Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[infrared]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

But it could. Even something as simple as opening your door may be a 'player ability' on their end, it just doesn't look like it on yours. Not to mention placing items, moving items, deleting items. Storage and etc.

Everything can affect something else.

Opening your door would spawn an instance, not cast a spell. If you are going to try and call everything a 'player ability' and assume Blizzard would have tied any in game action to a player's ability table, that is just foolishness.

There would be absolutely no reason to relate housing and Level 3 paladin skills together (if we want to be this literal). If a player ability were to be involved in housing, the only action that comes to mind would be to purchase a plot of land or performing specific ownership actions on your plot of land.

[Plorkyeran]

Originally Posted by infrared

Opening your door would spawn an instance, not cast a spell. If you are going to try and call everything a 'player ability' and assume Blizzard would have tied any in game action to a player's ability table, that is just foolishness.

Thottbot World of Warcraft: opening

There's several spells there which could easily be the "open normal door" spell. The fact that you can't open doors when the server dies indicates that it hits the server for something in the process. If you look at the spell lists on Thottbot, a huge number of things which you may not expect to be spells ARE implemented as spells in WoW.

Spawning an instance probably doesn't involve casting a spell (unless it's accessed some way other than a portal -- the BWL orb casts a spell), but we already know that the infrastructure does not support spawning a large number of instances. The 5 instances per hour limit wasn't implemented to stop farming, it was implemented because 2-3 people rapidly resetting an instance would literally kill the servers. Prior to the hardware upgrades we had BWL die on us with no other raids in the instance and under 5 people in Dire Maul several times. Most servers probably have more capacity than they need now, but do they have enough more to support several hundred people hanging out in thier own instances?

[Maxxius]

So Curt, remember 2 things regarding Bond's lawsuit against you: 1)Truth is a defense (and man does he open the door here against himself) and 2) he has to prove damages (good luck for him there since nearly the entire world believes he used steroids).

[Ngruk]

There is no lawsuit, so I won't even bite on that one.

Things are rolling along here. We are into two more engine evaluations as well as working with some major companies on potential partnerships. The IP continues to grow by leaps and bounds. R.A. has done some really extraordinary stuff with regards to creating a foundation and backstory that will, I think, put together something unforgettable.

As far as details, claim you heard it hear first, even though we've already said it here and other places.

We gain literally nothing by revealing anything about the IP right now. So much of the process right now is ebb and flow and give and take as it relates to game design that revealing anything right now would open us up to the same problem many others have. Things most likely would change and expectations for things would be created that are unfair to you guys/gals, and our design team.

I would guess that it will be well into next year before we even consider releasing the first details of anything related to the IP creativity wise. Comicon would be my best guess but that's certainly subject to change. We continue to evaluate the marketplace both here and abroad and use that with other things to see what is going to fit best 3-4 years from now.

Please don't stop the creative ideas coming if you have them. This board has the potential to give significantly positive input when you guys aren't slamming each other for stupid posts

[Locithon]

My only suggestion would be not to have a spammy combat system like EQ2 has.

[Cybsled]

Ya, usually the "simple yet deep" is the best way to go.

As for the IP, I have it on good authority that we will be seeing Mansquito: Online shortly from them.

[Laerazi]

Originally Posted by Locithon

My only suggestion would be not to have a spammy combat system like EQ2 has.

If nothing else, make combat abilities meaningful. EQ2 is a pretty good example of how it shouldn't be done.

[Draegan]

I won't talk about game mechanics, that has been talked about ad naseum, and I would expect you folks are pretty smart to know what works and what doesn't. However since you're looking into game engines right now and that can lead to what you're capable as far as graphics, here's my opinion. I'd like to see EQ2 and VG's art style be the last game that uses them. The plastic, unreal, shiny and awful texturing be gone.

Best enviroments to date, in my opinion, have been LOTRO's. All character modeling in most of the MMOs have been average, however I've always liked GW's for some reason.

[Traldan]

Originally Posted by Draegan

I won't talk about game mechanics, that has been talked about ad naseum, and I would expect you folks are pretty smart to know what works and what doesn't. However since you're looking into game engines right now and that can lead to what you're capable as far as graphics, here's my opinion. I'd like to see EQ2 and VG's art style be the last game that uses them. The plastic, unreal, shiny and awful texturing be gone.

Best enviroments to date, in my opinion, have been LOTRO's. All character modeling in most of the MMOs have been average, however I've always liked GW's for some reason.

I liked GW's too. I mean, it was unbelievably simple, but yet the overall presentation was nice. GW managed to look beautiful without the insane graphics or the wow-style crap graphics.

