Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Mkopec1 said:

If you introduce twitch skill to mmorpgs, by nature which are more cerebral time played based games, youre essentially going to alianate most of the people which play mmorpgs now. If you want twitch games, go play one of the shooters.

I think this is definitely the wrong way to take mmorpgs.

Click to expand...

If you take the gameplay and structure of Fable, beef it up a little bit with some detail, that would make an awesome MMO in my opinion.

Twitch gameplay is around in alot of single player RPGs makes sense to transition that to an MMO environment eventually.

As for twitch skills, I think there is decent amount of that in WoW and other MMOGs already, especially in PVP. If you gave the exact same characters to: a) a top 10 5v5 arena team, and b) a sub-1500 rated team, and had them fight it out, I guarantee the sub-1500 rated team would get stomped badly. The arena does require gear, but a lot of it is coordination, strategy, and some reflexive skill.

Regarding differentiation between characters in MMOGs besides gear - it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to ever see the amount of character differentiation like in DnD or other PnP RPGs. Mainly because in private D+D campaigns class balance does not matter, in MMOGs balance is everything. Also:

- if characters in the game are any significant time investment past something like Diablo 2, some form of respec is mandatory. Not to mention future buffs/nerfs by developers, which will happen, dictates a respec system is required.

- even in a classless system, certain builds will always be more effective.

- Since respec is must, the majority of people will gravitate towards the same set of builds

- an AA system where everything is available does not provide differentiation. It simply means max level = max level + required AA

So besides racials which are fixed, it will be very hard to make Warrior A and Warrior B in the same game significantly more different than they are currently in WoW, VG, or EQ2.

Kazgrim said:

They did the same thing with Anarchy Online, and now those features are common place in MMOs.

Click to expand...

Although I thought AO was remarkably ahead of its time, the combat system employed in AO was still the autoattack type combat we saw in EQ. So while pushing the envelope in other components of the game, combat was still the reliable, tried and true, autoattack type.

Combat is key ingredient in mmorpgs. I think game companies need to be carefull in this aspect of the game, because most people will spend 60% or more of their time in combat one way or another. Theyareessentially combat based games with other filler material like questing, travel, tradeskills..etc. So combat needs to take precedence as a core feature of the game that flows well, its not too spammy, and does not require ones attention for the entire time. And twitchy combat just does not mix well with a mmorpg in this way, because it requires too much attention,micromanagement and istoomuch skill based.

Froofy-D said:

As for twitch skills, I think there is decent amount of that in WoW and other MMOGs already, especially in PVP.

Click to expand...

I think WoW is as twitchy as you really want to make these games. There is already enough skill required without micro managing every hit and swing to make combat fun. Couple this with all the counters, diffrent skill sets that diffrent classes have available to them leads to a nice mix of skill vs knowledge vs autocombat. While not punishing those which do not have the required twitch skills to compete ina fully twitch game.

I don"t see how moving your character around and hitting one of a few buttons for attacks or a combo of buttons for special attacks is any different than it is now. Now you move your character, play finger gymnastics by measuring out 1,2,3,4,5.. ctrl etc.. alt etc.. shirt etc.. Or play wackamole with you mouse across 30 hotbars. Same shit.

Seems to me like you could for the most part cater to both styles. Just make the combat system reaction & chain based and have a lots of options. Something of a mix between the LOTRO & VG combat systems.

The game could provide a UI assistance feature for auto-swapping hotkeys for the non-twitchers, kind of like how the VG chain system UI worked. You could even extend the auto-swapping to have some logic, like Mob Type = Caster do chain actions 1 (interrupt), 2 (root), 3 (nuke) or Mob HP = 1 (slow), 2 (stun), 3 (long-cast high-damage nuke), that way just based on different conditions a non-twitcher could pull off a variety of chains attacks while essentially only using a single hotkey.

The twitch players on the other hand would be free to make their own chains, taking the opener, bridge, & finisher abilities and making whatever chains they want.

The skills should be varied but situational. I think WoW does a great job with this.

Raiding is where the classes tend to get dumbed down though. Its funny - PVP you use a huge number of abilities, solo a little less, groups a little less, and in raids, barely any. This is true for every class I can think of. WoW does at least make up for this by making raid encounters as chatoic as possible. 40 vs 25 doesn"t seem to make much difference.

There isn"t a WoW class that I liked in every sphere. Overall I liked mage better in groups and PVP, and I liked warrior better solo and in raids. I was always being torn that way. EQ, same issue. Paladin was great until raid time. AE heal and the need for snap-aggro later in the life of EQ improved things dramatically.

Kreugen said:

The skills should be varied but situational. I think WoW does a great job with this.

Raiding is where the classes tend to get dumbed down though. Its funny - PVP you use a huge number of abilities, solo a little less, groups a little less, and in raids, barely any. This is true for every class I can think of. WoW does at least make up for this by making raid encounters as chatoic as possible. 40 vs 25 doesn"t seem to make much difference.

There isn"t a WoW class that I liked in every sphere. Overall I liked mage better in groups and PVP, and I liked warrior better solo and in raids. I was always being torn that way. EQ, same issue. Paladin was great until raid time. AE heal and the need for snap-aggro later in the life of EQ improved things dramatically.

Click to expand...

FFXI subjob ftw. Being able to switch classes at will should be de rigeur for all MMOs going forward. Fuck alts. You should be able to play the class you enjoy most in a particular sphere in that sphere.

Edit: of course you can always use a classless system of some sort too with the same result.

I think EQ2 has gone a long way to achieve some sort of class balance while mantaining utility all around and giving different playing styles to the good and evil version of each class.

