LOL, really not trying to be rude here.. but you just don"t have a clue what it takes to make these things tick. Trust me, I was once like you until I started to see some of the actual behind the scenes junk and no, it"s nothing like a NWN mod that is so cool, why not do that in an MMO!Daezuel said:
Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling
- Thread starter Lord Thanos_foh
- Start date
you have shown no ability whatsoever to think outside of the box. Every single theory craft thread you shoot down every idea everyone has as not possible.Twobit Whore said:
I am 100% positive if I had laid out the Wii design stuff before it was announced you would have laughed at me and said impossible. I am not even trying to be rude or troll here I am 100% serious.
Most everything posted in all of these threads is very possible NOW let alone in 3-4 years when curt"s game ships. Just because it may not be the most cost effective or easiest way does not deem it impossible.
ANYTHING done in a single player game can be done in a MMOG you just have to think outside of the box and change the method of delivery, and of course have the funds and talent to do it. Instead of pointing out how everything is wrong and impossible, how about trying to come up with ideas and ways to make them possible.
in short stop being so damn negative all the time, especially when you are usually wrong or base everything on your personal opinions. Really stop living in the past and trying to tell everyone the limits of everything, look to the future.
We can talk about being babies all you want, but ths statement of "slap mob AI on its on quad-core server" plainly says you do not know what you are talking about. AI is not a limiting factor at this point. In fact it would be no problem for game makers to make AI so good that it is impossible to beat. But you know what? Impossible isn"t fun. It gets old quick and that isn"t a recipe for success when dealing with a recurring subscription based service as your primary income.Daezuel said:
P.S. I vote "think outside the box" be removed as a usable phrase alongside McDonalds, Britteny Spears and AOL analogies.
AI is not the limiting factor. You can script events and give mobs a subset of scripts to run at any given time. That"s there. It"s all about dev time and the tech support behind it. Do you want to spend hours, days and weeks scripting out a mob going to the grocery store and then cooking dinner sleeping then going back to work? Then do this 1000x times for everyone.
Do you really want to wait to repair your gear while the NPC"s sleep?
I second the motion "think outside the box" be removed from any serious discussion.
Do you really want to wait to repair your gear while the NPC"s sleep?
I second the motion "think outside the box" be removed from any serious discussion.
Along with "next-gen" and "revolutionary", please.Draegan said:
Seriously, though. I don"t know that I would advocate an entire life-cycle for NPCs because of the obvious, but having them havesomesort of variation in behavior, and sometimes take initiative in communicating with the player, would be a pleasant change.
Well that depends where in the game you are at now. I certainly read all the quest texts when I did and still do them for the first time. I pretty much stopped on alt 2+, but at that point I have a different agenda for those alts, with questing being more a thing of speeding leveling and making some coin.Bongk said:
As an edit, I was so happy when I discovered the auto scroll button on WOW quest texts. Can"t tell you how many times I died reading them as they were slowly scrolling.
Several things:
Finally, I"d like to support the mechanic of quests seeking you out, rather than the other way around. It adds a lot to the immersion and engagement factors of the game even if it is only a superficial change. Combine this mechanic with the end-loaded questing that WAR does and it would drastically alleviate a lot of the kill quest annoyances.
This absolutely screams that there will be a new novel series by R.A. that ties into the game before it releases, and carries on with it. Maybe I"m reading too much into it, but after that comment, I"d be willing to bet on it. As for the question posed, I think virtually everyone would agree that they would read the quest text if it advanced the story in some way, or gave extra insight into the characters. The task for 38 Studios and R.A. is to create a coherent story that players do get invested in. That"s how things like alternate reality games work, get people invested in a story (Lost for example), then throw minor hints and plot twists at them through otherwise generic games and puzzles and people eat that stuff up.Ngruk said:
I"ll agree that people need a reason to explore the world, but I think quests are an overused way of doing it. How about creating a world that inherently creates an urge to travel and explore, this is a programmed instinct in humans anyway, you just have to tap into it. Like you mentioned, exploration XP is one good, albeit artificial, way of doing this. Besides that, make the world dynamic, immersive, engaging and most of all, mysterious. I believe one of the biggest things that hurts todays MMOs is the lack of mystery surrounding the game world. I realize it"s difficult with todays players completely dissecting game files and information sites popping up everywhere, but if you can keep certain things under wraps it would go a long way to tapping into peoples" instinct to explore and be the "first" to find something.Ngruk said:
Finally, I"d like to support the mechanic of quests seeking you out, rather than the other way around. It adds a lot to the immersion and engagement factors of the game even if it is only a superficial change. Combine this mechanic with the end-loaded questing that WAR does and it would drastically alleviate a lot of the kill quest annoyances.
