Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Kreugen said:

The first time I quit WoW was right after AQ opened, after spending weeks picking flowers. The second time I quit WoW, was after picking a bunch of flowers because one Khara run blew through a huge pile of mana potions. I hate hate HATE harvesting.

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The problem is not with harvesting in itself; the problem lies with the fact that Blizzard made harvesting manadory in order to raid. Why? Because their in-house testers load themselves up to the max with every possible item, buff and potion. This is very poor game design.

Testers are already the best players in the world due to the fact that they test (read: play games) for a living. Testers are the worst focus group you can ever get for your game"s demographic. Obviously there is a huge disconnect between Blizzard"s design dept and their testing dept.

Harvesting and tradeskills should always be optional. In fact all activities in a MMO should be optional. Players should do things because they *want* to do things and because they are inherently fun.

Harvesting extends beyond WoW though. EQ2 was a damn nightmare. Ditto VG. Ditto every game that"s ever had it.

Harvesting would be cool if your guild could own a plot of land for herbs, or a mine for miners. You could do upgrades, beat back little invasions...there are always people that love the houses and stuff that would fuss around places like these.

... said:

Eve does alot of that.

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That thought had crossed my mind, but I have never tried Eve, Will have to look into it.

Sooo, since that issue seems to have been, at least partly, taken care of then I will have to go with

Pointless tradeskills. Harvesting goes in here somewhere, but others have already covered that, so I am not going to.

The tradeskills in WoW are laughable. They are a component of the game that is basically open to everyone. This in and of itself is not bad, but it really lessens the value of even having tradeskills. 99% of the WoW population is a 300+ crafter of something. Working up tradeskills in that game is ridiculously easy, and it makes them virtually worthless. Though, there are the few skills that are needed for raids and such - alchemy and enchanting, and now jewelcrafting.

I would like to see tradeskills that you have to actually work for. And by work, I mean - you aren"t going to be a top-level guild tank who also crafts armor. EQ2 and Vanguard I think tried to sort of go this direction, by attempting to make tradeskills a long grind and almost an alternative to leveling traditionally.

But damnit, if I am going to be a blacksmith, or tailor or whatever - the stuff I make should be very comparable to the best stuff people are getting out there adventuring. As well, being that I think that should be the case - tradeskills should NOT be something every player can pick up and max out. Becoming a level 10 smith/tailor/whatever should actually mean something. People should be banging down my door for my weapons and armor or whatever it is I make.

If I am a blacksmith, I shouldn"t have to compete with 100 other blacksmiths on my server. There should be a handful - at least only a handful who are "master" smiths. I should be able to craft uber_sword_of_dragon_slaying01. It should also take time to make. It should require hard to obtain, or pricey materials

Maybe make tiered crafting, where you have the people who like to dabble in it some - they make some normal run of the mill stuff. Then you have the people who play the game to craft. People like Rijacki from EQ2 who virtually lived and breathed crafting. She is an alchemist on AB. She is the type of crafter who, should be spoken of like "if you want the basic stuff, ask in /trade. if you want the hot shit, talk to "jacki".

I guess WoW really jaded me to tradeskilling. It was pretty ridiculous, when you needed a enchant, or a stack of pots, or some armor made - there wasn"t one or two people you went to. You asked in guild, and then five people responded with "yeah, I have like three alts that all can do that".

All that said, tradeskilling shouldn"t become a second job - but it should be a way to establish one"s self in the game, the same way we currently do with adventuring. Most servers have a couple fucking awesome tanks, some decent tanks, then a bunch of mediocre or just down right horrible tanks. Likewise, there should be a few elite smiths, some decent smiths, than a decent amount of so-so/bad smiths. The bad smiths make your horseshoes and your decoration/rp armor. The master smiths make the armor you are going to pwn some raidbosses in.

Edit: Also, kind of going with some of the above comments - tradeskilling should *not* berequiredfor raiding or progressing in adventuring content. In WoW, I dumped LWing so I could go herbalism so I could go pick flowers for all the mana potions, 20 elixirs, flasks, etc that I needed for raiding. It"s one of the reasons I cancelled my accounts - I spent a shitton of time not playing, but farming. Fuck that. Tradeskill items should give you *significant* advantages in adventuring. It should not be required though. This is why I think the kick ass items should be expensive, and hard to acquire - or at least consume a lot of time to make. You want that elite potion that makes you heal like a god? Fine, it"s going to take a long fucking time to get it. And you only get to use it once or twice. Maybe a little excessive - but tradeskills need a purpose. Currently, aside from a few in WoW, they really don"t serve any.

