not feasible no. you would be better off creating multiple versions of the same game using different engines.Locithon said:
Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling
- Thread starter Lord Thanos_foh
- Start date
yea using VG as an example as it was supposedly going to be built like that. On the setting under balanced, but not the lowest setting ( i forget the setting name), it looked worse than EQ1 in 1999.
I don;t post this to slam VG as it is relevant to the question asked, but damn it boggled the mind how a game released about 8 years later can look and perform worse at the same time.
Why do lower graphics setting always look so fucking bad.
I don;t post this to slam VG as it is relevant to the question asked, but damn it boggled the mind how a game released about 8 years later can look and perform worse at the same time.
Why do lower graphics setting always look so fucking bad.
Not going to make a long winded response since I have over the last few years covered most everything on this and other boards but....Flight said:
1. Get rid of the inbreeding, hire outside the industry.
2. Get some professional programmers with real life experience not a bunch of "earring boyz" that are professional "gamerz" whose only real experience is making web pages in HS or college.
3. Locate somewhere that has a good quality of life without having to pay the janitor $50K / year due to the high cost of living, hence you can provide better benefits and still pay a decent wage.
4. Set realistic and obtainable goals with measurable milestones and get some people that understand metrics and how to track progress.
5. Professional QA, production control, process control, marketing, PR, etc people need to be hired. Not just someone that ran a fansite and therefore has a few hundred people that listen to him. Sorry ******** but this swipe is directly at you after what you did to everyone with EQ2.
This could go on forever Flight. I work for a Fortune 500 company myself and am directly involved in production of an item from start to finish that most people could never even grasp the complexity of (Nuclear Aircraft Carriers).
Even as large as our projects are QID and QA are there from the start to the end and we have a small army of production control people keeping everything on track and running detailed continous metrics. That is how you turn a profit, satisify the customer and ultimately get repeat business to grow your company. Otherwise you stagnate and die.
Well, calling people idiots isn"t expressing an opinion, it"s expressing an insult. I thought you were talking about expressing opinions regarding design and company development processes.Zarcath said:
Regarding tight competition, I believe that. God knows there are a ton more people who think they want to write games than there"s a market for them.
Well considering your product (nuclear aircraft carriers), I would hope so. But despite all this buzz word discussing on how to set up a MMO production "model" it all still means nothing if the game just plumb sucks. And to be honest that is all I as a consumer really care about.gnomad said:
The single most serious issue MMORPG"s seem to face IMO is the sustainability of the early leveling and growth focus that these games have, often looked at as the golden age of the games with fond memories compared to the later times in the games when the playerbase has become maxxed out and the game shifts from the focus of skill and level advancement to loot collecting in raids. The expansions as they have been done in these games to date offer a small term temporary return to such a play style with a level increase, but by the time they do this those that yearn for the advancement playstyle are either playing an alt or have quit the game altogether.
It is no secret that the maxxing out playerbase is a large reason these games slowly lose their charm to a huge portion of players, the low level areas turning into ghost towns, the inability to find groups for the few new players starting at the low levels, and the only people able to play at the high level in the raid focused end game needing a whole lot of spare time. WoW combats it somewhat in making the leveling so easy that people played alot of alts, but even that has proved to lose the charm and now that game as well is getting into the endless cycle of ramping up content in expansions to keep the people playing going at the high levels. EQ1 of course 14 expansions later is completely altered from the game it once was and so many people yearn for a classic EQ server, but that is a yearning for that early MMORPG feeling that would simply end yet again due to the nature of the game design not allowing for the continued focus that the games initially offer.
Somehow a MMORPG has to attempt to stop the mass moving up to that glass ceiling. When VG was being developed I got into alot of discussions about this and remortation was one major tool a game could use in expansions for the advancement of characters instead of level range increases that would allow for the reuse of low level content, and expansions that release more low level content to go along with the mid-high level and raid content. Expansions much like Kunark with the complete level range available and allowing old characters to not only start at the level 50 content and move up from there but experience it all. These games and the world they inhabit are at their most healthy when the playerbase is spread througout the entire level range and not when it all gets lumped up at the top. EQ was able to avoid the issue due to 2 main reasons, the large experience requirements to max out (hell levels and all) and the playerbase that was new to games like these. It was well into Kunark before the issue of maxxing out and having cleared most of the content was boring a large portion of the playerbase and made an expansion like Velious required.