[Gaereth]

Yeah...the shiny, realistic stuff has to go. Bring beautiful, artistic, and stylish to the table and while some of the realism asshats would whine, most will thumb up.

[KharzaWHA?]

You know what? Fuck specific requests for such and such art style with this that and the other thing. Here's what I want for artwork in a game.

I want a cohesive art style. I don't care if it's so realistic I cut my eyeballs on the sword edges, or if it's so cartoony that getting drunk makes you vomit rainbows. I want all the different pieces of the world to look like they fit together like they should. That means when you have a campsite, with a few tents and such, it's not just a few models plopped down. Your art team has to go further than that, to different pieces of the world. If there's tents there, and active creatures, then there should be areas where the grass is worn away, yes? If there's a path somewhere, it likely needs more than just a different color of ground. It needs a reason, and it will likely need more identifying features like rocks, posts, and other things. The gist is, you can't create anything good with just models, or just textures, or suchlike.

There's more quality you can add, beyond that, though. Diversifying and identifying players is an important piece of art design. This means humans look relatively similar to eachother, and that human architecture fits with the humans. This means that different factions of the same non-human race might actually have different architecture to go with it. To clarify, Spoon elves would theoretically have different architecture and stylings than Fork elves, but all would be identifiably elven. If that's too many art resources, then get rid of Fork elves. Leaving Fork elves in, with Spoon elf stylings, means they're really just stupid Spoon elves.

Lastly, I'd like to see a little bit of equality in genders. I don't care if you've got gratuitous panty shots and cleavage galore, give it in equal measure to both genders. If you leave it out for one gender, leave it out for another. I personally don't care either way, and I think you'd probably get the best results by giving everyone a choice between modest styling and exaggerated sexuality.

[Draegan]

WOW actually does that very well. So does LOTRO.

[Cadrid]

I will just say that Warhammer Online's "public quests" is a good idea. With proper refinement and making the events more dynamic by mixing scripts, AI and player influence, it could add longevity and some spontaneity/surprise to any MMO.

Sure, systematically thwarting the bandit threat is neat, but wouldn't it be cool if the event wasn't always the same deal over and over? How about if it took the bandit lord to spawn, roam around "recruiting" other bandits, then capturing a small village and sending out raiding parties until players intervened? Sometimes a player will find the lord when he's still alone and nip it in the bud, sometimes a group will take out the lord and his posse before they ransack the village, and sometimes the event will mature to "Public Quest" status that requires the aid of a number of folks in the area to finish off the baddie invasion.

It's a rough idea, at best, but something that I feel has been sorely missing from games in general, and MMOs in particular.

[tad10]

Since you asked-- I want 27 classes with a subjob system. Given the eight types of class archetypes: tank, healer, melee dps, magic dps, debuff, buff, pet and CC -- there are 29 unique combinations of this archetypes. Combine all these classes with a subjob system and you never have to worry about balancing for solo (subjob system will take care of that) and just have to work on designing group and raid content around the 8 archetypes. There should be enough archetype abilities in anyone group that no one should ever be LFG for Healer or etc.


Classes are:
Tank Classes
Tank + Healer/Tank+MDPS/Tank+ADPS/Tank+Buff
Tank + Debuff/ Tank + Pet/ Tank + CC

Healers Classes
Healer + DPS/Healer+MDPS/Healer+ADPS/Healer+Buff
Healer+Debuff/Healer+Pet/Healer+CC

Melee DPS Classes
MDPS+ADPS/MDPS+BUff/MDPS+Debuff/MDPS+Pet/MDPS+CC

Arcane DPS Classes
ADPS+Buff/ADPS+Debuff/ADPS+Pet/ADPS+CC

Buff Classes
Buff+Debuff/Buff+Pet/Buff+CC

Debuff Classes
Debuff+Pet/Debuff+CC

Pet/CC Class
Pet+CC

Two classes are degenerative (ADPS+MDPS and Buff+Debuff) so total of reasonable classes is 27.
* * *
Oh re Khazar's post - I do NOT want to see equity in avatar protrayal. I'm all for T&A showing on female avatars -- but I must say no buttcracks on the male avatars. The MMORPG audience is largely male and that isn't going to change with your MMO.

[Drtyrm]

Originally Posted by tad10

Combine all these classes with a subjob system and you never have to worry about balancing for solo (subjob system will take care of that) There should be enough archetype abilities in anyone group that no one should ever be LFG for Healer or etc.

Did you actually play FFXI? This is armchair designing at its best. Your 'subjob system' gives players freedom to advance a single character, it has no direct correlation to balance. Even with the freedom of subs, most main classes had at best 2 or 3 subs that worked with any amount of synergy, i.e. your tank was Pal/war or Nin/war.