Alarion said:

The inability to actually be in a virtual world. I think UO, despite never really playing it much, came the closest.

My issue is, currently most MMOs are basically single player games, with co-op turned on. I level my character, you level yours, then we insert them into the same zone/dungeon/instance and play together to beat the monsters.

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Yes this would be issue #2 for me. As I"ve got into many an argument with my RL buddies about why I dislike WoW, my primary argument has been "If you could play WoW as is but on a server with just you, your buddies, & guild and nobody else would you consider that an improvement??" and every time their response is "Hell Yes!!".

To me that"s just freaking lame and goes against everything a MMO should be. But the fact is WoW could be played that way and would actually probably make a lot of people happier about the game.

Ngruk said:

What is the ONE single thing in MMO"s today that you see, and think is the absolute suck?

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Flaws in the core mechanics of the games. When there"s no concrete model to balance disparate abilities and add nuance to the system, it"s painfully obvious and open to degenerate exploitation. Other examples of mechanical flaws are secondary effects that feed back on each other in degenerate ways or "superior" gear that"s not actually an upgrade.

Some MMOs have done better than others, but I"ve yet to see one that didn"t have some gaping holes in the combat systems. It"s a really hard problem, but bad mechanics can kill a game stone-dead.

Cuppycake said:

. . .
I hate hate hate harvesting too.

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This may sound silly, but I always loved mining. I don"t know why. I just get excited seeing that sucker on my track and swinging that pick. Liked it in WOW. Liked it in LOTRO. What I think the real issue is with harvesting is that it becomes a total necessity for raiding when you throw in the need for consumables. Tradeskills should be supplemental not absolutley required. WOW I think blew it by starting to make potions too powerful and hence designing raid content around them. Nerf the suckers. Potions should just be something that is "nice" but not uber. Do that and the need for endless harvesting goes out the window. Either that or just have vendors sell endless supplies.

Cuppycake said:

I hate hate hate harvesting too.

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I love harvesting! I"ll spend hours "picking flowers", chopping logs, etc..

My biggest gripe is when that stuff isn"t worth anything. Like in EQ2 atm... pretty much all T1-T3 materials are useless. I hope in the future in EQ2 they add something like boats, or player built structures which require massive amounts of materials so that my harvesting obsession will serve a purpose, other than clogging my inventory.

Maxxius said:

This may sound silly, but I always loved mining. I don"t know why. I just get excited seeing that sucker on my track and swinging that pick. Liked it in WOW. Liked it in LOTRO. What I think the real issue is with harvesting is that it becomes a total necessity for raiding when you throw in the need for consumables. Tradeskills should be supplemental not absolutley required. WOW I think blew it by starting to make potions too powerful and hence designing raid content around them. Nerf the suckers. Potions should just be something that is "nice" but not uber. Do that and the need for endless harvesting goes out the window. Either that or just have vendors sell endless supplies.

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I loved mining in UO since:

• you didn"t have to run all over the place to find ore, any mountain would do
• if you used a special pickaxe to get a better quality ore it had the chance to spawn an Ore Elemental on you, which typically dropped decent loot

The amassing of materials should NOT be the timesink for crafting IMO.

I want MMOs to make crafting matter and let players create items that aren"t completely dwarfed by dropped or quested loot. But the question is how do design a system where anyone can do it easily but at the same time offer an advantage to a dedicated crafter??

I think LOTRO"s mastering system is a step in the right direction. Perhaps they could expand on it with an experimentation system where a master crafter could take a combination of mob drop resources & crafter resources to experiment at making new items. The more times you succeed at creating something new you would advance your experimentation skill. The higher you got the better the new items you could discover/create.

I would probably even extend it to be race/faction/region based so that you have to "grind" on different experiment techniques. So once you"ve mastered the Bree-land Humans experimentation techniques you could go work on another "Factions" techniques.

I concur with the "Harvesting ftl" sentiment.

Also, I really hate population imbalances. Not just with servers and factions, but while leveling up as well. There are some areas that are overcrowded with players, ending up in quarrels over spawns, then other areas where there aren"t enough folks and trying to do any group quests or dungeons is impossible. It seems like there should be a better way to equally spread out players among an area, perhaps having NPCs offer quests in specific areas depending upon the population density of said regions.

