Fires of Heaven and our continued disappointment

Warhammer could have been good, but having 2 factions instead of 3 really fucked it all up. That and some awful client/server tech that made casting a spell feel laggy. Vanguard was trying to do way too much with the tech of the time, with todays game engines they might have pulled it off. Pantheon is a glorified fan project, with Brad's passing there really isn't any industry experience left at VR besides maybe Steve Clover. Curt Schilling's game was way WAY too expensive, it was going to be a 200+ million dollar game but they only managed to come up with about half.

And EQ3... yeah it's probably never gonna happen. If the leak from a few years ago is real then they were trying to do some kind of battle royale which was probably shelved now that that fad is over.

dumb shit is why i left online gaming. this discussion is dumb shit.

Mist said:

I wanna make an MMO that lasts a month and then resets. Let people sign up for four different types of month-long campaigns:

Full lootable PvP
Factional limited lootable PvP
Corpse-Retrieval PvE
Carebear PvE

A campaign costs 10 dollars to sign up for.

Let the loot RNG go wild. Let players find shit that gets OP as fuck. Write the time-looping nature of the game into the story and seasonal content somehow. Have miniscule amounts of carry-over between seasons, like a single stat or perk point + earned cosmetic shit.

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Arent there semi popular indie dev MMO games like that? Albion Online? Crowfall? One of those. I mean, the theory is neat. Sort of like an MMO based Roguelike game. Each season, you collect inherent bonuses that arent "life changing" but enough that if you were a lvl 1 fighting rats in Freeport, you would be killing lvl 3 rats instead. Longevity / legacy alternate advancement - a single point a season, and perks that cost like 5 points that add a proc effect to your attacks that scales off level. Max level being the only requirement to get to the seasons reward point, or something. Idk. But I would try it if the day to day gameplay was great.

Chukzombi said:

dumb shit is why i left online gaming. this discussion is dumb shit.

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I know your post history. You specialize in it. Roll around in the mud on a Wednesday afternoon, fucker.

Lunis said:

Warhammer could have been good, but having 2 factions instead of 3 really fucked it all up. That and some awful client/server tech that made casting a spell feel laggy. Vanguard was trying to do way too much with the tech of the time, with todays game engines they might have pulled it off. Pantheon is a glorified fan project, with Brad's passing there really isn't any industry experience left at VR besides maybe Steve Clover. Curt Schilling's game was way WAY too expensive, it was going to be a 200+ million dollar game but they only managed to come up with about half.

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Since Unreal 5 came out and people in the company can work on the same area of a map at the same time on seperate computers without the program having to "bake" - asian MMO's have been plopping out like hot cakes. Thats why I dont necessarily think there is a "resurgence" in the MMO industry from asia. Its just a bunch of companies that are throwing workers at the problem hoping for the best (throwing shit at the wall, hoping something sticks.)

Daidraco said:

Arent there semi popular indie dev MMO games like that? Albion Online? Crowfall? One of those. I mean, the theory is neat. Sort of like an MMO based Roguelike game. Each season, you collect inherent bonuses that arent "life changing" but enough that if you were a lvl 1 fighting rats in Freeport, you would be killing lvl 3 rats instead. Longevity / legacy alternate advancement - a single point a season, and perks that cost like 5 points that add a proc effect to your attacks that scales off level. Max level being the only requirement to get to the seasons reward point, or something. Idk. But I would try it if the day to day gameplay was great.


I know your post history. You specialize in it. Roll around in the mud on a Wednesday afternoon, fucker.


Since Unreal 5 came out and people in the company can work on the same area of a map at the same time on seperate computers without the program having to "bake" - asian MMO's have been plopping out like hot cakes. Thats why I dont necessarily think there is a "resurgence" in the MMO industry from asia. Its just a bunch of companies that are throwing workers at the problem hoping for the best (throwing shit at the wall, hoping something sticks.)

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i'm glad this stale discussion is still exciting for you, been hearing it for 29 years. nothing ever changes.

