EQ Never

Tearofsoul_sl said:

Thread closed.

No more "I wish this" "I hope they will put that" kind of bullshit...

Click to expand...

Meh, I used this thread to spew ideas for hypothetical "never-gunna-happen" games. I figured that posting them here would be less obnoxious than starting new threads. I mean, considering that EQ:Whatever has no info and tons of people were throwing around what if's, it seemed like the place to bullshit.

Zhen is right about any game that holds to the current mmo standards. I think it's amazing that an entire industry has created a template that pukes out absolutely horrible games. I mean this piss washed, boring, repetitive gameplay is the best that anyone can come up with? I really think the AAA mmorpg industry should just die. Let the facebook farmers, small projects and other online genres take over. All they are doing at this point is souring further potential investment with one mega flop after another.

Pancreas_sl said:

I really think the AAA mmorpg industry should just die. Let the facebook farmers, small projects and other online genres take over. All they are doing at this point is souring further potential investment with one mega flop after another.

Click to expand...

Making Schilling/38 Studios attempt to develop a "WoW Killer" from scratch that much more astoundingly short sighted

Lord British Richard Garriot just posted most Game designers just suck and could not agree more.


http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/03...lly-just-suck/

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/19/ri...esigners-suck/

Garriott: 'I think most game designers really just suck'


Richard Garriott has some harsh words and a bit of tough love for game design professionals in a new interview at PC Gamer. Lord British, more visible in the press these days as a result of his successful Shroud of the Avatar Kickstarter project, sat down with the mag to talk at length about what ails gaming and who he thinks is capable of doing something about it.

"I think there's really very few great game designers," Garriott says. "I think Chris Roberts is one of them, Will Wright's another, Peter Molyneux is another. They clearly exist, but on the whole, I think that the design talent in our industry is dramatically lower than we need, as an industry. It's a very hard skill to learn."

Garriott cites a lack of education and a lack of extra-design skills as problems plaguing many designers and the industry at large.

If you're not a good artist and not a good programmer, but you still like games, you become a designer, if you follow me.

You get into Q&A and often design. And the most valuable part of creating a game is the design, which the programmers are technically executing. And they'd be happy to just execute some of them. But in my mind, most artists and programmers are just as much of gamers as the designers, and I usually find in my history that the artists and programmers are, in fact, as good of designers as the designers. They're often better, because they understand the technology or the art.

So we're leaning on a lot of designers who get that job because they're not qualified for the other jobs, rather than that they are really strongly qualified as a designer. It's really hard to go to school to be a good designer."

Source: PC Gamer


FYI cross posted this on 2 threads here that atm, most read as well as post, due to fact his statement applies to them.

Hmm... On one hand, Garriot may have a point; on the other hand, hedidjust hold up Peter Molyneux as an example of a great game designer, which does rather call his judgement into question.

Dandai_sl said:

It's ironic that Garriott of all people would talk about shitty game designers. I have to give credit where credit is due for being the grandfather of all computer RPGs, but the dude's designs are literally from the 80's. Have you seen the feature/gameplay list for his kickstarter game?

Click to expand...

Yes it will work well on my old Atari 2600 and Commdore 64 pc from 1984 on 1200 baud modem, cant wait.

AlekseiFL_sl said:

So we're leaning on a lot of designers who get that job because they're not qualified for the other jobs, rather than that they are really strongly qualified as a designer. It's really hard to go to school to be a good designer.".

Click to expand...

Well, I agree with this quite a bit. Honestly, when going to school, I wanted to design games--it was actually a dream of mine, hell, it still is--I'd work slave labor just to get involved in a game (heh, and I make good money right now..my wife probably wouldn't be happy.) But as I went through school, I got all kinds of conflicting signs on how to train for this field. Everyone said "you have to be a programmer", but that's not what I wanted to do--I wanted to write the stories for games, and design systems to make them work. As a super nerd, I designed and gave away my D20 kits/system in the comic shop. I had like 9 groups using it before I went to college. I'm sure it was just a mediocre system (But better than 2nd edition ), but I it was something I loved doing, I liked designing the rules and writing setting more than playing....But there was literally nothing on "how" to do that professionally, when I read about people who worked in the field, most of them I found started either in QA, or they "fell" into it. I got one piece of advice "learn to write" from an online friend who worked in the field. So, while I kept my main degree Economics/Accounting, all my extra credits went towards writing--but it didn't matter, when I sent applications out, it was all "need prior experience".

