Oh yeah I"d own you at the plate , if only I could swing a bat heheh. Tho, thankfully, you didn"t say gnome mage. And oh sheesh ya on my server lol. And hint, if you ever roll an alliance there and you see in chat someone with a name ending with "stain" just put him on instant ignore.Ngruk said:
Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling
- Thread starter Lord Thanos_foh
- Start date
Ever played druid? I"d think that class would open you up to various styles of gameplay without getting buried right off the "bat" so to speak
Anyone here going? Todd, RA and Brett, along with a few others will be at Comicon 2007 representing 38 Studios. Stop by, get a 38 Studios shirt signed by all three of us, and say hello.
Beyond what everyone else has said, a thing that I really hope you have in your game is some sort of process for streamlining alt-leveling. In WoW, they"ve put so much into ease of use and such, but you still have to endure the same quests over and over if you want more than one character at the level cap (and who doesn"t?) I should have to fight tooth and nail to level my character, explore the world, and become more powerful... the first time. Not like I should get a premade character or anything, but how people in WoW with multiple 70s can do 1-58 again is beyond me. Some kind of option for that might be nice.
Obviously that"s less of a problem if leveling to the cap isn"t hideously boring after the first time, and it sounds like one of your aims is to make that happen.
Thanks for being such a stand-up guy here on the forums, this thread was a pleasure to read. I look forward to what your company"s going to put out. Oh and (I"d be kicked out of Boston if I didn"t say) go sox~
Obviously that"s less of a problem if leveling to the cap isn"t hideously boring after the first time, and it sounds like one of your aims is to make that happen.
Thanks for being such a stand-up guy here on the forums, this thread was a pleasure to read. I look forward to what your company"s going to put out. Oh and (I"d be kicked out of Boston if I didn"t say) go sox~
Keep letting us know where you"re landing man....when you hit Denver I"ll be looking for the shirt.
Loot, you have a fine point about repetition.
WOW did really well in the starting areas and up to about 20-30...then you funnel. You can start in several different places on each side and have a unique experience for a third of it...but then you start hitting the same stuff.
One of the things that made Kunark and Luclin so fun for those with altitis was the ability to never step foot in what you had previously done. You funnel at the top end, and lots of people self-funneled, but you had the option to do things differently for a very large portion of your leveling.
If you have multiple paths in at release, even if they do funnel somewhat at the upper levels you are doing pretty good. WOW did pretty well here.
However, it would have been better to have a couple new paths with the expansion that got you closer to the upper levels. The new starting areas in TBC were fun, unique, and entirely to short. I got to 20 and looked at where I would be going and lost interest in my alt.
Sure, it makes sense from a design standpoint to reuse existing assets. It would just be nice to have a couple of options in an expansion so you could do things with alts that you haven"t done before.
WOW did really well in the starting areas and up to about 20-30...then you funnel. You can start in several different places on each side and have a unique experience for a third of it...but then you start hitting the same stuff.
One of the things that made Kunark and Luclin so fun for those with altitis was the ability to never step foot in what you had previously done. You funnel at the top end, and lots of people self-funneled, but you had the option to do things differently for a very large portion of your leveling.
If you have multiple paths in at release, even if they do funnel somewhat at the upper levels you are doing pretty good. WOW did pretty well here.
However, it would have been better to have a couple new paths with the expansion that got you closer to the upper levels. The new starting areas in TBC were fun, unique, and entirely to short. I got to 20 and looked at where I would be going and lost interest in my alt.
Sure, it makes sense from a design standpoint to reuse existing assets. It would just be nice to have a couple of options in an expansion so you could do things with alts that you haven"t done before.
What if someone brings a baseball for you to sign? Do you keep the baseball world and the gaming world separate? I would imagine that a future Hall of Fame signature on a baseball is worth more than a future Hall of Fame signature on a gaming T-shirt...unless of course your game becomes the next WoW. Even then, I want the baseball.Ngruk said:
I won"t be there. Day job takes precedence Feb-Oct. Todd, RA and a few others, our President, Chief Marketing Office and maybe a few others. We"ll also be premiering some snippets of our founders video I think.
