Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

spentmotiff said:

Reading that makes me think about the storyline in early Horizons days. Yes, I know,Horizons.

They had a pretty cool storyline about a war against the undead that progressed as you played and would dump some pretty cool events on the players. The storyline unlocked new races to play (as you liberated them from the undead) and new towns would open as well. Before the company who originally owned Horizons went under (Artifact, I think) every 2 weeks or so a new "chapter" would open with all sorts of events and changes to the game world.

In my opinion, if you are going to make a strictly PvE game, a progressing storyline that involves players is the way to go.

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Yes please.

It is pretty sad that even in its sad state the neutered version of Horizons back on "03 at least still managed to do some of the dynamic content they talked up so much but yet 4 years later none of the major MMOs have progressed the tech much if at all.

Lenardo said:

hey Ngruk, have you decided on a engine yet? and if not, have you looked at "tech5" by ID?

just curious because just from perusing what they are saying- in my opinion- would be very good for a mmo to use, also you could release said game on pc ,mac ,360 and ps3 with supposedly- zero- code changes.

as a side note, if someone was say at Fenway and yelled "HEY Ngruk" as you lean over the rail on the dugout, would you turn around and look to see who yelled it? (i almost did that a few weeks ago Guy i get tickets from has tickets 5 rows behind the dugout...as an aside, - my son was with wally on the dugout roof during the 7th inning stretch during that game-and got his name on the scoreboard for his birthday- also got a foul ball (beckett was pitching))

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Engine eval is one of the steps we are smack dab in the middle of. We"ve done extensive work with pretty much everyone we have heard about that has something that could work for us, and are on a second and in some cases third round of evals with those same companies. It"s a monumental decision to be made and we are covering and recovering our tracks in every case. What we end up creating is all based on what path we choose to take.

Ya, I have already heard "Hey Ngruk" at just about every park in the AL and NL.....

Could someone with some experience with Asheron"s Call explain the episodic content in that game? Just as a starting point for me to try and understand what 38Studios may do similar/different.

Did they just implement new quests? New hubs? Update old hubs? New art assets?

The challenge with a story based MMO is ensuring that *everyone* gets to experience it and feel impacted by it. Typically in MMO"s like WoW, only a tiny minority of players get to experience the stories and main protagonists first-hand. Of course I"m speaking about the pampered raiders. It"s paradoxical that the people that care the least about the lore get to experience it the most. Not to mention that aproximately 5-10% of the playerbase gets 90% of dev resources allocated to their playstyle.

Another challenge for MMO"s in the future is to let the players somehow shape the storyline. Currently MMO"s devs/writers drive the storyline in most major MMO"s -- not the players. The player is essentially playing a game on rails where the storyline unfolds whether they like it or not. Players are mere bystanders to the real events and story arcs that are all predetermined on some whiteboard in southern California.

All the player can really do to impact the world is to level up and get more gear. This explains why MMO"s of late have become all about the accumulation of gear and not about the other things that used to make RPG"s so special: role-playing, exploration, etc.

Things only change in an MMO world if the devs decide it should change via new expansions and occasional content injections. Players truly crave being able to make their mark on the world. They want to impact the worlds they inhabit. MMO devs need to start removing the shackles from players and give them meaningful ways to do this. MMO companies need to be much more ambitious if they are to drive this genre forward beyond the current state of making yet another EQ clone. 38 Studios at least is going in the right direction.

Old Man Potter said:

The challenge with a story based MMO is ensuring that *everyone* gets to experience it and feel impacted it. Typically in MMO"s like WoW, only a tiny minority of players get to experience the stories and main protagonists first-hand. Of course I"m speaking about the pampered raiders. It"s paradoxical that the people that care the least about the lore get to experience it the most. Not to mention that aproximately 5-10% of the playerbase gets 90% of dev resources allocated to their playstyle.

Another challenge for MMO"s in the future is to let the players somehow shape the storyline. Currently MMO"s devs/writers drive the storyline in most major MMO"s -- not the players. The player is essentially playing a game on rails where the storyline unfolds whether they like it or not. Players are mere bystanders to the real events and story arcs that are all predetermined on some whiteboard in southern California.

All the player can really do to impact the world is to level up and get more gear. This explains why MMO"s of late have become all about the accumulation of gear and not about the other things that used to make RPG"s so special: role-playing, exploration, etc.

Things only change in an MMO world if the devs decide it should change via new expansions and occasional content injections. Players truly crave being able to make their mark on the world. They want to impact the worlds they inhavit. MMO devs need to start removing the shackles from players and give them meaningful ways to do this. MMO companies need to be much more ambitious if they are to drive this genre forward beyond the current state of making yet another EQ clone. 38 Studios at least is going in the right direction.

