I had for a kind of on-line MMOish version of NetRunner (which is/was a real CCG). You, the runner, have a cyber-deck, and a set of software. Your cyberdeck has a memory size, which opens N slots for abilities (beginner cyberdecks have like 4, HL cyberdecks have 7 or 8 or more). You have a queue of software (abilities). You load the first N in your deck, and can use them. Once used, they go on cooldown (various values of cooldown used there, from the 5s common ones to the 1mn rare ones). You can "swap" any software on your deck: the card goes back at the end of your queue, and the next in queue loads.

See? No randomness. Of course, you must design your software queue prior to start your run - no reordering your queue mid-run so that you load all your specialized Icebreakers just as you're going to face a Hell Hound Black Ice, so you can disable it in 3s (that's the Guildwars model, in case you wonder).

I'll admit I may not be following you 100%, but it sounds essentially like the Spellborn system only one ability cycles at a time. I'm not sure I see the appeal of it in combat. It seems like it would just overcomplicate things for the sake of doing so to attempt to make it more interesting, and I don't think it would succeed in that. I do like the idea of being able to go into a scenario/encounter with a tailored set of abilities, but that goes back to the deckbuilding idea (as others have mentioned isn't that far from WoW talents and such).

Maybe it's just personal preference, but in a fast-paced combat-oriented MMO game I don't think I'd want to have to focus too much on my ability bar or "hand" and figure out what to use. It just doesn't seem like it would add enough fun/interest to make up for the potential annoyance.

[Tananthalas]

Originally Posted by tad10

stuff

See Battleforge.

I will never again play any game that requires me to buy more shit beyond the initial box sale or monthly fee. A CCG MMO will never work because companies that utilize them will never not have those cards available for purchase. If it was a CCG MMO where you couldn't buy cards except from what other players had gotten as drops, then it might work, but otherwise the idea is doomed to mediocrity at best.

[Zehn - Vhex]

All you did Tad was make a skill based system instead of class based. It didn't really add anything. All you're doing is taking grinding on mobs to level with getting new skills as a byproduct with grinding mobs to get skills with levels as a byproduct.

As for your, "What does it add?" section.

1 - Variation? You mean like having 30 specs to choose from in WoW? And that's just PvE. There are at least 20 if not more viable PvP spec's as well. Remember, we have theorycrafters galore these days and within a week we'd have figured out the 20 or so best combinations and then all people do is mix and match those synergies based on what the encounter requires.

2 - ...

Y'know what. I'd go on, but I need to take a nap before raid time tonight and after watching this girls generation video on loop for like 2 days straight I need some alone time. Gee gee gee gee baby bay bay indeed.

I'll get back to you.

[Lourdin]

I would like to see something to at least keep me wondering. A total lack of anything is just as bad as too much of something...