For example, Carl the Farmer has 3 different quests to offer players, each with the same reward, but he can send players to different areas of the "zone" to complete them: the forest, the plains, and the hillside. The first 5 players are sent to the forest, the second 5 to the plains, and the third 5 to the hillside. How many quests for each area have been given out is tracked, and as people turn in quests from a specific area more "slots" open up for that region.

I"d go further, but this really isn"t the thread for it. Just spread people out comfortably instead of cramming them all on the same path.

Old Man Potter said:

Harvesting and tradeskills should always be optional. In fact all activities in a MMO should be optional. Players should do things because they *want* to do things and because they are inherently fun.

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This is definitely sig worthy and all developers need to read this 100 times, repeating it out loud. And then when done, write it on the chalk board 100 more times untill this simple idea sinks in.

Alarion said:

The inability to actually be in a virtual world. I think UO, despite never really playing it much, came the closest.

My issue is, currently most MMOs are basically single player games, with co-op turned on. I level my character, you level yours, then we insert them into the same zone/dungeon/instance and play together to beat the monsters.

I would like to see a game that doesn"t feel like this. One that makes me feel like I am really a citizen in this other world. Which means, if I want to be a pleb and bake cookies, I can. If I want to try to become some political figure, and maybe organize a coup and attempt to take over as "local emperor" of a city-state, I can. I suppose what I am saying is - MMORPGs are missing a lot of the RPG element. Sure we get the stats, the monsters and weapons of the tabletop systems. But that"s about where it ends. You really don"t role play - and I am not exactly talking about the RP that takes place in "taverns" in most MMOs these days.

I don"t know if this at all even practical, but it"s something that has always really irked me about MMOs :-/

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A integrated player run political/administrative system would definitely be great, and give the MMO a lot more depth and immersion.

We could for instance imagine an MMO which has several permanent factions/countries which each has one or more permanent larger cities.(Player build cities could be limited to smaller settlements or villages.) At set intervals each factions population would get to vote for a ruler, king or whatever. The titles could differ from faction to faction. After the election the ruler could then delegate different ministries and departments to other players he choses. Every player appointed to the government would have different areas to mange, be it trade, treasury, foreign affairs, defense ect.

Now, for this to work and not just be token e-peen titles to the elite of the server, the developers have to give the players large freedoms and responsibilities in running the city, much like how EVE corps are run. The difference, that there shouldn"t be any NPC run areas you could run off to if things got messy. Things that could be controlled by the player government are: Taxes, how to fund the city, making sure your NPC run shops and industries are running smoothly and contracting player crafters ect. Foreign affairs; your run of the mill diplomacy and relations with other factions/player build settlements. Defense; managing, training and equipping your factions NPC staffed army (Yes, I think players should be the elite in this MMOs society, not actually being soldiers, but commanders and leaders or just villians)

I believe this kind of system could be embedded with a regular MMO leveling/adventuring/raiding concept to great effect. Giving players ways to influence the game in other ways than just to kill shit, be it spying, trading, crafting, the political arena ect.

This concept is nothing new in online games, it is actually a blatant rip-off from a MUD I used to play. You might say that implementing things like this in a high fantasy MMO with thousands of players online would be impossible, compared to the relatively small text based MUDs. But I believe it is possible to achieve if the framework of the game is set right. Issues that comes to mind are: What if one faction completly conquers another, what if a group of players in the government of a faction does everything they can to screw a large partion of the servers player base ect. Basically when does the developers step in to keep the game world healthy and evolving. (EvE and the BoB situation comes to mind)

By the way, the MUD which I played with this system is called Avalon, I haven"t been active for quite some years now, but I believe they"re still going strong. There are literally hundreds of unique systems - not just in this MUD but probably in others as well - which I think would be awesome in an modern day graphical MMO. Every MMO Dev should at least familiarize themselves with MUDs like this. I believe this truly is the way to go if you want to be "third genereation" and not just use the term as some marketing fluff.

From reading this thread it sounds like most people want second life with better graphics, more fluid controls, and some kind of combat and general NPC"s with AI.

They just think they want that.

I"m not saying some kind of politcal system couldn"t be cool and all, but the reason most people play these games is to kill badass monsters, pimp out their characters, advance their level and damage and abilities and generally upgrade their paper dolls and get to do so in a persistent world full of other people.