Mist said:

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i mean, people still play UT. it never gets old because its so simple. thats really all thats required for a good game. KISS is the best game design.

uniqueuser said:

Asian MMOs have been trash since the very start and always will be. If the gacha grinder garbage isn't enough to turn off a normal Westerner, it's the faggot weeb stylizations comically mismatched with plagiarized Western fantasy themes that does it.

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There are 2 types of Asian MMOs:

1) P2W gacha (usually the Korean/Chinese ones)
2) Traditional MMO style (smaller subset overall)

The annoying thing is the P2W gacha MMOs usually have extremely solid combat or really cool mechanics/features and fantastic animation/graphics...which is poisoned by brazen P2W aspects like time gates that can be skipped via RMT or mechanics that punish the player unless they have RMT things

Traditional MMOs are less common but usually solid (see FF14). Of course, there is a vocal population that go "UGH WEEB/ANIME SHIT" and instantly ignore it, even thought it tends to be far superior game wise to a lot of the western shit on offer and does western shit better than most western offerings as well (See Blizzard stealing from Marvel, and SquareEnix stealing from ancient Greek philosophers and Western European history)

I honestly don't understand why there is this sharp hatred for anything with some manner of Asian styling. I remember this forum flipping it's shit about Mists of Pandaria in WoW. Were you people molested in the back alley behind a Dim Sum restaurant?

Cybsled said:

I honestly don't understand why there is this sharp hatred for anything with some manner of Asian styling. I remember this forum flipping it's shit about Mists of Pandaria in WoW. Were you people molested in the back alley behind a Dim Sum restaurant?

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Was being diddled in the back room of Mr. Miyagi's dojo the reason you now enjoy these "Asian stylings"?



As for MoP, the entire concept started as a joke that was seemingly developed into an exercise in humiliating Blizzard's pathetic fanbase while they sat in the Cosby Suite laughing their asses off "oh man I can't believe we made a whole expansion about fucking kung-fu panda bears and these losers still bought it!"

And yet MoP was one of the best xpacs for WoW

Also regarding the male bunny outfits in that screen, that was mostly western players wanting that. There were some vocal people on the JP forums that didn't want the bunny outfits being usable on males lol (originally it was female only)

I think MMORPGs need to start making a choice whether they want to be a large open world with a long leveling experience, or a game focused on tightly tuned, complex raids because it is difficult to design a game that does both well. Many players tend to prefer one style over the other as well. Let's call them sandbox players vs raiders.

A large open world with a long leveling experience is great for sandbox players that enjoy exploring and making their own way. For raiders, it's just something to get over with so they can get to the "real game".
Sandboxers benefit from class interdependency and diversity, raid focused players need classes that are more homogenized so their version of the game doesn't turn into 3 viable specs in a sea of suboptimal ones.
Sandbox players benefit from being able to form flexible size groups with random players, raiders want to form fixed groups at fixed times with known players so they can do their raid and log off.
Sandbox players enjoy game lore and need the game world to make sense internally, for raiders it's more about being challenged by new raid mechanics and consistency with other parts of the game is less important.
Sandbox players want mildly challenging raids where they can bring everyone, raid focused players want to be challenged by the raids so they need more complex and tightly tuned encounters.

You can't really focus your game on both at the same time so you're always leaving behind part of the audience. I think WoW started out mostly as a sandbox and moved heavily into the raider category over time. The genre's "roleplay" origins in 90s computer RPGs and tabletop AD&D fell completely by the wayside. Raid focused players kept playing, sandboxers started leaving.

I think it's one of the reason hardcore classic WoW is doing so well lately, it attracts the sandbox players because it makes the game actually start at level 1, you're just thrown into the world and have to make your own way.

Your post is really 3 categories:
1) Sandbox
2) Casual
3) Hardcore

Sandbox players are a better fit for "Survival MMO light" games to be honest in this day and age. They tend to have minimal directed gameplay, have relatively long leveling/skill up curves, and rely heavily upon the players creating the content. There can be overlap with casual and hardcore players, but the gameplay style is better suited for that type of game IMO.