OneofOne
Silver Baronet of the Realm
- 6,701
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If you want me to actually spend the time to read the quests your writing team has spent the time writing, make it interesting or integral that I do so. Having a head writer shaping the entire story of your world gives you an opportunity other games may not have had. One reason I loved the epic quests in EQ (not necessarily their rare as hell drop implementation - hi2u SSoC) was they had a good story and and were multi-stepped.
If your world has a focus, a REAL story, other than just "Look at our world, we have Wizards and Rangers and Warriors and you can kill goblins and orcs and rats, rats, rats!" the potential for twining your quests together is great. Why would *evil* races and *good* races work together? What if something strong enough to threaten them both came along? I was reading about a game previously that had some sort of undead blight that players would have to perpectually keep at bay. I loved the idea as something that gave the players of the world a focus on, a persistant interactive background story.
Sure you"ll still have your noobie quests like "thin the goblin population of the area" or "get 20 bear meat so Joebob the butcher can keep up with demand". But start giving us quests at early levels that lead into medium/high level quests where we learn about the world"s leading NPCs and about a real menance that actually effects the world. People are too quick to dismiss this kind of story as only possible in single player games, but most of the games we"ve played have done this to a small extent. What I"m saying it make it a gamewide theme. I never played LotR, but they surely were in the best position to do this. You guys might not be going for any sort of gamewide story - maybe you just want to make a Fantasy sandbox - but that"s what I"d like to see.
PS I"m not a Salvatore fan myself either, but free of his TSR/WoTC contraints, I"m curious to see what he can do.
If your world has a focus, a REAL story, other than just "Look at our world, we have Wizards and Rangers and Warriors and you can kill goblins and orcs and rats, rats, rats!" the potential for twining your quests together is great. Why would *evil* races and *good* races work together? What if something strong enough to threaten them both came along? I was reading about a game previously that had some sort of undead blight that players would have to perpectually keep at bay. I loved the idea as something that gave the players of the world a focus on, a persistant interactive background story.
Sure you"ll still have your noobie quests like "thin the goblin population of the area" or "get 20 bear meat so Joebob the butcher can keep up with demand". But start giving us quests at early levels that lead into medium/high level quests where we learn about the world"s leading NPCs and about a real menance that actually effects the world. People are too quick to dismiss this kind of story as only possible in single player games, but most of the games we"ve played have done this to a small extent. What I"m saying it make it a gamewide theme. I never played LotR, but they surely were in the best position to do this. You guys might not be going for any sort of gamewide story - maybe you just want to make a Fantasy sandbox - but that"s what I"d like to see.
PS I"m not a Salvatore fan myself either, but free of his TSR/WoTC contraints, I"m curious to see what he can do.
You better make it an option. I like to use my computer often with sound off, and even if it"s on I"m frequently talking on vent and listening to music; I don"t want to have to rely on audio for any very important information besides easy-to-hear sound effects.Bongk said:
Bongk I"ll take 2bit"s opinion over yours. You just seem to be shouting for this and that without considering dev time, tech support etc of each idea. At least 2bit considers this first whether his ideas are good or bad.
yes lets all worry about dev time and tech support. They asked for ideas not for business advice.Draegan said:
This game is years out and you guys are stuck thinking about things in yesterdays technology.
Sure. I think all devs should put in robots that give handjobs by stimulating my brain by a really cool USB brainwave sender-outer.Bongk said:
You need to be realistic when suggesting things. As far as technology goes, you have to plan for that. Don"t you think WOW had the right idea for allowing for max audience with their tech requirements? Didn"t VG and EQ2 teach a lesson on what happens when you go for real high tech requirements?
so which titles have you shipped and worked on to know the industry so well, to be able to tell everyone what will and won"t be possible years in the future.Draegan said:
High Tech requirements and high graphic requirements are two different things, you keep bringing everything to a grpahics level. Scripted encounters and quests mean nothing to the client PC. And if you think EQ and VG failed because they had to many new ideas think you are mistaken. The reasons they failed have been gone over many times here and those were never the conclusions.
