Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Burnem Wizfyre · Jan 31, 2009

FoghornDeadhorn said:
Well, Blizzard chuckles at it too I think, considering the fact that, in the midst of all the terrible recommendations that are given here, real solutions which are never implemented are suggested. I may not know as much about the devs currently working on WoW as some of the industry insiders, but I know for a fact that not everyone pulling the leversreallyknows what they"re doing. That"s been proven time and time again.

And yes. I am saying I"d do a better job than some of them. No amount of "you"ve never seen behind the wizard"s curtain" BS can explain away blatantly wrong decisions which take 6-18 months to backpedal from.

Glyph of Holy light changed to 20 yard radius, anyone with 2 brain cells knew that was over powered.

Ngruk_foh · Jan 31, 2009

FoghornDeadhorn said:
And yes. I am saying I"d do a better job than some of them. No amount of "you"ve never seen behind the wizard"s curtain" BS can explain away blatantly wrong decisions which take 6-18 months to backpedal from.

I laugh when I read stuff like this because folks just refuse to believe it"s as hard as it is. There is not a member of the gaming community that doesn"t think they could do it better, me included, in some game.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas that can actually be implemented and made fun are not. The process from idea to actual implementation is so far from what I had ever thought it could be it"s silly.

This quote is a perfect example
"Glyph of Holy light changed to 20 yard radius, anyone with 2 brain cells knew that was over powered."

Anyone with 2 brain cells who had to only focus on that one spell sure. But anyone with 2 brain cells, who also had to factor in the thousand or so variables attached to this spell and it"s effects within the spell system, PVP combat, PVE combat and about a hundred other things likely saw it differently.

Imagine the WoW game, done in chart form, with a box to represent every single system in your game. Now put those boxes into a tiered system, from most important (boxes affected by most systems, or that affect most systems) to least important (boxes that affect the least amount of systems, and are least affected). It is a MASSIVE, and I mean MASSIVE amount of data, in hundreds, if not thousands of boxes.

That"s a first step imo, after that is done, from that day forward, every single game design decision you make starts at one of those tiers and spiders out, affecting 1 or more systems. That"s every single CHANGE/ADD/DELETE from the basic game system setup.

It"s just not that easy, no matter what you want to believe.

The amazing part is watching people like Jason Roberts and Travis, Steve, and others, who, on that day when your game is laid out in a visual format, they go into a mode of thinking that has them seeing the boxes with regards to every decision and discussion going forward.

I"ve been the instigator of massive box impacting and changing discussions/decisions, and learned very quickly that there is a definitive dev cost in time and money to every single one.

Daezuel · Jan 31, 2009

^^ and no amount of boxes trumps common sense. If you play the game at any decently high level of pvp OR pve you know most of every classes abilities, talents, etc...some of the changes they make are serious mistakes just based on common sense alone and if these changes are going through 20 peoples hands someone has to see that and stick their hand up and say something.

I find it laughable people are pointing to the WOTLK expansion and saying anything positive about it. Yeah, the zones are nice and the leveling process was good. That"s about it, otherwise it is more of the same yet LESS challenging than all their prior content at any point in time. People are bored, shit bored. Pvp balance is a joke, pve content is done. Their servers are taking massive shits right now, their server optimizations have made gameplay worse for a significant number of players, and wintergrasp is probably the worst idea they"ve ever had.

If there was ONE decent MMO out there they might actually be in trouble...they are mailing it in at this point and it"s very disappointing.

faille · Jan 31, 2009

If only there was a way to test those changes, provide feedback, release it to smaller a number of players and get an outside perspective from them.

Genjiro · Jan 31, 2009

Which is also why some games have separate data tags attached for things like pve and pvp. If you choose to use a catchall for both, you are going to have a widely screwed up system like WoW has been for arena for practically every season.

If target = player
If target = npc

It"s not that hard, and any extra initial legwork such as the above would have saved them endless nightmares and balance problems if they had gone this way early on. "Lesser" games such as the City of ________ games did this a long time ago and realized, holy shit we can fix 1 side of the coin and not screw up the other!!

FoghornDeadhorn_foh · Jan 31, 2009

Ngruk said:
I laugh when I read stuff like this because folks just refuse to believe it"s as hard as it is. There is not a member of the gaming community that doesn"t think they could do it better, me included, in some game.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas that can actually be implemented and made fun are not. The process from idea to actual implementation is so far from what I had ever thought it could be it"s silly.

This quote is a perfect example
"Glyph of Holy light changed to 20 yard radius, anyone with 2 brain cells knew that was over powered."

