Actually ya, EQ and WoW now, are playstyles I enjoy. But as I stated much earlier, this isn"t about making MY game, it"s about making thee game. You get creative genius working together and in the right direction, whatever you end up with is going to be fun.
Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling
- Thread starter Lord Thanos_foh
- Start date
Fallout or any-post Apocalyptic setting is ideal for a game mainly because there is a logical reason for certain futuristic techs to exist (weapons, power armor) without the existence of other game-breaking tech (like cars, airplanes, etc...). Whereas as many futuristic games like Neocron, SWG, AO really suffer in the realism department because its 4000AD and you cant even buy a car.Eomer said:
Ngruk since you are actually reading all the posts, here"s my 2CP on what would truly make a next gen MMOG since nothing out or in development seems like anything more than EQ 1.5.
- 1st and foremost can we please have something more than: a) leveling treadmill to max level then: b) start raiding. I think if an MMOG finally breaks this mold it will be extremely popular. Mainly, more RPG and less online mob exterminator. This will be the hardest by far.
- something besides kill/collect/delivery quests which are 90% of current MMOG quest content. WoW made a small start at this with quests like the Mechanical Yeti quest, the Mortar Combat team (so funny), and Tooga"s quest. But it would be so great if there was more like these. Probably the 2nd hardest issue here.
- Mounted and aerial combat, one of the few things that no MMOG has done really.
- Interactive NPCs just like "real" RPGs like Baldur"s Gate. In pretty much every MMOG currently NPCs are static quest/mission dispensers and nothing more.
- Voice overs are a must for key NPCs. You cannot have memorable NPCs without them. For example, I can"t really remember the name of a single non-mob NPC from my ~3 years in EQ. Yet I can clearly remember Charsi and Deckard Cain from Diablo2 which I probably only had installed for a month or 2. Same with Aribeth from NWN or General Barnaky from Fallout Tactics.
- reasonable system specs, since you cannot hope to "change the online landscape" when your game runs like trash on the average PC. Gameplay and graphics are not mutually exclusive, but gameplay and 10fps are. Why many current developers knowingly limit their playerbase with ridiculous specs is beyond me.
- "everything visible" gear system. Basically everything you equip can be seen on your avatar - rings, necklaces, bags, backpacks, everything.
- cut-scenes for major events.
- Please do not revisit past MMOG combat system mechanics errors. When you are hiring mechanics designers make sure they can write you 4 page essay on topics like: damage-delay system, melee-caster balance, mudflation, PVP balance, resists, stat caps, etc... Ask them questions like: Why were slow weapons better in WoW but fast weapons were better in EQ (pre-WoW normalization and EQ delay modifier)? If they cant answer stuff like that they have no place designing an MMOG combat system, or even itemizing the game. More importantly if they ever mention the Morrowind/Oblivion leveling system as anything synonymous with "good" just terminate the interview on the spot.
I don"t think it matters. If the world being created is interesting and awesome looking, and the game is fun, you accept the setting don"t you?Froofy-D said:
Froofy-D said:
IMO the good games make leveling something in the back of your mind, and not something that you stare at the EXP bar every four minutes, tapping your screen because you think it"s stuck.Froofy-D said:
Some cool ideas for sure, certainly nothing that hasn"t gone through our grinder already at least once. The most important one is system specs though, IMO.Froofy-D said:
Every spec, no matter how small, that you move up the scale, eliminates a base of customers. That"s a huge deal.
Hehe, check.....Froofy-D said:
Levelling-curve is a totally different issue.Ngruk said:
Where games have run into trouble is a lack of different things to do. Most games the goal is to hit max-level and then get phat loots. Whether you"re aware of levelling (hi2u EQ hell-levels) or not (WoW quests) makes little difference when the only rewarding aspect of the gameislevelling. As soon as you hit the level cap, most games say "Okay, now that you"re done levelling, go raid!" While EQ tried to remedy this with Alternate Experience, it was just xp-grinding with a new cap. WoW, too, failed to offer a well-designed alternate form of character development; the PvP system is an xp treadmill with the added "fun" of being unable to stop grinding or else youloselevels.