I for one (and I imagine many others here) have no issue with large level curves that take a long time to complete. Interim rewards within levels such as an AA system that gives a person points to spend at interim times within the levels would help alliviate some of the feeling of stasis in a long level, perhaps more AA points being awarded within the higher levels when the experience and therefore time requirements are greater. Of course in EQ, as great a game as it was, the grinding of aviaks in South Karana for 5 or 6 hours straight to get a level is only a enjoyable memory in hindsite. WoW gets huge credit from me in making the leveling process vastly more interesting with the focus on quests that give real experience and the ability to group up in the instanced dungeons for very nice level specific loot. With a larger exp curve within the levels one would simply need more detailed quests keeping the players involved, perhaps having multilevel quests such as the Greenmist.
If the curve were large enough to warrant it raid content could also be added to the game for level ranges other then the maximum level, and that raid content giving a decent exp rate for the people involved so it again becomes another viable option of advancement to go alongside the questing and killing of normal mobs. Of course the raid content for, say, level (25 +- 5) characters would also drop valuable loot for people of that level range that would be superior to the normal or dungeon drops of that same level, much as raid content at the end game tends to be superior. Those raids would of course also be more difficult to complete, warranting the superior loot. Raiding does not have to be something only possible at the end game levels, and the inclusion of it and making it a viable form of exp advancement (along with quests associated with those raids) gives people who might remort in a system to combat the maxxing out playerbase the ability to keep playing a style of game they enjoy, since many raiders hate to suddenly have to stop raiding to level to some new cap.
I was wondering Curt, since you mention issues in previous games that you think were mismanaged and that you wanted to attempt to fix if this would be one problem you see and that you would aim to fix? Are you seeking a way to keep the entire game world active at all level ranges and avoid the inevitable maxxing out playerbase that most of these games face?
It is no secret that the maxxing out playerbase is a large reason these games slowly lose their charm to a huge portion of players, the low level areas turning into ghost towns, the inability to find groups for the few new players starting at the low levels, and the only people able to play at the high level in the raid focused end game needing a whole lot of spare time. WoW combats it somewhat in making the leveling so easy that people played alot of alts, but even that has proved to lose the charm and now that game as well is getting into the endless cycle of ramping up content in expansions to keep the people playing going at the high levels. EQ1 of course 14 expansions later is completely altered from the game it once was and so many people yearn for a classic EQ server, but that is a yearning for that early MMORPG feeling that would simply end yet again due to the nature of the game design not allowing for the continued focus that the games initially offer.
Somehow a MMORPG has to attempt to stop the mass moving up to that glass ceiling. When VG was being developed I got into alot of discussions about this and remortation was one major tool a game could use in expansions for the advancement of characters instead of level range increases that would allow for the reuse of low level content, and expansions that release more low level content to go along with the mid-high level and raid content. Expansions much like Kunark with the complete level range available and allowing old characters to not only start at the level 50 content and move up from there but experience it all. These games and the world they inhabit are at their most healthy when the playerbase is spread througout the entire level range and not when it all gets lumped up at the top. EQ was able to avoid the issue due to 2 main reasons, the large experience requirements to max out (hell levels and all) and the playerbase that was new to games like these. It was well into Kunark before the issue of maxxing out and having cleared most of the content was boring a large portion of the playerbase and made an expansion like Velious required.
I for one (and I imagine many others here) have no issue with large level curves that take a long time to complete. Interim rewards within levels such as an AA system that gives a person points to spend at interim times within the levels would help alliviate some of the feeling of stasis in a long level, perhaps more AA points being awarded within the higher levels when the experience and therefore time requirements are greater. Of course in EQ, as great a game as it was, the grinding of aviaks in South Karana for 5 or 6 hours straight to get a level is only a enjoyable memory in hindsite. WoW gets huge credit from me in making the leveling process vastly more interesting with the focus on quests that give real experience and the ability to group up in the instanced dungeons for very nice level specific loot. With a larger exp curve within the levels one would simply need more detailed quests keeping the players involved, perhaps having multilevel quests such as the Greenmist.
