Search results

I agree that all designers should be gamers, I don"t agree that all gamers should be designers. I don"t trust most hardcore (non-designer) gamers to design clever and fun mechanics. I trust a few hardcore gamers to mathematically balance the coefficients in different abilities; for example...

Right, but I wouldn"t trust players when it comes to fun. I wouldn"t want them anywhere near DESIGN. What I want players to help with is mathematical finetuning and balance - not, "will this mechanic end up being fun" but "will this mechanic with these coefficients end up being too strong"?

Yeah, Ngruk is mixing up apples and oranges here a bit. I wouldn"t trust any player with coming up with new abilities or new class mechanics. What I trust a select few mathematically gifted players with is TUNING pre-existing game-mechanics. There are simulations that can predict exactly how...

Sure Ngruk, but what does that have to do with a single player using a publically available spreadsheet or publically available perfectly commented code (simulationcraft - Google CodeorRawr - Home) can predict the impact of some changes more exactly than a developer? Err, no no no. Sorry but...

As a trivial example, Sebudai posted this right after the hunter changes had gone in: Ghostcrawler a week later: I can dig you up a huge amount, but basically when it comes to DPS/PvP, a fair few members of the community are waaaaay ahead of developers, because developers have to watch all...

I think this is the case for creating content, and I think even the most blizzard hating person in the universe cannot deny that the amount of effort that goes into creating zones by blizzard is incredible. Everything from the art direction, the lore, the pacing, it is all perfectly and lovingly...

Right, I agree - the thing is if you post this, someone inevitably counters by saying that while players have been correct about a lot of things, players as a whole have been incorrect about more things than not. I think a solution to this is to have a forum similar to the old beta-boards...

In fairness, I think developers do talk to a few players directly, but while I was in the loop in having the "batphone" to the EQ developers, I do not in WoW, so my personal perspective is skewed. I do know that a few of the balance changes they have made, especially on the PvP front, are...

Ngruk, I think the point is, if you look at the playerbase as a whole, most players have a horrendous track record as far as balance predictions. I completely agree with you. Take hunter balancing changes though that they recently did to nerf BM. Sebudai (who posts here a few times) posted on...

What exactly did he say that gave you that impression Cylus? If anything what he said is pretty much what you expect to hear at such a conference, just general talk of leadership and emphasis on building a team - nothing particularly new, but then again, what else do you expect at a "leadership...

Has any MMORPG done pvp balance right? Guildwars kind of got close, and WoW season 2 was pretty good as well, but PvP balance has been sort of a pipedream.

I know absolutely nothing about baseball, but isn"t Ngruk a sport superstar? That alone probably is why he is credible enough to pitch an idea and get people to listen - as a society tend to worship our sport champions. This doesn"t mean that his game will be automatically amazing, but it...

You think so? After enough people got burnt on MMO"s, is it still easy to get funding? I mean there were enough spectacular failures that I am worried that not many people are willing to step up to Blizzard now.

WoW (and EverQuest) makes the best improvements when they actually feel pressure from their competition. WoW at the moment has no competition whatsoever so they are taking their sweet time with fixing broken shit and fucked up game balance. Witness the abortion that is the current arena...

This post reeks of jealousy.

Ngruk, by your original request I had the impression you were requesting people to give you not design-related features that the game has, but more technical details that were required before people considered even picking up the game.

Rather than game balance / content issues, simple features that if they are absent ensure that I won"t even bother playing the game. These seem minor and are mostly a given, but here is a small list: 1. A perfectly responsibe UI. A lot of games have some minor lag/imperfect animation etc -...

Did you see how all the LDON maps were literally copy/pasted over and over? Let me try to get the images, this was not a case of re-using assets like in WoW where a few caves/houses are similar, this was a case of dungeons being literally cut and pasted hallways tied together. Edit: Here...

For whatever it is worth, I always thought cartoony graphics looked better than any attempts at realistic graphics. See WoW vs Vanguard - they just age much much better.

Sam the motherfucking man deathwalker is back. Sam, fuck the hataz, I look forward to hearing more of your tales. How is Zek these days, all boring and dead?