Levelling up as a part of the game is all fine and dandy. For a game to retain its fun factor, though, there need to be various forms of advancement offered for various types of players. Raiding shouldnotbe the only "end game".
Quests are definitely the way to go to hide the time=xp factor. It makes it more enjoyable to level when every so often you get a burst of XP all at once for turning in a quest (or several!) , feeling like you"ve accomplished something.
Raise your hand if you"d rather do the EQ grind 245,000 mobs to level 50 routine again!
Raise your hand if you"d rather do the EQ grind 245,000 mobs to level 50 routine again!
FRcanbe a Tolkien rip-off... Or it can be a time of decadent city-states strung in the throes of political intrigue, factional warfare, and a hefty dose of arcane weirdness. The Baldur"s Gate series was set in FR, and they were nothing like WoW and EQ.Lost Ranger said:
It"s all in the writer.
I doubt that there is an alternative to it. If you want to make levels easy and fast, then you don"t need levels at all. Reaching max-level has to be an accomplishment that one can be proud of and it requires a certain amount of mindless grind.Frax said:
The 24,500 quests to kill 10 mobs is just as much of a grind. It"s the grind I prefer because it makes it easy to get groups together... "hey you doing quest xyz? I"ll join ya". But don"t be fooled, it"s the same grind.
Nobody is fooled, for many people it just feels better to have some perceived purpose to things.redjunkopera said:
Cybsled
Avatar of War Slayer
- 16,493
- 12,149
People like quests because it gives them a short term goal that works towards a larger one. Psychologically it is better to have the player focused on looting the 10th bearclaw to finish the quest then it is to purely focus on the XP bar creeping as you slaughter mobs. The "FINALLY..." moment comes much sooner and much more frequently as well. You feel relief (or joy) when you complete the quest, knowing that you"ve acheived that goal. In a pure XP grind system, the relief (joy) is far less frequent, as your goal is filling up a bar to the top.
Metaphor time: It"s akin to foraging for berries vs. climbing some really tall tree for a big piece of fruit if you were really hungry. Frequent rewards in smaller chunks vs. less frequent rewards in large chunks. While you need many of the smaller bits to equal the large one, as you gather them (and consume them) you are gradually being satisfied. With the large one, once you finally get to it you are finally able to quell your stomach"s rampage, however you had to put up with an empty stomach the whole time you were working to reach it.
XP or fruit, the concept is still the same.
Metaphor time: It"s akin to foraging for berries vs. climbing some really tall tree for a big piece of fruit if you were really hungry. Frequent rewards in smaller chunks vs. less frequent rewards in large chunks. While you need many of the smaller bits to equal the large one, as you gather them (and consume them) you are gradually being satisfied. With the large one, once you finally get to it you are finally able to quell your stomach"s rampage, however you had to put up with an empty stomach the whole time you were working to reach it.
XP or fruit, the concept is still the same.
I would like to see a branching away from the typical "go here, kill this, report back" quests, and the "kill XXX mob XXX times" quests. I understand that these are two of the easiest models to work with, and creating more in-depth quests takes more man hours and effort, but damn, it would be more than worth it to have in-depth quests which took longer to complete (say, "Epic" quests?) but would advance you a level at a time perhaps, and that could be completed solo? Or with a small group?
When I began my epic quest in Everquest as a monk, I remember thinking that there should have been more quests than just one, and that they could really build on this as a selling point for the game.
After I completed the whistling fists, I realized that there was an extreme lack of in-depth quests (PoP later remedied a lot of that, but even the Binden Correntia neck quest and the crafter tool kits quests were more easily done than the epic quest, and were generally time sinks). If there were quests which were as complex and difficult to achieve as the epic quest was for me, I would have enjoyed the game much more. I kept looking for quests, and was continually let down over the course of several years with nothing quite matching that initial enjoyment from completing the epic quest.
That said, of course the epic quest included vast timesinks. Why did I enjoy these timesinks, wasted away in LGuk/SolB? Because I new the reward was valuable, there weren"t that many people that had it, and that I would be more valuable as a damage player than others. It was a stepping stone that was necessary to compete in PvE, and was of course enjoyable in a PvP match as well.