If the curve were large enough to warrant it raid content could also be added to the game for level ranges other then the maximum level, and that raid content giving a decent exp rate for the people involved so it again becomes another viable option of advancement to go alongside the questing and killing of normal mobs. Of course the raid content for, say, level (25 +- 5) characters would also drop valuable loot for people of that level range that would be superior to the normal or dungeon drops of that same level, much as raid content at the end game tends to be superior. Those raids would of course also be more difficult to complete, warranting the superior loot. Raiding does not have to be something only possible at the end game levels, and the inclusion of it and making it a viable form of exp advancement (along with quests associated with those raids) gives people who might remort in a system to combat the maxxing out playerbase the ability to keep playing a style of game they enjoy, since many raiders hate to suddenly have to stop raiding to level to some new cap.
I was wondering Curt, since you mention issues in previous games that you think were mismanaged and that you wanted to attempt to fix if this would be one problem you see and that you would aim to fix? Are you seeking a way to keep the entire game world active at all level ranges and avoid the inevitable maxxing out playerbase that most of these games face?
Pancreas
Vyemm Raider
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I am going to be obnoxious and tag on my two cents to the end of this thread without reading any of it.
--What are the elements of an mmo?--
The most basic components are:
-visualization
-statistics & calculations
-player organization & communication
-NPC behavior
All of which are used by a player to determine how they interact with the game.
--What makes a good mmo?--
Innovation in each of the above fields coupled with smooth implementation.
That"s it... of course the details are always the tricky part. Up until now there has been mild innovation with the primary difference between games being setting/player focus. Are players killing each other, npcs or both?
To this end if I were to make a game I would focus on four things.
1.)Hide stats as much as possible (sounds horrible but wait!) Replace lists of numbers with as much visual and aural information as possible. The more information a player gets from observing their environment the more "immersed" they become. (that word gets way too much)
2.)Develop NPC"s that are smart, have goals, interact with their environment without player initiation and interact with players in much the same way the players interact with each other.
3.)Have clearly defined cumulative goals. Give the entire player community things to achieve beyond simply being the first to kill something or getting new gear.
4.)Create a dynamic environment and use a physics engine to determine how player actions are received by that environment.
*did I use enough buzz words in this post?
--What are the elements of an mmo?--
The most basic components are:
-visualization
-statistics & calculations
-player organization & communication
-NPC behavior
All of which are used by a player to determine how they interact with the game.
--What makes a good mmo?--
Innovation in each of the above fields coupled with smooth implementation.
That"s it... of course the details are always the tricky part. Up until now there has been mild innovation with the primary difference between games being setting/player focus. Are players killing each other, npcs or both?
To this end if I were to make a game I would focus on four things.
1.)Hide stats as much as possible (sounds horrible but wait!) Replace lists of numbers with as much visual and aural information as possible. The more information a player gets from observing their environment the more "immersed" they become. (that word gets way too much)
2.)Develop NPC"s that are smart, have goals, interact with their environment without player initiation and interact with players in much the same way the players interact with each other.
3.)Have clearly defined cumulative goals. Give the entire player community things to achieve beyond simply being the first to kill something or getting new gear.
4.)Create a dynamic environment and use a physics engine to determine how player actions are received by that environment.
*did I use enough buzz words in this post?
I agree with you also Maxxius, what is being discussed though is how to get rid of the suck and if MMORPG companies keep on the same course that they have for the last decade or so (with few exceptions) then suckage will be the standard.Maxxius said:
Well my hope with studio38 is that they do have a quality author in RA to at least help create a good story. With VG you basically had Brad and Jeff creating a story that, I am sorry, they simply were never qualified to make. So in the end, true talent imo proves important, regardless of production models. And while I would agree that having a solid production model is important, it will always remain secondary to the actual product being produced.gnomad said:
Brad and Jeff"s realization never came to fruition because Brad was never around and Jeff was too busy playing WoW in his office. The only time that I ever found Jeff outside of his office and not playing WoW was when he got pissed off and would roam around yelling at people.Maxxius said:
Now, I like Jeff and I respect him much moreso than others. But seriously, put down the gdamn mic and ignore that WoW instance in exchange for the attention of one of your designers, please?