Anyone with 2 brain cells who had to only focus on that one spell sure. But anyone with 2 brain cells, who also had to factor in the thousand or so variables attached to this spell and it"s effects within the spell system, PVP combat, PVE combat and about a hundred other things likely saw it differently.

Imagine the WoW game, done in chart form, with a box to represent every single system in your game. Now put those boxes into a tiered system, from most important (boxes affected by most systems, or that affect most systems) to least important (boxes that affect the least amount of systems, and are least affected). It is a MASSIVE, and I mean MASSIVE amount of data, in hundreds, if not thousands of boxes.

That"s a first step imo, after that is done, from that day forward, every single game design decision you make starts at one of those tiers and spiders out, affecting 1 or more systems. That"s every single CHANGE/ADD/DELETE from the basic game system setup.

It"s just not that easy, no matter what you want to believe.

The amazing part is watching people like Jason Roberts and Travis, Steve, and others, who, on that day when your game is laid out in a visual format, they go into a mode of thinking that has them seeing the boxes with regards to every decision and discussion going forward.

I"ve been the instigator of massive box impacting and changing discussions/decisions, and learned very quickly that there is a definitive dev cost in time and money to every single one.

You"re making it sound harder than it is. Sure, these games are overwhelmingly complex, blah blah blah. In the end though, people are making lots of individual changes. Some are big; some are small. Some of these changes are predicted by the community with overwhelming accuracy to be too good or too bad and Blizzard goes forward with them anyway.

There"s a big difference between "why don"t you guys make it so Charge doesn"t leave me trailing outside of melee range of something I"m following" (technical difficulty) and "Glyph of Holy light at 20 yards is overpowered" (obvious and easily adjustable).

I won"t argue that at your stage, where your game stands, it takes some high-mindedness that most players don"t possess to figure out how various things will impact the game. However, no matter how cocky developers get, they will always be massively outnumbered by their customers; and like it or not some of those customers will be smarter than them.

And some of those levers are really not that hard to pull.

Genjiro · Jan 31, 2009

I played with several of the high ups and lower downs from the Blizz staff for years in EQ, including Pardo (who I might add is a real prick). None of them were rocket scientists, even though a couple had egos the size of Jupiter. Hell tons of the changes you saw from EQ to WoW were things that guildmembers would bitch about in /guildchat that we didn"t like or just thought were retarded. So yea, I think you can chalk up a good many of those changes from EQ-->WoW as simply those guys actually listening to players they knew (for the most part) weren"t morons.

Back to whatever point I originally wanted to make....it might seem like a lot to absorb and I"m sure it is (like any career would be) when you first start out, but anything where you jump head first into a brand new career with zero experience, and that isn"t flipping burgers, will have a similarly steep learning curve.

WillzZz_foh · Jan 31, 2009

Ngruk said:
Ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas that can actually be implemented and made fun are not. The process from idea to actual implementation is so far from what I had ever thought it could be it"s silly.

Yes, ideas are a dime a dozen. People who come up withGood Ideas, and can turn bad ideas in to good ones are not nearly as common. Assuming that there is this great pool of talent in the world of gaming is a logical farce which has caught up to almost every game in existence. The process never was, and never will be, the problem. Great pieces of art and entertainment will always be made under strenous circumstances. That will never change. Anyone can take a good idea and ruin it (see: almost every MMO in existence), then blame it on a lack of time/money. Good developers will make the most of the time they have and make a game which isn"t just an unfulfilled alpha feature list with a promise to change things in the future. The long(err short, whatever!) and winding process is not the problem, it"s the holier-than-thou developers who think they"re god"s gift to gaming that cause so many games to fail.

Imagine the WoW game, done in chart form, with a box to represent every single system in your game. Now put those boxes into a tiered system, from most important (boxes affected by most systems, or that affect most systems) to least important (boxes that affect the least amount of systems, and are least affected). It is a MASSIVE, and I mean MASSIVE amount of data, in hundreds, if not thousands of boxes.

Do you think anyone on this message board is totally incapable of comprehending the amount of information in these games? Really now...

The amazing part is watching people like Jason Roberts and Travis, Steve, and others, who, on that day when your game is laid out in a visual format, they go into a mode of thinking that has them seeing the boxes with regards to every decision and discussion going forward.

I"ve been the instigator of massive box impacting and changing discussions/decisions, and learned very quickly that there is a definitive dev cost in time and money to every single one.