I think that taking the time to create intricately-woven quests which are class-specific, more involved than "Go here, kill this shit, you win. Grats.", and involve an actual moticum of brain power to answer riddles, puzzles, or to defeat a solo instance which is actually challenging, are worth their weight in gold.
My 2cp on quests.
When I began my epic quest in Everquest as a monk, I remember thinking that there should have been more quests than just one, and that they could really build on this as a selling point for the game.
After I completed the whistling fists, I realized that there was an extreme lack of in-depth quests (PoP later remedied a lot of that, but even the Binden Correntia neck quest and the crafter tool kits quests were more easily done than the epic quest, and were generally time sinks). If there were quests which were as complex and difficult to achieve as the epic quest was for me, I would have enjoyed the game much more. I kept looking for quests, and was continually let down over the course of several years with nothing quite matching that initial enjoyment from completing the epic quest.
That said, of course the epic quest included vast timesinks. Why did I enjoy these timesinks, wasted away in LGuk/SolB? Because I new the reward was valuable, there weren"t that many people that had it, and that I would be more valuable as a damage player than others. It was a stepping stone that was necessary to compete in PvE, and was of course enjoyable in a PvP match as well.
I think that taking the time to create intricately-woven quests which are class-specific, more involved than "Go here, kill this shit, you win. Grats.", and involve an actual moticum of brain power to answer riddles, puzzles, or to defeat a solo instance which is actually challenging, are worth their weight in gold.
My 2cp on quests.
I liked WoW"s use of Quests to mask the grind, but none of the quests felt really "big" to me, since they were drowning in a sea of other quests. Whereas the original paladin swords quests in EQ1 were huge and felt like a big accomplishment because, well, you weren"t doing quests all of the time, it was a special occasion and a special reward for the effort.
EQ epic quests were cool if you had a spoiler and that"s actually how 99.99% of the playerbase "solved" them.
Eomer
Trakanon Raider
- 5,472
- 272
Exactly. And most had massive time sinks in them somewhere, involving you killing some random green mob over and over again until it dropped what you needed. As a cleric and one of the first dozen or so on the server to get my epic, the last bit was hell on Earth and something I certainly did not enjoy in any large way (due to Zordak or whatever his name was not spawning when everyone expected him to, us still camping him, and every other cleric on the server sending me hate tells accusing us of "stealing" multiple spawns).
Not to mention that I never would have even started the quest if it weren"t for spoiler sites and forums detailing it out. I can"t even remember who the starting NPC was, I think some jackass in Lake Rathe, or whatever zone it was that had all the aviak islands. Yeah, as a level 50+ cleric I hung out there all the time....
That"s not to say that epic quests are bad. In fact I agree with Amadeus that they have a lot of potential to be a lot of fun and somethign that draws people into the game far more than "collect 20 large boar tusks and 10 snake skins and I"ll give you a shiny sword" type quests.
But EQ"s implementation of them was atrocious.
Not to mention that I never would have even started the quest if it weren"t for spoiler sites and forums detailing it out. I can"t even remember who the starting NPC was, I think some jackass in Lake Rathe, or whatever zone it was that had all the aviak islands. Yeah, as a level 50+ cleric I hung out there all the time....
That"s not to say that epic quests are bad. In fact I agree with Amadeus that they have a lot of potential to be a lot of fun and somethign that draws people into the game far more than "collect 20 large boar tusks and 10 snake skins and I"ll give you a shiny sword" type quests.
But EQ"s implementation of them was atrocious.
Yeah, it"d be sweet if there were a way to:Eomer said:
A) Reduce the time-sink factor of the "epic-quest" and make the quests long and in-depth without having Raster-esque time-sinks.
B) Make the quests fluid and without bugs.
C) Make the quests *worth doing* to begin with.
That"s EQ2"s heritage quests except EQ2 equip suffers from the WOW-inspired faster levelling curve where you blow past content too fast (imo) and thus blow past usefulness of equipment (lvl 32 legendary = worthless next to level 40 almost anything that you get quickly thereafter). Half of the heritage quests are pre-endgame so they get skipped more often than not.Angry Amadeus said:
I was going to post the exact same thing. EQ2 moves too fast. They have great quests, but by the time you find them let alone finish them, you have far passed the point of their usefulness.