Oh give me a break. You know damn well neither Brad nor Jeff has ever written anything of serious quality. And don"t give me some lame meaningless Eq expansion as an example. True talent wins out in the long run and neither had it, aside from ego.
I find it ironic that VG"s demise could be attributed to a case of WoW addiction (among other addictions).
Doesn"t work. If your MMORPG is popular and achievement-oriented, those numbers WILL be derived, with a relative degree of precision, by the people interested in numbers.Pancreas said:
If your clues are imprecise or irrelevant to the results, people will complain that they have no idea how well they"re doing. If they"re relatively precise and well-correlated to your results, the numbers will be derived, and then other people will complain that they need to go to this-and-that website to get "real info".
This creates a small mini-game, that of deriving the underlying equations and numbers. But don"t kid yourself, hiding numbers make theorycraft a game that only a smaller percentage of population creates because it"s harder, it doesn"t erase it. Ask any veteran of MUD-DEV about it.
Tropics said:
Practically everyone who has played FFXI agrees their answer to this is phenomenal. Allow all characters to level all classes, though you can only have one class active at a time.
Allow races to have significant bonuses to different stats, so each has classes they are the best at, and the min/maxers and power games will still have an incentive to reroll.
The list of ideas developers should adopt from FFXI is extensive; its all about fun, which translates to "hooks" to keep interest. Square Enix really took the class and combat system to the next level - no-one else has come close.
It shows how good they are when so much of the rest of the game sucks, but we will play it because these aspects are truly innovative and fun.
I don"t post on message boards very often but Flight, you"ve drawn me out of the woodwork with some of the comments about the MMO industry which I"d like to elaborate on.
QA vs. QC vs. Testing
Many of the comments about QA (Quality Assurance) seem to try and blend QC / Testing (Quality Control) in with them for a lot of the suggestions about what is wrong with the MMO industry. There is a difference between Quality Assurance, which is an advisory role: "Hey Bob, you know that feature you added? Yeah, it"s not winding up so good, I know you wanted the button to turn the screen blue, but what you"ve got is more of a purple, is that what you intended?"
And Quality Control / Testing which is more of the "Hey Bob, the specification says the blue should be hue values 0.243, 0.112, 0.981 using our system, what you have there is not that, please fix it." QA and Testing both get used interchangeably which is often incorrect in context. The aims for the two are different even if it may be the same department or person who is doing both. Knowing the difference is very important.
Applying a waterfall / whatever other process to game development.
A process is a process, it is neither good, nor bad on its own. What you need to do often is pick or develop the processes and methods which work best for what you"re trying to accomplish. The waterfall method works very well in a system or product where failure rate needs to be very low and you"re iterating a lot. It works well for things such as microprocessors since you have your core product and you"re making little modifications and need to make sure those modifications don"t break your core. The same holds true for just about every other process, you pick the one that is best suited to your environment, goals, and product and run with it. Falling into the trap of "this method works for X" is dangerous when it could be very inefficient for what you"re specifically trying to accomplish.
Lack of Skills / Hire outside of the Industry
Please try to avoid broad generalizations. In the time I"ve been in the game industry I"ve worked with folks who were project managers from NASA, Chemical Engineers from DOW and DuPont, Engineers from IBM, Xerox, the medical industry, IT from fortune 500 companies, Designers from investment banking, radiology labs, and animal behaviorists. Before the game industry I was an ISO 9000 QA Engineer working on microprocessors and firmware. The industry does hire outside of itself, however, there is nothing quite like making an MMO and so while you can have a lot of parallel skills there is always something to be said for that specific experience and learning from doing it once.
Subjectivity
Having come from a hardware background where things either worked or they didn"t, it was very chaotic to move into an industry where there were shades of gray. "Well Bob that didn"t quite work out the way we planned it, but that sure is neat anyway. That"s not a bug, that"s a feature!"
That chaos is required though for one very specific reason: Creativity. Inability to learn how to focus that chaos and creativity is the prime reason many MMO"s don"t live up to expectations. Above all Focus on what you"re making and be realistic about your expectations. Lack of focus is where the industry has had problems in the past.