What MMORPG related "hypes" has he delivered on? Curt has been exceedingly good about not really promising any specifics or going into details.

You missed: Enh/war/druid or Enh/Rogue/Druid for 3s - very strong combos. For 5"s, you can play 3 healer war/hunter, and the melee cleave combo is pal/priest - you cannot afford a resto druid healing, you need the extra dispells to keep your melee mobile.

I really have no problem with no ability to switch between classes, but I would like a much greater commitment to class balance from developers. Tipically, if things are overpowered PvE, they get nerfed very quickly, but if classes are overpowered relative to each other they get nerfed very very...

It is a matter of encounter complexity and reaction time. WoW is by far the "twitchiest" MMORPG and has a humangous amount of information going in that you all need to know exactly in real time. As long as raid encounters are simple, then you can get away with just showing information...

A bit faster would be nice, but if I had to choose, I"d rather each expansion was a masterpiece rather than having expansions like ldon or legacy of ykesha. EQ did have some incredible expansions like Kunark, Velious, PoP. Even DoDH was really good. Some expansions like GoD, Ykesha, LDoN were...

Excuse me, but what has he "shown" from a MMORPG point of view? As a European, I have gathered he is an incredible sport legend who is also valued for his integrity. Fantastic, sports need more of those people - but other than in an abstract way, those qualities don"t transfer over to leading...

Haha well, we saw that hyping things up too much can backfire spectacularly. Pardo never ever hyped WoW - I wish he did talk more though, expecially about his philosophy of design.

In that there is only one right answer and the other answer is wrong, or in that it causes a shitload of mouthbreathers to start arguing and showcasing how dumb they are?

That shit about on the tick is trivlal and any decent bard could do it, I played a bard as a 4th box and it was very easy. The basis for pulling like that was abusing the fact that mobs could only "call" for help once every tick, and a tick in EQ is 6 seconds. Here is how it works - you...

High end wow is ridiculously unforgiving in terms of playskill. I played in a very high end guild in EverQuest and most of the players I used to play alongside couldn"t handle anything at the SSC level, just because of how fast paced WoW is compared to EQ and how much faster the reaction times...

Genjiro, there is also the non-trivial issue that while FD pulling was a blast for monks, it SUCKED ASS for everyone else to wait for the monk to take 15 minutes and split the mobs to the raid. Remember the Javelin pulls on the triplet in NToV? As a monk learning those pulls was incredibly fun...

Lack of polish/love of perfection. There are only two things I care about in an MMORPG. Great gameplay, lots of great polished content. Too many people are trying to be re-evolutionary. I want a game with the basics done perfectly well, before everything else fancy is added on top. There is...

University have professors, not teachers. If your professors accept a quotation from wikipedia on any serious paper they are dumb and you should ask for a refund for your tuition.

You don"t think using the slow from rez to prevent the slow from the 4th warder AoE was an exploit? I mean it was brilliant, but it was really really borderline.

Tigole was the guild leader of one of the most leading edge guilds in the game, had a fantastic sense of humour, and had the fortune of playing alongside some Blizzard developers. Furor lead the top EQ guild, understood a lot more about game mechanics than many people of his time, and wrote some...

Hahahhaah, he really thought he could get a job when his job credentials are "talking a lot of shit on a messageboard" and "pretending to know insider sources"? This is hilarious. Hell hath no fury like a spurned fanboy.

Utnayan is absolutely insane. I speculated he has Brad"s bullseyes in his house, but I think he probably has fullsize blow up dolls that he torments, and he spends his evenings howling at the computer dreaming of what he will do to McQuaid one day.... Brad, I hope you have good security...

Haha truth. I always wonder how people who happen to play insanely overpowered classes can have the cognitive dissonance to not see how overpowered they are - see monks during luclin, knights during PoP, necromancers in early EQ, fury warriors during Naxx, etc.. If you are overpowered, face...

I am a prophet.

Because 2+2=4 is a fact, I like Vanguard/I don"t like Vanguard is not a fact, it is an opinion, who everyone by now is aware of. I never bought Vanguard, so I am not sure how I was ever wrong. The game is a lot of fun for a fair few of my friends, but it wasn"t what I was looking for, perhaps...