I know most industries have this vicious loop of only hiring prior experience, but the gaming industry seems to be particularly incestuous with it. Anyway, I gave up and got a boring job--but to this day, I'd have liked it if "game design" was a developed field of it's own, with a proper training-->placement track, rather than the small circle industry it is right now. Oh well, working on the accounting end of the world, I can see why investors have their balls shrink up when they don't see previous experience on a team--Games are a long horizon for investment, with risky return prospects....From the outside, looking in, moving capital into gaming is a risk and usually you minimize risk with experience.

Gamebreaker has the same story I posted about Garriot but the are always trolling in titles to get more peps to read the stories lol.

The Title is


http://www.gamebreaker.tv/mmorpg/shr...esigners-suck/

http://east.paxsite.com/schedule/pan...videogame-rpgs

Not specifically about EQN, but there's a chance some discussion might be had about it. Better than the complete drought we're in right now.

Smokejumper just stated that the reveal for EQ3 isn't until August 1 (SoE Live)...

Question during the panel:
"Why don't games allow one character to level all classes like in FF11 and FF14?"

Smokejumper:
"that's a really good question....." hmmm, nice hint for EQ Next. SJ seems to be excited about the topic.

AlekseiFL_sl said:

"I think there's really very few great game designers," Garriott says. "I think Chris Roberts is one of them, Will Wright's another, Peter Molyneux is another.

Click to expand...

Goes to show just how inbred the industry is. Add Brad McQuaid and John Romero and you have almost the complete list of Video Games one hit wonders.

In fairness though, how many people have really been a part of multiple successes? I'm sure several of them have resume's with games they have worked out a mile long but most of these guys have been involved with 1 or 2 major games. Brad has what? EQ and VG? I'm not taking up for him or anything but I don't see a developer or designer out there that has a list of 8-10 games that all have A+'s, especially when you are speaking in terms of exclusively the MMO genre.

Muligan_sl said:

In fairness though, how many people have really been a part of multiple successes? I'm sure several of them have resume's with games they have worked out a mile long but most of these guys have been involved with 1 or 2 major games. Brad has what? EQ and VG? I'm not taking up for him or anything but I don't see a developer or designer out there that has a list of 8-10 games that all have A+'s, especially when you are speaking in terms of exclusively the MMO genre.

Click to expand...

Making a good and/or successful game requires a shocking amount of luck along with everything else. As much as it pains me to say, I'd say it is overwhelmingly luck.

The simple fact is there are infinitely more states for a game that are bad than that are good. You do your best to use knowledge and experience to minimize those bad states, but the odds will always be against you.

Zehn - Vhex_sl said:

Goes to show just how inbred the industry is. Add Brad McQuaid and John Romero and you have almost the complete list of Video Games one hit wonders.

Click to expand...

Well to McQuaid's credit, Vangard does have some amazing designs ( world, dungeons, classes )... running a company different story.

Future of MMO Panel at Pax discussing characters being able to change to different classes:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aI5C...ilpage#t=2471sbeginning of where SJ responds to the question:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aI5C...ilpage#t=2753s

SJ is clearly trying to hold his tongue. It seems pretty obvious that characters in EQ Next will be able to change classes some how.

Yeah, it does sound like some sort of multiclassing or class change is in the cards.

The language he used when talking about how sandboxy EQN will be is also interesting: him talking about there not yet having been an MMO that truly let you do anything in the game world, that was truly an openworld sandbox, and all that. Is he really suggesting that EQN will be more of a sandbox than the likes of EVE and UO? Because that's the impression I was getting.

Agreed. He makes it sound like they are embracing either a classless system or something more akin to FF11.

It's interesting to watch him squirm while the other developers are talking. He clearly has a lot to say but can't. Someone could probably guess a lot about EQN just by watching his reaction to the other's answers to questions...

pond_scumm_sl said:

Agreed. He makes it sound like they are embracing either a classless system or something more akin to FF11.

It's interesting to watch him squirm while the other developers are talking. He clearly has a lot to say but can't. Someone could probably guess a lot about EQN just by watching his reaction to the other's answers to questions...

Click to expand...

I am hoping for a classless system like UO or AC.

Watch it not only use the PS2 engine but instead be a literal reskin of that game with fantasy skins and spells instead of guns. You change classes at a terminal reskinned to be a mystic shrine or something...

Hopefully they'll make the class changing fit into the world better than that.

I actually kinda agree with what the GW2 dev said on the subject: your character's class helps to define where your character fits into the world/the lore, and letting you just bounce around from one class to another sort of rips the soul out of the whole system. There are ways to do it without that problem, I think, but the norm seems to be, in games that do this, to just make it so you pick another class out of a menu, and bam, you're a new class. It makes the whole class system feel even more mechanical than it already is.