And of course, Fun
Maxxius had the best quote: "But despite all this buzz word discussing on how to set up a MMO production "model" it all still means nothing if the game just plumb sucks. And to be honest that is all I as a consumer really care about."
People only care if thier nuclear boats don"t sink, or their taxes get filed correctly, or their medical equipment does exactly what it"s supposed to. For a game, they also care what color the hull is, how efficiently their taxes get filed so they can calculate their MPS (Money per second), and that the medical equipment isn"t somehow nerfing their lifespan from errant radiation.
Subjectivity is the hard part. You can"t learn that from other industries in the same way. The development methodologies you can, but you do need to adapt them to work in the MMO environment. There is no "right" answer just ones with different tradeoffs. There is always a tradeoff.
QA vs. QC vs. Testing
Many of the comments about QA (Quality Assurance) seem to try and blend QC / Testing (Quality Control) in with them for a lot of the suggestions about what is wrong with the MMO industry. There is a difference between Quality Assurance, which is an advisory role: "Hey Bob, you know that feature you added? Yeah, it"s not winding up so good, I know you wanted the button to turn the screen blue, but what you"ve got is more of a purple, is that what you intended?"
And Quality Control / Testing which is more of the "Hey Bob, the specification says the blue should be hue values 0.243, 0.112, 0.981 using our system, what you have there is not that, please fix it." QA and Testing both get used interchangeably which is often incorrect in context. The aims for the two are different even if it may be the same department or person who is doing both. Knowing the difference is very important.
Applying a waterfall / whatever other process to game development.
A process is a process, it is neither good, nor bad on its own. What you need to do often is pick or develop the processes and methods which work best for what you"re trying to accomplish. The waterfall method works very well in a system or product where failure rate needs to be very low and you"re iterating a lot. It works well for things such as microprocessors since you have your core product and you"re making little modifications and need to make sure those modifications don"t break your core. The same holds true for just about every other process, you pick the one that is best suited to your environment, goals, and product and run with it. Falling into the trap of "this method works for X" is dangerous when it could be very inefficient for what you"re specifically trying to accomplish.
Lack of Skills / Hire outside of the Industry
Please try to avoid broad generalizations. In the time I"ve been in the game industry I"ve worked with folks who were project managers from NASA, Chemical Engineers from DOW and DuPont, Engineers from IBM, Xerox, the medical industry, IT from fortune 500 companies, Designers from investment banking, radiology labs, and animal behaviorists. Before the game industry I was an ISO 9000 QA Engineer working on microprocessors and firmware. The industry does hire outside of itself, however, there is nothing quite like making an MMO and so while you can have a lot of parallel skills there is always something to be said for that specific experience and learning from doing it once.
Subjectivity
Having come from a hardware background where things either worked or they didn"t, it was very chaotic to move into an industry where there were shades of gray. "Well Bob that didn"t quite work out the way we planned it, but that sure is neat anyway. That"s not a bug, that"s a feature!"
That chaos is required though for one very specific reason: Creativity. Inability to learn how to focus that chaos and creativity is the prime reason many MMO"s don"t live up to expectations. Above all Focus on what you"re making and be realistic about your expectations. Lack of focus is where the industry has had problems in the past.
And of course, Fun
Maxxius had the best quote: "But despite all this buzz word discussing on how to set up a MMO production "model" it all still means nothing if the game just plumb sucks. And to be honest that is all I as a consumer really care about."
People only care if thier nuclear boats don"t sink, or their taxes get filed correctly, or their medical equipment does exactly what it"s supposed to. For a game, they also care what color the hull is, how efficiently their taxes get filed so they can calculate their MPS (Money per second), and that the medical equipment isn"t somehow nerfing their lifespan from errant radiation.
Subjectivity is the hard part. You can"t learn that from other industries in the same way. The development methodologies you can, but you do need to adapt them to work in the MMO environment. There is no "right" answer just ones with different tradeoffs. There is always a tradeoff.