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Good point and why I mentioned Horizons. They did this really, really well and made sure that if you wanted to participate in the event, you could.

For example, in the event where you saved (unlocked) the Elven Town from the Undead, you first had to repair these siege weapons to lay siege to the town. Crafters needed to bring mats and load them into the Siege Weapons to repair them, and the Horizons devs did it right where you needed mats and components fromallCrafting schools. However, there were these higher level mobs around the Siege Weapons that the adventurers had to constantly clear to allow the Crafters to come in and rebuild the siege weapons without getting slaughtered. Real good times and real sense of accomplishment when it was finished...

...and that"s not even mentioning the fact that the undead were pissy about losing their town and released a plagued villager who would spread the plague around from person to person. The plague would lower your stats and slowly drain your life until you did the quest to get the cure. The best part was that the plague was actually passed from player to player based on promiximity...it was awesome to see the tells go up in General when people found a player spreading the plague. Cool, cool stuff...

Asheron"s Call is what comes to mind for me, when I think of episodic content. At one point they destroyed an entire city.

spentmotiff said:

Good point and why I mentioned Horizons. They did this really, really well and made sure that if you wanted to participate in the event, you could.

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Well one problem HZ did has was tailoring the content so all level ranges could participate. Unfortunately when they tried to have things for lower level players higher levels would come in and wipe it out. And it was the same way for the crafting objectives. It was so much more efficient having a higher level crafter do that work that newbs basically got locked out.

This IMO is probably the hardest problem to solve because how do you make an open world event but restrict it to desired level range in a non-artificial way??

spentmotiff said:

Good point and why I mentioned Horizons. They did this really, really well and made sure that if you wanted to participate in the event, you could.

For example, in the event where you saved (unlocked) the Elven Town from the Undead, you first had to repair these siege weapons to lay siege to the town. Crafters needed to bring mats and load them into the Siege Weapons to repair them, and the Horizons devs did it right where you needed mats and components fromallCrafting schools. However, there were these higher level mobs around the Siege Weapons that the adventurers had to constantly clear to allow the Crafters to come in and rebuild the siege weapons without getting slaughtered. Real good times and real sense of accomplishment when it was finished...

...and that"s not even mentioning the fact that the undead were pissy about losing their town and released a plagued villager who would spread the plague around from person to person. The plague would lower your stats and slowly drain your life until you did the quest to get the cure. The best part was that the plague was actually passed from player to player based on promiximity...it was awesome to see the tells go up in General when people found a player spreading the plague. Cool, cool stuff...

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The problem still is....if you start playing the game 3years after initial release you don"t experience any story. Its all history unless devs continually go back and retool existing areas so that a new story arises.

Now, thats not such a bad thing because as long as people keep moving forward they will at some point enter into a phase where they can become part of the story. But as was pointed out above if the story is based on progression then the bleeding edge will push that progression and once again most people won"t get to participate unless they are right on the front edge. In essence, that becomes exactly like what we have today with the raiders pushing at the wall of "story" while everyone else slowly catches up.

To truly engage everyone of all levels, at any time, in a story that they can participate in it must truly be a dynamic and changing world. Cities must rise and fall. Good and evil must walk freely and control and lose ground as they go. The starting areas will move based on what happens, etc, etc. Otherwise episodes just end up looking just like our current stable of games after a couple of years unless you at the front edge riding the wave.

It would be very nice if they actually moved to a more dynamic world system, or even a highly scripted world system that changed the face of the world over time. It would be nice to not start a new character 3 years after the game opens and have the game be exactly the same as when you started a character in that spot the first time.

It would be nice.

Ngruk said:

Engine eval is one of the steps we are smack dab in the middle of. We"ve done extensive work with pretty much everyone we have heard about that has something that could work for us, and are on a second and in some cases third round of evals with those same companies. It"s a monumental decision to be made and we are covering and recovering our tracks in every case. What we end up creating is all based on what path we choose to take.

Ya, I have already heard "Hey Ngruk" at just about every park in the AL and NL.....

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Very interesting. Obviously, you can"t tell us which you"re considering, but the better graphics comment brings Vanguard to mind (can"t help it!). I applauded Sigil for pursuing a higher standard of graphics than was typical of MMOs, but it backfired and was another reason why Vanguard struggled to find mass appeal.

Oh, and how is Ngruk pronounced, anyway?

Gaereth said:

It would be very nice if they actually moved to a more dynamic world system, or even a highly scripted world system that changed the face of the world over time. It would be nice to not start a new character 3 years after the game opens and have the game be exactly the same as when you started a character in that spot the first time.

It would be nice.