Who wouldn"t want to spend more time in [ Preproduction / "HEY GUYS IT WOULD BE AWESOME IF..." ] mode? I just hope you"re spending that time wisely, and not pulling a TR every 6 months because of a sudden revelation that you"ve wasted the last 6 months. At least you"re saying the right things =)

Cybsled · Feb 1, 2009

Maybe to distill what Ngruk was saying since people are giving him flak, perhaps it could put as "Developers have a ton of stuff they"re dealing with and they have to account for alot of stuff, you"ll need to excuse them if they don"t instantly correct an "obvious" error without looking into other stuff first".

To draw a comparison, I"ll use group insurance (since that"s what I"m most familiar with hehe). Lets say you have a claim on some guy, and there is some issue with the benefits being claimed. Maybe someone screwed up on the employer side and administered the wrong benefit, or maybe they didn"t read the policy and thought something was ok when it wasn"t, or maybe the insurance company screwed up when they made a typo in the policy or forgot to add some clause, or whatever. So to the person making the claim, they might go "Who cares? Fix this!!!! It"s an easy fix! Why is this taking so long?". But on the insurance side, you"re not just looking at that one claim, you have to consider this could potentially effect THOUSANDS of other claims, past present or future, so you need to make sure all your departments are on the same boat and every aspect of the policy/the group/etc are accounted for before you can do the "easy fix" to the claim. That way when you do fix the issue, you"ve accounted for everything and you won"t be required to do more fixes down the line, which would impact other claims.

Fammaden_foh · Feb 1, 2009

I guess what people are saying though is why would a change like the HL glyph (which I know nothing about) have gone in at all, when 20k players could have told them it was a bad move. That"s how I"m getting it, but this is a post production type of thing, not really initial development. It gets back to the idea of having hardcore players as free testers. You don"t really need player consultants on the payroll when the game is live, you should have plenty of free ones. Its just how you manage that resource and how you filter out the signal to noise on the feedback that I think has been a stumbling block.

Burnem Wizfyre · Feb 1, 2009

Ngruk said:
I laugh when I read stuff like this because folks just refuse to believe it"s as hard as it is. There is not a member of the gaming community that doesn"t think they could do it better, me included, in some game.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas that can actually be implemented and made fun are not. The process from idea to actual implementation is so far from what I had ever thought it could be it"s silly.

This quote is a perfect example
"Glyph of Holy light changed to 20 yard radius, anyone with 2 brain cells knew that was over powered."

Anyone with 2 brain cells who had to only focus on that one spell sure. But anyone with 2 brain cells, who also had to factor in the thousand or so variables attached to this spell and it"s effects within the spell system, PVP combat, PVE combat and about a hundred other things likely saw it differently.

Imagine the WoW game, done in chart form, with a box to represent every single system in your game. Now put those boxes into a tiered system, from most important (boxes affected by most systems, or that affect most systems) to least important (boxes that affect the least amount of systems, and are least affected). It is a MASSIVE, and I mean MASSIVE amount of data, in hundreds, if not thousands of boxes.

That"s a first step imo, after that is done, from that day forward, every single game design decision you make starts at one of those tiers and spiders out, affecting 1 or more systems. That"s every single CHANGE/ADD/DELETE from the basic game system setup.

It"s just not that easy, no matter what you want to believe.

The amazing part is watching people like Jason Roberts and Travis, Steve, and others, who, on that day when your game is laid out in a visual format, they go into a mode of thinking that has them seeing the boxes with regards to every decision and discussion going forward.

I"ve been the instigator of massive box impacting and changing discussions/decisions, and learned very quickly that there is a definitive dev cost in time and money to every single one.

Are you serious?? That change didn"t even last a whole 2 days before they nerfed it. I don"t care how much you think average joe MMO"er has no idea about balance or good ideas, but he can figure out something is over powered and stupid if its as blatantly obvious as that Holy Light Glyph.

It"s down right amazing like someone said that no one at blizzard stopped that from hitting live, it was on the PTR for weeks, internal testing had WEEKS to mess around with that glyph. Yet the moment i saw the change mentioned on the PTR notes i said "I for one welcome our new healing over lord paladins" do i some how think im smart for being able to recognize something that is completely over powered and makes a 1 button spamming class the best healer in the game? No i don"t, but i expect someone who gets paid to do this for a living to have enough common sense about healing to be able to figure this out. Sorry Curt, but you give these guys way to much credit in some cases.

Burnem Wizfyre · Feb 1, 2009

Here is just an example, i call it "Spot the blatantly over powered change" game.