The "all classes all races" feature works in game like EQ2 because the starting stats means so little; if you plan on doing something different you should never allow both a gnome and an ogre to be warriors, if the ogre is going to be the best one by far at the level cap.

WoW has more unique classes, but the pigeonholing at their role is somewhat detracting from the full game enjoyment imo, little versatility especially when you hit the level cap (and the game has a lot of other glaring issues as well, that are more apparent once you hit the level cap).

Replayability is improved 10-folds with the EQ2 AA system and the new starting areas, while it"s always been a good selling point of WoW since the beginning, but rerolling is rerolling... it won"t be the same magic you experienced on your first character.

Miele said:

I think EQ2 has gone a long way to achieve some sort of class balance while mantaining utility all around and giving different playing styles to the good and evil version of each class.

The "all classes all races" feature works in game like EQ2 because the starting stats means so little; if you plan on doing something different you should never allow both a gnome and an ogre to be warriors, if the ogre is going to be the best one by far at the level cap.

WoW has more unique classes, but the pigeonholing at their role is somewhat detracting from the full game enjoyment imo, little versatility especially when you hit the level cap (and the game has a lot of other glaring issues as well, that are more apparent once you hit the level cap).

Replayability is improved 10-folds with the EQ2 AA system and the new starting areas, while it"s always been a good selling point of WoW since the beginning, but rerolling is rerolling... it won"t be the same magic you experienced on your first character.

Click to expand...

I"d like to see the situation where an Ogre is the best tank via a certain method, brute damage absorption, while the gnome can achieve the same tanking level via a different method, better avoidance for instance.

Combined with that, I hate how come classes get no use from certain stats. Would love to see warrior that has a good use for high Int instead of the usual more hp, better dmg taking. Vanguard kinda hinted at having this sort of development, but never really followed through.

But the problem with twitch skills in MMO"s is connectivity is it not? I mean if your connection has a spike and during that spike twitch skills matter, doesn"t that suck?

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?

Ngruk said:

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

Click to expand...

BOE (whoever first thought massive BOE was a good thing should DIAF) and tiered quest based progression that requires backflagging (should be able to get the quest even if you haven"t done prequests if members of group are on it). That"s two but whatever.

Ngruk said:

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

Click to expand...

Gnomes.

Death penalties. People who think they are a must should always suffer them ;p THE first MMO ever, NWN on aol never had one (well for the trivia nut it had a tiny one where you might lose an item from inventory in your top slot, but people just put a single arrow there) and it lasted over 7 years (people paid hundreds of dollars a month just to play it, before flat monthly fees). I want to play the game. I don"t need to be kicked in the nuts for having tried something and failed.

Ngruk said:

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

Click to expand...

The single current trend I hate is the use of quests for filler. Fed ex quests, kill x of y mob quests, etc. They obscure the quality quests and kill the feel of a story. I don"t mind quests that say go kill named mob because he ate my village, if there is a ruined village in the zone. That type of stuff adds to the lore. But flat out kill 10 fluffy bunnies for no apparent reason, that stuff has to go.

The second single trend is more of a gripe then specific. A viable first person camera, but as long as you can see more details in 3rd person that is the primary camera.

Ngruk said:

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

Click to expand...

A lack of worldwide events that the players can participate in which dynamically change the world. Asheron"s Call was doing this back in "99, and even though the tech is more complicated, I firmly believe that if you intend to bring something new to the table, this has to be it. Their monthly updates continued the overall storyline of the game, while also changing the world in other ways, like keeping things in season (snow on the ground, amber hues in fall, green in spring and summer)..

Duppin said:

Gnomes.

Click to expand...

Screw you hippy!

tad10 said:

BOE (whoever first thought massive BOE was a good thing should DIAF) and tiered quest based progression that requires backflagging (should be able to get the quest even if you haven"t done prequests if members of group are on it). That"s two but whatever.

Click to expand...

BOE?

And to the second point, I am not sure I get what you are saying.

You want to be able to "join in" on a tiered quest at any stage of it if someone in your group has done the other steps, but you haven"t?

darksensei said:

The single current trend I hate is the use of quests for filler. Fed ex quests, kill x of y mob quests, etc. They obscure the quality quests and kill the feel of a story. I don"t mind quests that say go kill named mob because he ate my village, if there is a ruined village in the zone. That type of stuff adds to the lore. But flat out kill 10 fluffy bunnies for no apparent reason, that stuff has to go.

The second single trend is more of a gripe then specific. A viable first person camera, but as long as you can see more details in 3rd person that is the primary camera.

Click to expand...

The 10 fluffy bunnies I can see. But I think you also should consider you are putting quests in to placate 3-5000 people. If you don"t have a bunch of run here and go there, kill these and kill those, you"ve got 3k people on the same quest at the same time.

I thought EQ2 did a great job of allowing players to "learn" the world through the go here and there quests. I think those quests become much more palatable when the world is a dynamically cool looking and fun place to run around. WoW did a cool job of that imo.

Way to not address the gnome issue at all!

Jerk.

Repair costs/consumable consumption. THEY SUCK.

WoW got so much right, but my GOD did they get this wrong. It servers no purpose except to encourage gold farming activities. Find other ways to milk money from the economy, or go the EQ route, and make it not mean too much at max level, except for cool toys. I mean honestly, as a raider in EQ, did you ever need plat? at all?

Except after they put in augment slots. Then you needed SOME cash to replace augments when you got an upgrade. But that"s really it. Unless you were in some nazi guild that didnt supply clerics with Emeralds/dots from the Guildbank.

Enough rambling. Find another solution. Endless cash grinding for shit like this is AWFUL.