It"s fun. It"s proven. PVP centered games like EVE are another beast really, while still falling under the umbrella of MMOGs.

If you can manage to mesh the two together somehow in a really great, easy to play game, then you"ll have true innovation.

Personally, I"d rather just see something done really well rather than trying to re-invent the wheel.

rangoth said:

From reading this thread it sounds like most people want second life with better graphics, more fluid controls, and some kind of combat and general NPC"s with AI.

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And of course the original Ngruk question was simply: what is the one thing that pisses you off about current MMOs. Nothing to do with what would you like to see in the next gen of MMOs.

He should just have done a poll. So far the winners are:

1. Harvesting
2. Durability
3. Tiered quests all the steps of which must be performed sequentially.
4. BOE
5. Lots of other things.

Did I miss anything?

rangoth said:

From reading this thread it sounds like most people want second life with better graphics, more fluid controls, and some kind of combat and general NPC"s with AI.

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I am not completely familiar with Second Life, but as to what I"ve read about it, it sounds like a 3d chat client.

My ideal MMO - and what I think would be a natural progression from the games we have today - would be present day MMOs (WoW, EQ ect.) experience, loot and dungeon systems, combined with a EVEish open ended world, only with a more solid framework. Thus giving the players more way to influence the game.

Just imagne, not only "pwning" people in the battlegrounds with the items you"ve grinded, but also having several others means to influence/gaining advantages in the game world.

Boy is my face red. Wrong thread /cough

Zhakran said:

Awkwaaaard...

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Call me crazy, but I think you"re in the wrong thread...

In that case the best answer I saw was an MMO where everything is optional and the user picks what to do because it"s fun. That"s just perfect.

For me however, the single thing I hate most in an MMO is the dividing of people. Uber guild or not, high population or low and cant find groups, level x or y. You are taking a player base and telling them they cant play together. Most stupid idea ever. And each expansion puts a newcomer further and further behind in skill/knowledge/level/gear.

I can deal with bugs, quirky mechanics, poor animations, sure they all bother me at some level but if the game is fun and I am playing with other people then who cares? It"s been repeated so many times I"m shocked but FFXI did this one thing right, at least in concept.

You change jobs, therefore are at level 1 so you go back through low level areas, maybe even one you didn"t get to do when you were low level for the first time. And you can change your jobs as many times as you want to try new classes all under the same character name. Friends can still reach you, you can play your low level mage and then head back to town, swap and go on the raid. Plus it makes it seem like there are always people around even without truely new subscribers.

Now Im not saying copy FFXI exactly, but learn from the damn concept anyway.

Ngruk said:

On another note. I am very curious to hear from the masses on many topics. Having said that, and I don"t want to start a Q&A that gets 51423 five word one line responses, but if you had to make one gripe, you only had ONE, about MMO"s, what would it be?

What is the ONE single thing in MMO"s today that you see, and think is the absolute suck?

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I think I need to set up a timer to ensure I don"t write an epic post. There are a lot of good things I"ve seen over the years in the MMO genre, but I think everyone can agree there has also been a lot of bad things. Thankfully we can reflect upon these decisions and improve upon them. God knows there are some really neat ideas that have been greatconceptsput in to a MMO butimplementedhorribly.

As for what I think, I agree with a lot of the posters here (go figure, MMO players and all). I like Tad"s list.

1. Harvesting
2. Durability
3. Tiered quests all the steps of which must be performed sequentially.
4. BOE
5. Lots of other things.

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As I mentioned above, a lot of concepts arecoolbut damn, they"re so damn tedious sometimes. For example, I think the concept of harvesting makes a lot of sense, but trying to make it realistic where you go out and harvest the raw goods is very annoying. I do like how in some games you can get resources off various mobs (killing a rock elemental allows you mine it, etc). I also agree with what Cuppy said about EQ being a very straight-forward and /nice/ path of having the mobs drop all the components. While I don"t think that should be theonlyway, it sure makes life easy (as compared to running around for countless hours trying to get your skill up, throwing away common resoures). Like many tedious things in games, there needs to be more options (kind of like character development, which is something I"m -really- in to, I can talk about that topic all day). Hrm, maybe I should add character development to the list

The list could be expanded tenfold I"m sure, but those are some of the top dogs for sure.