Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Moorgard Mobhunter]

Originally Posted by Gallenite

Truth. While I wouldn't worry about the game in that case, if he's even mildly giddy, I would check for either a nitrous leak or a fresh pile of gnome corpses.

Roberts cracked a smile one day. We all cleared out, assuming the building was on fire.

Turns out he was just chuckling over one of Curt's idea emails.

[Ukerric]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

What makes the subs less impressive is that it's got about half as many subs as the game above it, Dofus. And in 5 minutes of internet research all I learned about Dofus is that it is apparently an amazingly silly game.

Dofus is Europe's take on the myriad of asian browser-based games. It's all written in flash (yep, the same flash you use), is completely multi-platform, lightweight, works on even computers that wouldn't run vanilla WoW, and targets the teens/young adult.

It's not a MMORPG, it's more of a MMOstrat (with big RPGish elements).

And it's a free to play, with a premium version for "real". Which is why it gets so many players, the same way you get Runescape and all those other games at million players.

[Big W Powah!]

Originally Posted by Ninen

Evasion tanks are simply always in a bad place.

If the content is trivial, then it doesn't matter who tanks, including non-tank classes.

If the content is current and/or hard, healers prefer non-evasion tanks due to consistency of incoming damage. The raid prefers non-evasion tanks due to not RNG wiping out of nowhere when you fail to dodge 4 attacks in a row.

The only real place evasion tanks shine is in content you have no business doing and/or isn't tuned remotely correctly. If the mob can kill ANYONE in 1-2 hits, then evasion rules the roost. Even then you're likely to get RNG wipes.

What if the evasion is active evasion? Management of cool downs?


What if bosses have enrage/flurry type abilities (with some sort of pre-warning) that will wipe the fuck out of anybody that gets all the hits, but an evasion tank can pop a cool down and evade all/most of the hits? Something like the giant king summons the spirits of his ancestors and imbues his blade with the fury of the past, making it white hot and slice through any armor (thus completely negating mitigation). In that situation, the only method would be to evade.

What if the evasion tanks had a shit ton more hp than the mitigation tanks, and you had a boss that did unresistable magic damage, instead of physical damage. Pretty much the evasion tank is your best bet, because he will take less damage than the mitigation tank due to the mitigation tank's mitigation being pointless (as well as the evasion tank's)

Things like that could allow a properly done evasion tank to be viable, if not always optimal. Granted, in group content, the evasion tank and mitigation tank would be balanced to be fine (I.E. hard group content would probably be require blowing cool downs on a boss for either tank)

[Caliane]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Eve is one of those games I love to hear other people talk about but about two days was enough to convince me that I even my obsessive compulsive behavior pales in comparison to the people who play this game.

What makes the subs less impressive is that it's got about half as many subs as the game above it, Dofus. And in 5 minutes of internet research all I learned about Dofus is that it is apparently an amazingly silly game.

It's the MMOers guilty pleasure. We like to see it do well because it's that game that proves a niche game can be successful. But I fully agree with Yahtzee's review of the game.

The Escapist : Video Galleries : Zero Punctuation : Eve Online



Another reason I'm for removing healing as the potent force it is right now is because it helps mitigate this issue. Simply put, the concept behind evasion vs. raw mitigation sucks when you can go from alive to dead in 2~4 swings. However, if you instead push that out to it taking roughly 100 swings, then the issue is lessoned.

Either way, I don't think that players would care that they have roughly the same raw stats, it's that the classes just operate differently even if they achieve the same effect. You don't hear about hunters and rogues complaining about how similar they feel even though in the end they're both just doing 7000 dps.

Likewise I don't think tanks would care that they're all sitting at 50% damage mitigation and 25% chance to avoid when the soldier achieves that via heavy armor and hiding behind a shield, the ninja achieves that by 'rolling with the hits' and expert sword work and the psionic achieves it by coating himself in a mental shell and blinking out of phase (the 3 tank classes in Zehn the MMO by the way! Exlusive info for FoH forum posters only!).

I already echoed the Eve sentiments. I couldn't play the thing for more then 3 days.
however, I would agree/argue their are many good things in Eve that can be learned from. take those good points, infuse more engaging gameplay, infuse interesting early game. And your starting to have something that would break out of the niche.