100% agree. I have never been able to break 21 on a second character in WoW because after the first time it is just boring as shit to me.Loot said:
Giving a way to power-level an alt certainly is one way to approach it but personally I"d prefer if there was a content team dedicated to updating older content on a regular basis (which I something I"ve already mentioned in this thread before
). I could probably level through WoW again is a lot of the content was new to me but as is I just want to gouge my eyes out by the late 10"s and just give up by 20.Me, I"m an alt freak. On malfurion I have 5 level 70 Alliance characters and 1 level 70 Horde. If you are gouging your eyes out in the teens, then nothing is going to matter for you since it only takes a few hours to get there anyways.
It was no different with EQ. You still were doing the same things with alts, grinding off mobs you could handle at your given level. You may choose different mobs, but it was still the same leveling repetition. What makes alts fun is playing different classes and races. You get a totally different perspective of the game. Also it really does go much quicker the next time around.
The biggest problem with leveling alts, is not so much doing the same quests over and over, but finding people to do them with. Grouping at lower levels just gets harder and harder as a game ages. And while it would be nice to change lower level content over time or add new lower level content, it generally gets seen by a small percentage of your cutomers anyways.
Suspecting I am the exception rather than the norm with the amount of high end characters I have, I"d be curious to see stats for WOW on this.
It was no different with EQ. You still were doing the same things with alts, grinding off mobs you could handle at your given level. You may choose different mobs, but it was still the same leveling repetition. What makes alts fun is playing different classes and races. You get a totally different perspective of the game. Also it really does go much quicker the next time around.
The biggest problem with leveling alts, is not so much doing the same quests over and over, but finding people to do them with. Grouping at lower levels just gets harder and harder as a game ages. And while it would be nice to change lower level content over time or add new lower level content, it generally gets seen by a small percentage of your cutomers anyways.
Suspecting I am the exception rather than the norm with the amount of high end characters I have, I"d be curious to see stats for WOW on this.
Probably the biggest problem for me with WoW is I don"t care at all about the Lore and really don"t have much love for the classes, at least not until the Lev 50 range. So grinding isn"t really an option because I don"t find the classes interesting and since I don"t care about the Lore being Quest driven makes it tedious as hell.Maxxius said:
LOTRO I knew & liked the lore and I had Deeds & the Epic Quest to help me get through doing the mindless quests over & over. In VG there were 3 or 4 distinct progression paths into the late 20"s (which is where I stopped playing) and the classes I played I really enjoyed which made grinding fairly fun. UO of course was just ridiculously easy to skill up to the point where you were effective. Took more time to be really good, but you could at least hold you own when PvE"ing and what not.
If WoW had a power-up service that let you start at Lev 50 I would be all over that, because for me thats when things got really fun.
I"m the same way, I have four 70s and a 64. But they were all 60 before TBC, and I leveled them all over the course of two years. Now that TBC is here, 1 -> level cap is looking longer than ever (because it is). I"ve done the Outlands quests almost to the point where they"re as boring as the old world. There"s lots of content but the best way to level is still the same tired quest zones. I want a warrior and a warlock at the cap now, but doing 1-70 again is beyond daunting. I don"t have fun doing those quests, regardless of whether I did the first time.Maxxius said:
This may be more specific to Blizzard. My personal complaint, anyway. I just want them to put in a damn /level command a la DAoC so I can get a jumpstart (40 or so?) and not have to worry about some of the lowbie stuff. Or at least something similar. Pay some gold or something for 500% exp until 50? I don"t know. Something to make it less tiring. Like I said, more of a WoW bitch than anything else. With good forethought and game design ideas (both of which Curt and his team seem to have in spades) this will never become a problem in GMG"s game.
But damned if I wouldn"t jump for joy if Blizzard eliminated the 1-40/50 grind for people with multiple capped characters.
What about using a leveling system that is "sideways"? very loosely similar to EvE.