Right, I agree 100% that the EQ2 heritage quests move too fast. Well, ok. Most of them. I ended up soloing them at a high level because I knew what the gear was ahead of time, and there was far better player-made gear on the market then the quest reward offered.
Which brings up another interesting point. What if the quest rewards were class-oriented, but random?
Honestly, I haven"t seen this implemented before. So, let"s take an example (just brainstorming here)...
Step 1: Quest giver gives a generic quest to the PC
Step 2: PC completes the quest as everyone else does
Step 3: Quest giver determines that the PC is a mage, and doles out a reward as follows:
(Bonus 0) Mage"s Staff (of) (Bonus 1) (Bonus 2)
(Bonus 0) = 2% possibility of "dropping" into the item tag, and will be the most powerful aspect of the staff. An example would be "Chilling", which naturally gives a bonus to ass-rap.. I mean, Frost Damage (or something).
(Bonus 1) = 25% possibility of "dropping" into the item tag, and is a somewhat powerful additive to the staff. It could be something like "Cruel" (+ 2% to crit).
(Bonus 2) = 85% possibility of "dropping" into the item tag, and is less powerful than the other prefix/suffix, but is almost guaranteed to be added. It might be "Entropy", and add some value (+25 energy).
So, there is a slim chance (math majors help me out; .02 x .25 x.85?) of .0043 (roughly 1/250?) of getting all three bonuses on the staff (and ending up with aChilling Mage"s Staff of Cruel Entropy). This, I believe, would increase the desire to complete the quest again in the hopes of getting the better staff. And why not? If someone is allowed to repeat the quest and get a better reward, why not let them go for it?
Hmmm, I like this idea. I"ll think on it some more and develop it on my notepad.
Curt? Want an extra hand? *roflz*
*mad scribbling*
Which brings up another interesting point. What if the quest rewards were class-oriented, but random?
Honestly, I haven"t seen this implemented before. So, let"s take an example (just brainstorming here)...
Step 1: Quest giver gives a generic quest to the PC
Step 2: PC completes the quest as everyone else does
Step 3: Quest giver determines that the PC is a mage, and doles out a reward as follows:
(Bonus 0) Mage"s Staff (of) (Bonus 1) (Bonus 2)
(Bonus 0) = 2% possibility of "dropping" into the item tag, and will be the most powerful aspect of the staff. An example would be "Chilling", which naturally gives a bonus to ass-rap.. I mean, Frost Damage (or something).
(Bonus 1) = 25% possibility of "dropping" into the item tag, and is a somewhat powerful additive to the staff. It could be something like "Cruel" (+ 2% to crit).
(Bonus 2) = 85% possibility of "dropping" into the item tag, and is less powerful than the other prefix/suffix, but is almost guaranteed to be added. It might be "Entropy", and add some value (+25 energy).
So, there is a slim chance (math majors help me out; .02 x .25 x.85?) of .0043 (roughly 1/250?) of getting all three bonuses on the staff (and ending up with aChilling Mage"s Staff of Cruel Entropy). This, I believe, would increase the desire to complete the quest again in the hopes of getting the better staff. And why not? If someone is allowed to repeat the quest and get a better reward, why not let them go for it?
Hmmm, I like this idea. I"ll think on it some more and develop it on my notepad.
Curt? Want an extra hand? *roflz*
*mad scribbling*
The quests aren"t too fast (imo), its the usefulness of the items due to outlevelling them so fast.Angry Amadeus said:
Your pre/post item name, random generator is essentially Wirt shopping from Diablo. You check what Wirt has for sale (ruby ring of dexterity, +40%/+10, where the "ruby" and "dexterity" had ranges of what they could possibly be like 40-50 and 8-12, respectively), go back to dungeon then back to Wirt real quick to see what he has this time, rinse and repeat until you get obsidian bow of destruction or whatever (cant remember all the modifier names, /sigh) with the best possible rolls on the ranges of the stats.
Quests would be longer than resetting Wirt, obviously. Just saying there are/were systems like that out there (though maybe not in an MMO, I dont know).