Evasion tanks work fine if the incoming damage is inherently more moderate and paced. If your choices are 75% evasion with 1000 hp, and your up against 600hp/hit hits, vs 75% dr with 1000hp and those 600hp/hit being reduced to 150/hit, the DR is clearly better . Its more stable, can be healed by hots, auras, you can't be instagibbed by bad luck, or RNG.
But if we are talking 75% evasion with 1000hp and 150hp/hits, vs 75DR with 1000hp and 150hp/hits reduced to 37hp/hit, well this is much more viable.

[Big W Powah!]

Originally Posted by Caliane

I already echoed the Eve sentiments. I couldn't play the thing for more then 3 days.
however, I would agree/argue their are many good things in Eve that can be learned from. take those good points, infuse more engaging gameplay, infuse interesting early game. And your starting to have something that would break out of the niche.



Evasion tanks work fine if the incoming damage is inherently more moderate and paced. If your choices are 75% evasion with 1000 hp, and your up against 600hp/hit hits, vs 75% dr with 1000hp and those 600hp/hit being reduced to 150/hit, the DR is clearly better . Its more stable, can be healed by hots, auras, you can't be instagibbed by bad luck, or RNG.
But if we are talking 75% evasion with 1000hp and 150hp/hits, vs 75DR with 1000hp and 150hp/hits reduced to 37hp/hit, well this is much more viable.

Over 100 hits, assuming no RNG stupidity, the evasion tank will take 150x25, or 3750. The DR tank will take 3700. We all know that the RNG fucks us, and chances are the evasion tank will take more hits.

The thing The DR's mitigation would need to be reduced to 50-65%, if the evasive tank is 75%. This allows the POTENTIAL for the evasion tank ot be better; and lets face it, when the potential for it to be much worse is there, its fucking needed.

That forces the choice between playing the RNG, and MAYBE needing more healing (allowing heal/dps hybrids to dps until they need to throw out the oh shit heal), or playing the smart card and knowing you'll need more healing (forcing all your healers to heal)

[Zehn - Vhex]

Why even bother? Why make one a niche tank and the other not? Why not just make evasion tanking another aspect of the tank classes themselves?

Going back to Zehn the MMO again, the soldier, ninja and psionist all have a base 50% mitigation and 25% avoidance in similar gear. The solider again, does it via heavy armor and blocking/parrying attacks, the ninja by rolling with the hits to minimize damage and by dodging attacks and the psionist does it by reducing the kinetic impact of attacks and phasing out of existence.

Then with the rest of their defensive abilities you make sure the base defensive part is the same, but can give them a myriad of 'other' effects.

For example, all of them cam switch to 'evasive' mode for a few seconds during a rape phase. For example, the Ninja for a short while dodges most attacks and immediately counter-attacks for good damage. The soldier simply hides behind his shield and the psionist absorbs all the attacks and then reverses the energy of the blows back at the target in a huge counter burst.

Then anti-magic damage. The ninja simply dodges the spell, the psionist channels the magic into his psi-blade and for a few seconds increases damage dealt. The soldier however spell reflects a portion of the magical blasts back at the target.

And so forth.

Tack on the fact that they'll be also dpsing in different manners with the soldier using mostly his shield to deal out brutal rape, the ninja flipping out and swan diving with his sword into the enemy and the psionist pulling some Jedi style force choking action, and they'll feel different enough.

Blizzard has shown that creating sub-niche's for classes is a universally bad idea.

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Blizzard has shown that creating sub-niche's for classes is a universally bad idea.

Really? How is that? I am curious to know whether your opinion is that it is, or some data I haven't seen is?

Blizzard has gained more new subs since WotLK than 99% of the MMO's out there have as an entire base.

That's in about 6 months mind you.

I don't believe they've created the 'end all be all' but I chuckle every time I hear how bad they've done things, or how their demise is imminent.

There are MORE than enough MMO's out there to get your fix, whatever that may be, but almost 13mm people believe WoW is that fix, which kicks the ever living crap out of everything else in it's space.

[Tyen]

Their new commercials are very entertaining~

[Grave]

WoW is just an absolute phenomenon. I don't think you can relate subscription rates to design choices at this point. I'm pretty sure they could do anything they wanted, terrible design or great design, and the subs will just keep rising. It's unlike anything else at this point. It's grown to the point that it can't help but keep snowballing.