Harshaw said:

Wait... This place isn't an MMO?

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The loot sucks, but it 100% is.

Cybsled said:

Your post is really 3 categories:
1) Sandbox
2) Casual
3) Hardcore

Sandbox players are a better fit for "Survival MMO light" games to be honest in this day and age. They tend to have minimal directed gameplay, have relatively long leveling/skill up curves, and rely heavily upon the players creating the content. There can be overlap with casual and hardcore players, but the gameplay style is better suited for that type of game IMO.

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There's definite overlap but I wanted to avoid the terms "casual" and hardcore player" because they're kind of nebulous, some consider the difference between the two little more than hours played. I'm mostly referring to what the player's reward structure is: do they want a sandbox where they set their own goals and achieve them, or do they want a specific challenge laid out before them that they have to learn to defeat? It's not really about raids only, it can apply to group (or even solo) content as well but I wanted to keep the post concise.

The survival MMO is a good example. You can't make a survival MMO that has WoW style mythic raids, there's just too many conflicting design requirements.

I've accepted there will never be another experience in my life like Everquest. It was a combination of me being a teenager with unlimited time, the internet being somewhat new, and my first experience with an mmorpg.

I wish DAoC and WoW would have been spaced out further so that I could have played all of them at their release. In my guild on Tholuxe Paells if you even mentioned those games you were shunned, so I did not play those at the beginning.

Even if the perfect MMO came out again, it wouldn't have the same novelty and I sure as hell don't have the time to devote to it. I find that in my older age I spend a lot more time reading about games than playing them.

This probably holds true for the majority of us, and as much as I would love to, I no longer have the time to sit in front of a computer at 3:30 in the afternoon until 3-4 in the morning because I'm no longer a zero-responsibility teenager. 42, 5 kids, business owner, and trying to keep a wife somewhat happy. I'm lucky to play a game a few hours a week.

There needs to be some middle ground for a true MMO to succeed because the generations are completely different. The things that I think made EQ successful in the beginning were the slow leveling process, solo play was generally slow, boring, and nearly impossible for most classes which meant that people had to interact with others for hours on end. Another thing that I think helped EQ succeed was the gearing, and at least initially like someone said above, getting that item with a +3 stat on it was huge. I remember seeing a warrior walk around Freeport in a set of Full Steel armor which was even before the warrior blue quest set came out which I think was called "crafted" if I remember correctly. He was an FOH member, but I can't remember his name to save my life though. I remember camping Drelzna(sp) in Najena for jboots for about 18 hours straight before I got mine. The younger generations don't have the patience for the slow leveling or the slow gearing (like a 50 warrior in FS), because they want everything to be first person shooter paced. On the other side, the generation that loved EQ as stated above, we don't have the time for it. Another MMO that captures the soul like EQ did probably won't be made, and if it did, it would be cancelled in 6 months.

The two things that I didn't like about wow is the lack of community because grouping wasn't necessary, and you could level to 60 pretty damn fast when compared to EQ. The lack of community got even worse when they created the cross server random dungeons. The second item was the gearing. I think they got it right in classic, but they progressed it to quickly in BC and subsequent expansions. Replacing an AQ raid tier item with a green two levels into the next expansion was ridiculous. With exception of a few dungeon pieces, I didn't start replacing the majority of my EQ classic indicolite armor until Kunark raid level items, and some of the classic raid items were still needed/valuable. If I remember correctly, I don't think I replaced my cloak of flames until Velious and Naggy/Vox were essentially the first raid target in EQ.

EQ and WOW were definitely the best, and I think for an MMO to succeed today, there needs to be a solid merger of the two. One that is less of a grindy time sync but slower gear progression also while having the requirement of solid group content that creates community. In other words, a unicorn that is never going to exist.

Just my worthless 2 cents.