That is one MMORPG I have never played. So what you are saying is is you start as a druid, level to 20, get bored for a while you can switch to a warrior, which reverts you to a level 1 warrior but otherwise the same character (what happens to the gear?) and you can play like that for abit before switching back to the 20 druid or something else starting as a level 1? Definately unique, it smacks abit of a skill based system letting you build up different skill sets within the different class of the same character.Flight said:
If you do this are quests redoable for the character? What I mean is if I do a level 5 quest with the druid, level on to 20, then revert to a warrior and begin leveling that can you redo a quest as the warrior version of yourself now? If so it seems kind of odd, but if not it makes starting an alt alot more practical since you have more quests to do that the druid already did.
One thing about this system is it may help the game last a while longer in the short term but much as alt building tends to wane later in the game so would playing a different class on that same character instead of sticking to the high level class. With remortation as a system to add character advancement in expansions, a diffiuclt and time consuming quest that a necromancer for example could do at the maximum level and at the end of that quest they become a lich, weakened greatly by the change to this new form to a low level, but with some new spells and abilities that they did not have as a necromancer and a higher level cap as a lich then existed as a necromancer. Done well this would be a real fix, many of those capped when an expansion is released would do a remortation quest to become the more powerful form, re-populatiing low level content and new low level content in the expansion. This would give each expansion a significant lifespan before people are maxxing out again en masse since people are making a trip from the low levels all the way to the top again instead of just tacking on 5 or 10 levels that many paste off in a week or two from the release of an expansion. Given the varying speeds of leveling that a game like this has in it"s playerbase a system done like this right would assure that each level range would have numerous people working through it and allow for grouping for both those older players going through a remort stage and a newer player starting out late in the game seeing a well populated world.
I agree totally that the various races should have large differences in stats. A ogre should be alot more powerful then a gnome, and alot less intelligent. One issue games have is while you can make this difference somewhat meaningful in the early game the gear tends to add bulk amounts to the characters and a difference of 140 strength and 70 strength for a ogre an in the beginning which is 2/1 becomes 540/470 at high levels. The bulk stats from gear nullifies the differences in the classes to a large degree. On the VG forum we had a large discussion about this and the best answer I heard was to make gear have percentage increases from the original stats instead of bulk stat amounts (AKA: instead of a helm giving +20 strength it gives +15% of original strength, so if you have 100 strength as a naked human you get 15 more strength with that helm, as a gnome with 50 strength naked you would get 7.5 strength from that same helm). What that would do is keep the exact same ratio of strength that existed at the start of the game. A well geared gnome could be more powerful then a poorly geared ogre, but when equally geared the ogre would be stronger by a large margin, which makes sense.
Just some brainstorming from back in the day.
Jason, I think this is a fantastic post and I"m going to spend more than a little time re-reading it and thinking it through (hey, I"m mining in Eve, what else is there to do. ). I have to say, again, that I believe we have similar views on a lot of the subject material, but we are approaching it from different angles.Dymus said:
I"m trying to promote a discussion among the folk who can feed into it, to :
i) find common ground and belief on what can be improved; and,
ii) discuss how we make those improvements a reality.
I"d really appreciate your feedback on those issues.
I also have to ask, in light of how extensive your experience is in non-MMO games prior to your Sony experience, how different are the issues you encounter in the two genres ?
Pancreas
Vyemm Raider
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I understand that there will always be those who want to open something up to see how it ticks. However, giant numerical values representing different variables is the result of limited technology or poor implementation or habit.Ukerric said:
If you are going to make a calculation a critical part of any game,it needs some sort of accurate representation, period.
Threat in WoW is completely invisible without 3rd party mods. And yet it will cripple any raid if it is not completely understood. This is really inexcusable in my opinion.
What players need is accurate feedback for every calculation they are subject to. How this feedback is delivered is something to be considered though.
People are always compiling data about real world systems to better understand them. These systems invariably get broken down into numerical values so that they might be more readily examined and understood. We use these numbers and calculations to see patterns and ratios with better focus.
However, the original data was not in numerical format. My point is that in order for a game world to seem more like a world and not a spread-sheet these values need to be displayed in as much a natural way as possible.
I have played countless versions of statistics-quest over the years and have always thought that numbers were big trade-offs. They give information quickly but in very simplified format. There is a lot of story telling that has yet to take place in place of those numbers.
The box scores for baseball games give you all the information to accurately recite how the game was played and yet they are still a poor substitute for going to the park.