[James]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Really? How is that? I am curious to know whether your opinion is that it is, or some data I haven't seen is?

The opinion is from the mindset of even the most casually informed raiders. Not sure there's data that you can attribute to the utter gayness of tank balance in WoW (certainly not subscription data), but pretty much everyone but Death Knights thinks it sucks pretty hardcore right now, and they'll think it sucks pretty hardcore next patch as Paladins skip into the scene on a rainbow fucking road, wearing flowers, and singing old Bette Midler songs and completely out perform every other tank that exists by simply facerolling their keyboard.

But hey, if you say tank balance is good, then OK.

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Really? How is that? I am curious to know whether your opinion is that it is, or some data I haven't seen is?

Depends what he means by sub niche. Like tanking only X types of fights? Or dpsing only underwater?

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Really? How is that? I am curious to know whether your opinion is that it is, or some data I haven't seen is?

I said nothing about their imminent demise. I'm saying stuff they've publicly admitted themselves. One of those things was trying to create niche roles within roles.

They openly admit making mages a 'niche AoE damage' class at launch was a terrible idea so over time they've made AoE damage just something everyone does.

They've spent the last 3 years trying to balance Paladins/Druids not having an AE heal. They broke down and gave Druids an AE heal and now with the glyph plus beacon system in 3.2 Paladins will finally be able to 'sorta' AE since you can pretty much just non-stop spam HL on the melee pile.

Most recently they admitted that making the DK the 'cooldown tank' was a bad move because it gave DK's a hard counter to predictable mob abilities and now they're making them more streamlined with paladins/warriors/druids.

At the end of the day, why make something niche that only one class gets when you can make 5 different flavors of that ability and spread it around? That'd be like saying, "Okay, Paladins are the buffing class" and remove all the buffs all the other classes get and making Paladins the only one with buffs.

Granted you don't want it to be as lame as Paladin gets holy strike that does 1000 damage and deathknight gets unholy strike that does 1000 damage, but you get the overall picture.

[The Muze]

Originally Posted by Grave

WoW is just an absolute phenomenon. I don't think you can relate subscription rates to design choices at this point. I'm pretty sure they could do anything they wanted, terrible design or great design, and the subs will just keep rising. It's unlike anything else at this point. It's grown to the point that it can't help but keep snowballing.

This exactly... WoW is kind of the perfect storm of gaming right now. It is a great game built on an rock solid IP. Was that enough to ensure a 2600% increase in subs over the previous generation's flagship game?

It's success is more cultural then it is mechanical. I lose count when I try to think about all the people that I know in real life that have either played or dabbled in WoW. Many of them on the complete fringe of gaming (almost equitable to the Wii crowd). WoW is Facebook.

[Grave]

Originally Posted by The Muze

It's success is more cultural then it is mechanical. I lose count when I try to think about all the people that I know in real life that have either played or dabbled in WoW. Many of them on the complete fringe of gaming (almost equitable to the Wii crowd). WoW is Facebook.

Precisely, and that's the problem with all of these games that look at WoW as their design bible. I'm not saying WoW didn't do anything right, far from it, it's the best designed MMO ever made and I can say that even through my EQ nostalgia. But it's far, far from perfect at the same time.


WoW's success stems from something else, something we've rarely seen in gaming: it has itself become a pop-culture item. I don't think any other MMO can or will ever do the same.

Simply copying WoW is not a path to success, but probably closer to a path to failure. You aren't going to win over the WoW crowd, and those that are not playing WoW are not playing it for a reason and don't want more of the same. That's the era of MMOs we're currently in unfortunately, and I can only hope 2010 and beyond finally see it change.

[Rayne]

Originally Posted by Grave

You aren't going to win over the WoW crowd, and those that are not playing WoW are not playing it for a reason and don't want more of the same. That's the era of MMOs we're currently in unfortunately, and I can only hope 2010 and beyond finally see it change.

Agreed. Kinda. I think the next big mmo will need to be something that plays like WoW mechanically, but isn't just some sort of clone. Sci-fi, post Apoc, or some variation of this would be a great addition to the genre right now.