EDIT: also if you have been reading the other thread for game ideas from the anonymous dev. I have been stating there that graphics should take a back seat that this high poly photo real shit sucks and makes games worse as it takes to much of the budget and dev time for something that doesn"t add "fun".
Any game that"s being release in the next 3-4 years should be able to work fully on the computers that are new today. I was also not referring to scripted encounters and quests either.
--
On a completely different note:
I was just posting on another forum for a game in BETA where I was discussing customization in your game. I believe that any game that comes out should allow for full customization on how you receive and view game date. Whether this is your combat log, chat log, combat text above your character, unit frames. Basically WOW Mods.
No game should ship without at least moveable and resizable UI elements, completely customizable chatboxes and everyone should just steal the SCT and SCT damage mod.
--
On a completely different note:
I was just posting on another forum for a game in BETA where I was discussing customization in your game. I believe that any game that comes out should allow for full customization on how you receive and view game date. Whether this is your combat log, chat log, combat text above your character, unit frames. Basically WOW Mods.
No game should ship without at least moveable and resizable UI elements, completely customizable chatboxes and everyone should just steal the SCT and SCT damage mod.
One of the major problem with long quest chains as opposed to wide quest hubs is quest synchronisation.Laerazi said:
The Epic quests of LOTRO are a good example of this. Everyone is going to be on those quests (or nearly everyone). However, if you want a group for Book 3, chapter 6, you have to find people. And you get mostly:
- People who are on chapter 6, but can"t do it for now/are farming some stuff/are busy (ok, we can ignore them)
- People that are too low a level to be able to contribute for that encounter (ok, we can ignore them too)
- People who are not yet on chapter 6, and thus have no interest in helping you, since it"s not going to advance their quest
- People who"ve already finished chapter 6, and thus have no interest in helping you, since they"ve done it and they don"t get anything from it anymore.
and then, when you"re lucky, you find enough people that don"t fit in the 4 categories above to build a working group. Which, 6 months after launch, when the number of people in the zone is expressed in toes and fingers, isn"t going to happen.
If you have few long quest lines, the odds of finding somebody to help you is low. If you have multiple quest lines, you have better odds of having people in one of these at your stage, which is why you get the scattershot of 20 quests running at the same time.
The answer to this is quite simple: Allow people who don"t have the quest step to benefit from the quest.
Right now, if I help someone doing a quest I don"t have, I get the xp from the mobs being killed, and that"s all. It might be a bit better than solo grinding xp, but usually it"s not that much more interesting. But what if I could benefit from the quest. I help someone complete the quest step X, I should get a good chunk of quest XP, maybe as much as doing the quest, maybe a little less. If there"s gold to be had, I should get some share as well. And faction. Of course, you do this on group questlines. Solo questlines don"t require help, so no incentive for help is required (and you place solo questlines so people have things to do when they don"t have enought time to group).
Put incentive to people to help others advancing a quest they don"t have themselves, and suddendly, it"s a lot more easier finding a group to advance your quest. Or even do a quest for warrior A, then a quest for cleric B, then a quest for rogue C... The idea is to encourage people to play together - that"s what MMO are for. Instead of segregating them into little pockets of content with little chance of seeing someone else.
Than what the fuck are you railing on me about? I never asked for higher computer requirements or better graphics...Draegan said:
Making things higher end server side does not mean I need a better computer on client side.
This happens in WOW right now with a lot of the SMV/Netherstorm 5 man quests. My new toon still has those 5 mans to do and I just don"t bother because I don"t feel like annoying guildmates to run me through them since I don"t need the rewards, but I like finishing things off.
VG has this exact problem in areas. Dungeons with 6 step quests that take you to different areas. If you get to part 4 and your group falls apart then finding a full group on part 4 is impossible. So you decide to help out some people just starting and getting them to catch up and by the time you get to part 4 the group falls apart and you"ve gained next to nothing. This also goes back to the running back and forth to an NPC every step annoyance as well. Allowing people to work on steps ahead of where they are would be a decent option so that you can form a group and work on what"s going to help everyone instead of dragging several people down to help several others catch up.Ukerric said:
I also like the solo quests leading to a group culmination. You can work on what you have up until you need a group and then try to find people for a one shot completion. You may not find it instantly, but if it"s just one group quest in your log you can work on other stuff while keeping an eye out for others. Of course that requires your game to be soloable.