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Good points and yes, please for a truly dynamic world. Shit, the MMO genre is either in the 4th or 5th Gen (depending on who you talk to) and, honestly, nothing has been done that is simply groundbreaking, like playing EQ for the first time was for people.

Going from playing UO to playing EQ was jaw-dropping in the differences and improvements in the game world. I remember I spent my first couple of days walking around saying to myself "I can"t believe how real and how deep this world is." Compared to going from EQ to EQ2/WoW and while you can see obvious improvements, there were not as jaw dropping as before.

I believe that a changing, dynamic world will be a real good step in that direction and something to differentiate the next crop of fantasy games from the crowd (as AoC and WAR seem to be doing.)

While I"m sure there is room for another fantasy MMO, I can"t see any reason from switching from my current level/class based, fixed class roles, leveling treadmill MMO to the next level/class based, fixed class roles, leveling treadmill MMO-with-slightly-better-graphics.

Gaereth said:

The problem still is....if you start playing the game 3years after initial release you don"t experience any story. Its all history unless devs continually go back and retool existing areas so that a new story arises.

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What would be nice is to build instances based off of major storyline events that "replay" these moments in the server"s history. A lot like the Caverns of Time from WoW. To me that would make for a great way to explain instances in the world from a lore perspective.

It would be very nice if they actually moved to a more dynamic world system, or even a highly scripted world system that changed the face of the world over time. It would be nice to not start a new character 3 years after the game opens and have the game be exactly the same as when you started a character in that spot the first time.

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What I would really love to see is as players move the game to some major ending of a storyline that the game basically "resets". The storyline advances 50-60 years, everyones" characters are now dead, and you start playing as a new generation of your character"s family. This would give you the chance to change basically any aspect about your character, Class/Name/Race/etc.. or you can just remain the same if you so chose (though you"d still be a child of your former character).

You would retain your level & gear (or perhaps gear could be converted to points and you spend these points to acquire new gear) and anything else your previous character possessed. Maybe you could even do something like take your previous Lev 60 character and turn that into 2 Lev 35 characters or whatever the amount of XP earned would allow.

With this storyline advancement brings in the content of a new storyline and perhaps some major changes in the world. Former allies are now foes or new enemies have arisen etc..., some refreshing of the older content, and following up on my above suggestion of CoT like instances some new instances that cover the events of the old storyline & anything significant that happened in the in-between years.

Traldan said:

Very interesting. Obviously, you can"t tell us which you"re considering, but the better graphics comment brings Vanguard to mind (can"t help it!). I applauded Sigil for pursuing a higher standard of graphics than was typical of MMOs, but it backfired and was another reason why Vanguard struggled to find mass appeal.

Oh, and how is Ngruk pronounced, anyway?

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Well one thing to keep in mind they are targeting release for what..2010-2011? It"s a ways off, who knows what cards can do!

But then again, it"s good to keep in mind what Sigil did and that Brad was banking on hardware overcoming the crappy performance of Vanguard...which obviously didnt happen.

The way the graphics comment was phrased, it seems to me that he means better graphics than WoW, but not "cutting edge" graphics, the Sigil approach.

Lonin said:

The way the graphics comment was phrased, it seems to me that he means better graphics than WoW, but not "cutting edge" graphics, the Sigil approach.

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Agreed, I interpreted it as such, but wanted to bring up Vanguard as an example of one that went too far.

Traldan said:

Agreed, I interpreted it as such, but wanted to bring up Vanguard as an example of one that went too far.

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Where did I mention graphics?

It"s like Spaceballs:

Just now.

Lonin said:

The way the graphics comment was phrased, it seems to me that he means better graphics than WoW, but not "cutting edge" graphics

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Reasonable systems specs is the way to go, no question, if you want subscribers. In fact, evidence suggests that higher system specs = less players. For example:

WoW: reasonable system specs, most players by a huge margin. Do I even need to linkMMOGCHART.COMhere?

Counter Strike 1 - Most players of any online FPS game by a long shot and is based on 1998 technology engine. The only game that even comes close is CS:Source, its sequel which has less players presumably due to system specs:

GameSpy.com - Gimme The Stats!

America"s Army is 100% free, based on vastly superior graphic technology (Unreal), yet has virtually no players compared to CS1, which is a free HL1 mod people actually pay for. How can game developers continually release MMOGs with high system specs when it is so obvious that it completely gimps their player base?

Ngruk said:

Ya, I have already heard "Hey Ngruk" at just about every park in the AL and NL.....

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Haha, how do they even pronounce it. I"d feel like a total dork being all like "HEY N...g...ruk!"

Ngruk said:

Where did I mention graphics?

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We"re talking about the original quote.

Marketing would do well to set up a Flash-based "Kick Moorgard in the nuts."

/hugs Moor