Glyph of Arcane shot, mana refunded 30% up from 20%
Glyph of Frost Fire, damage increased by 3% and crit 3% up from 2%
Glyph of Circle of Healing, removes the cool down on the circle of healing ability

FoghornDeadhorn_foh · Feb 1, 2009

Fammaden said:
I guess what people are saying though is why would a change like the HL glyph (which I know nothing about) have gone in at all, when 20k players could have told them it was a bad move. That"s how I"m getting it, but this is a post production type of thing, not really initial development. It gets back to the idea of having hardcore players as free testers. You don"t really need player consultants on the payroll when the game is live, you should have plenty of free ones. Its just how you manage that resource and how you filter out the signal to noise on the feedback that I think has been a stumbling block.

Yeah, I think I"m saying "let me run that by guild chat" has proven a more effective testing method than whatever they do -- technical issues aside. I also think when someone says "let"s do X" it is sometimes obvious that they could do Y instead, but are too "smart" and "experienced" to do it. They have internal numbers, what ho.

Fadaar · Feb 1, 2009

What totally ended up screwing the 20 yd range was CoH and WG getting nerfed at the same time. If that hadn"t happened I guarantee you it either would have gone largely unnoticed. Well maybe not unnoticed, but the numbers wouldn"t have been skewed ao horribly in paladin"s favors.

Burnem Wizfyre · Feb 1, 2009

It"s an extreme, somethings like a % here, or a % there going either way to get the desired changes and thats where the real tough decisions come in. Those things are the tough ones and require lots of testing to find out if its enough, or just wasn"t needed and give the class to much power.

Making Thunder clap a 20 yard radius is something anyone whose ever tanked a 5 man let alone a raid instance would quickly spot as something thats over powered. Some things just aren"t hard to determine rather or not they would be over powered, even for the joe casual mmo"er, yet some how some of these things hit live.

Burnem Wizfyre · Feb 1, 2009

Fadaar said:
What totally ended up screwing the 20 yd range was CoH and WG getting nerfed at the same time. If that hadn"t happened I guarantee you it either would have gone largely unnoticed. Well maybe not unnoticed, but the numbers wouldn"t have been skewed ao horribly in paladin"s favors.

Yes, they would have still been skewed in the paladins favor. People would have still noticed it, because rather some people want to believe it or not the nerf to WG and CoH was more of a nerf to just CoH. Spamming CoH had a purpose, spamming WG made you ignorant.

The only people that might not have noticed it were people with heavy heavy ranged compositions. The glyph negated anyone to ever throw a heal on the melee, completely screwing shamans and to a lesser extent the coh spam happy priest.

Genjiro · Feb 1, 2009

Where blizzard shits the bed, and you especially saw this in beta wotlk (when I dont know how many times GC fucked up this way and made it clear on the forums), was their internal testing versions were like 5 builds ahead of the ptr.

So we have stupid shit that ends up going live that some random lackey at blizzard likely figured out was a bad idea and fixed between the ptr/current beta version and their own version 5 builds ahead, or where they might have never even realized was an issue because the code in a future build fixed the bug they never noticed. Its nice they try to work ahead of time, but it comes back to bite them in the ass more often than not. Somewhere between PTR and our super sekret Blizzard future build 5.0 the communication doesnt happen and things turn into a giant clusterfuck. I can almost guarantee you this is what happened with the amazing new arena point system this past week where people were either losing or gaining insane points for W/L"s.

whaerf_foh · Feb 1, 2009

Some of these changes are predicted by the community with overwhelming accuracy to be too good or too bad and Blizzard goes forward with them anyway

Sometimes the community may make great predictions about game changes -that"s true. Then again all changes that don"t turn out the way the community predicted are quickly forgotten and actually never even acknowledged.

Not to say some pretty stupid things don"t make it live in various games "cause they do. I just don"t think the masses would be as good at making a healthy game as some people perceive.

Fammaden_foh · Feb 1, 2009

whaerf said:
Sometimes the community may make great predictions about game changes -that"s true. Then again all changes that don"t turn out the way the community predicted are quickly forgotten and actually never even acknowledged.

Not to say some pretty stupid things don"t make it live in various games "cause they do. I just don"t think the masses would be as good at making a healthy game as some people perceive.

So like, Fog, Dumar, Makata and Zehn finally get to design a game together and....

FoghornDeadhorn_foh · Feb 1, 2009

Fammaden said:
So like, Fog, Dumar, Makata and Zehn finally get to design a game together and....

- Every class would have energy
- All classes would have an "agree with the developers" keybind
- Tokenized loot would give way to drop-down-menu loot
- No instances
- No such thing as "rewarding, small-scale PVP"
- /played would combine with UO hours; nameplates would include "Played UO"
- Raid dungeons would resemble Zelda
- All racials will include an innate "dies to rogues" ability

I"ll let you assign those design imperatives as you will.

Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

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