Instead of having levels 1-40 then add expansion 40-50 add expansin 50-60.
Just do something like a cross between guild wars and even where you have levels 1-40 period. No additional levels ever.
Then with more expansion add more skillsets or more options. More "trees" like in wow every class would get 1 additional tree or something.
This way the playerbase doesn"t become more and more spread out due to casuals not keeping pace and uberguilds skyrocketing.
Allow cross class or something similar to EvE where if you have multiple skills from several classes you gain some bigger benefits such as.
Paladin + Warlock trees = access to 5-10 Death knight skills
Rogue + Warrior = access to 5 - 10 berserker skills.
the key here would be to limit the amount of skills to these special classes to a very small amount so the playerbase doesn"t get to divided but that the players who put in mass amounts of time have access to more abilites and cross classes.
The do something like guild wars and only allow a set number of abilites to be used.
this will allow noobs to get in the game and after a few months of playing have viable characters in their roles instead of still beind 30 levels behind uber guilds...
Instead of having levels 1-40 then add expansion 40-50 add expansin 50-60.
Just do something like a cross between guild wars and even where you have levels 1-40 period. No additional levels ever.
Then with more expansion add more skillsets or more options. More "trees" like in wow every class would get 1 additional tree or something.
This way the playerbase doesn"t become more and more spread out due to casuals not keeping pace and uberguilds skyrocketing.
Allow cross class or something similar to EvE where if you have multiple skills from several classes you gain some bigger benefits such as.
Paladin + Warlock trees = access to 5-10 Death knight skills
Rogue + Warrior = access to 5 - 10 berserker skills.
the key here would be to limit the amount of skills to these special classes to a very small amount so the playerbase doesn"t get to divided but that the players who put in mass amounts of time have access to more abilites and cross classes.
The do something like guild wars and only allow a set number of abilites to be used.
this will allow noobs to get in the game and after a few months of playing have viable characters in their roles instead of still beind 30 levels behind uber guilds...
Noooo. How about make the damned game so I don"t need any reason to have multiple max level characters in order to enjoy the game? Sure, some people like Maxxius just enjoy levelling different toons. That"s great. Some people do.Loot said:
In EQ, *many* myself included did not, and preferred to focus on one character. In WoW, because of the fact that you can"t do shit a lot of the time with a group/raid based character, and cuz you can only have two tradeskills, you MUST have alts a lot of the time. You are almost required to have 2 or more max level characters.
How about this instead: make the game at max level a REWARDING EXPERIENCE for just your one character with no horrible deficiencies because zomg my DPS sucks or because I can"t do the right tradeskills. Let everyone get every tradeskill if they have the patience. OR make them not required like they are in WoW.
Make *DAMNED SURE* that there is reason for me *and* other classes, who could solo, to want to be grouping all the time at max level and achieving things that are impossible without at least 4 people, so that I don"t feel the need to have a "better" dps class just to farm shit.
put some open-ended advancement system that actually rewards me for playing a max level character, but again, don"t make it based on solo farming shit, or once again you screw over some classes.
I"d rather just have one character. Make that an option, don"t focus on making it easier to have tons of max chars. Sure, some people will always want to twink and try a new class, and that"s great, but you should not feel obligated to because of anything other than "i want to try something new"
You know this is pretty much the main reason why I leveled up alot of alts in WOW, mainly for the tradeskilling. In EQ I did have a couple alts, but was more for having fun with different types of classes; although I did have a tendency of rolling up a new ranger whenever new servers opened (think I had 5 by the time I stopped lol). But with EQ you really did just concentrate mainly on one character because you can do all the tradeskills with him and there were just too many AAs afterall to even catch up on with alts.Zhakran said:
I say make it ALL skill based. Leave classes behind and move on. You are a blank pallete at the beginning then let folks fill in the colors.
I"m not sure how long it"s been up, but 38 Studios is looking for a Concept Artist. From following the events in the Uberworlds forum I know we have a few talented artists around here that might be interested.