Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Grave said:

Valid points, Zehn..

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Well, it depends ultimately on how much of a dick the people you play the game with are. Our guild is "relatively" hard core and yet we"re gone so far to avoid making people feel like the game is a chore to the point where our officers decided to "hire" people to farm raid mats for us in exchange for rot loot from previous zones.

As others have said, FFxi was a bit of an anomaly in that high end guilds were almost universally dicks to begin with. Sub-jobbing just complicated the issue as well since you also had to have the optimal sub-job levels as well.

Plus the game was asian-inspired so insane fucking grinds were the norm. You"d have less of an issue with that in modern wester MMO"s where leveling is more of a trip then it is a chore. For all the things done well in FFxi there was an equally terrible game mechanic. Plus you couldn"t jump. If I couldn"t jump in a game I"d be an elitist prat too.

It"s a situation we already deal with. We"ve had a handful of people reroll since we only had 1 raiding shaman and they"re ridiculously necessary for Sunwell. We had 3 people step up and volunteer. We didn"t require that everybody in the guild level up alts just in case some other class suddenly became OP.

Will some ridiculous guilds require that people have at least 2-3 useful alts? Sure. But I"m willing to wager most won"t. Will it definitely be counted as a plus? Sure. But so is saying "I have 200 flasks of relentless assault in my bank." People with a lot of extra time on their hands are usually a bonus.

Besides, you can just look at our recruitment page. We"re actively seeking people who don"t have a shitton of spare time (outside of our normal raid hours that is) because that usually means you"re jobless and/or a teenager and in 2 months will "Realize that you need to get your life in order" and will bail on the guild.

Anyways...

My main point still stands. Allowing players to choose loot alleviates a lot of the bullshit that comes with random loot systems. EQ, EQ2 and WoW all know this and have been moving away from it. Think of how retarded the pvp honor/arena system in WoW would be if you went up to the arena vendor and you turned in your 2000 arena points and he gave you a box. And in that box was one random item. It could be a rogue dagger even though you"re a paladin, or it could be that you get the same druid leggings two weeks in a row.

Random loot is stupid.

However, without random loot you"ll very quickly run into bosses where you no longer need anything off them and it just becomes a chore to kill them.

One option is to allow players to skip bosses somehow. If everyone in the raid is flagged as having killed that boss you can teleport pass or trigger a mob that will kill the boss for you or use a key to skip it or whatever.

Another option, which I feel is superior and helps fix dozens of other gameplay issues, is the job system in that the loot will almost never rot.

Both options could even be employed for that matter. Whether or not it makes sense lorewise is up for grabs. Depends on how you spin it (the prevous discussed card-game mechanic).

Plus, I"m really sick of making alts with silly names since I can"t name them all Zehn or Vhex. 8(

Anyways...bed time.

Agraza said:

Balance 1v1.

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You missed the point. You can"t balance 1v1 unless you give everyone the exact same abilities. You can try balancing with different abilities. You can try really, really, really, really hard but you will not succeed. Take dps v. healer. Either, at the end of the day, the dps will be able to outnuke the healer"s ability to heal himself in which case the dps wins most fights or he won"t in which case the healer will win most fights.

tad10 said:

You missed the point. You can"t balance 1v1 unless you give everyone the exact same abilities. You can try balancing with different abilities. You can try really, really, really, really hard but you will not succeed. Take dps v. healer. Either, at the end of the day, the dps will be able to outnuke the healer"s ability to heal himself in which case the dps wins most fights or he won"t in which case the healer will win most fights.

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Well, you could balance to the point where, like in counter-strike, he who gets the first shot wins.

I disagree that you cannot balance 1v1 without giving everyone the same abilities. And you can design a healer that can effect drains on a single target when not actively healing to wither dps to non-effect and kill him with dots. You can do all kinds of crazy shit. Your concept stems from the idea of a healer that can only heal and/or a healer too busy healing to return fire. This is 1v1. The dps isn"t extraordinary and perhaps by taking the offensive he can come ahead.

I"ve said DPS should never be < healing, not that healers should only be capable of healing.

Every dev goes back to the pitiful excuse that PvP is balanced for group combat, but never presents balanced group combat. Everything just scales into zerg oblivion when you begin with the concept that groups are the ground floor of PvP combat.

Agraza said:

I disagree that you cannot balance 1v1 without giving everyone the same abilities.

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You can disagree all you want but you"ll continue to be wrong so I"m not going to argue this further. There"s a reason "every dev goes back to the pitiful excuse that PvP is balanced for group content"

But I"ll tell you what: if you can balance rock-paper-scissors so that any one of the three has an even chance to win against any of the other two I"ll concede defeat


And no cheating by using random chance.

* * *

And I"ll add that in your example it seems pretty clear that the healer would kick the shit out of the dps every time.

Zehn - Vhex said:

Plus, I"m really sick of making alts with silly names since I can"t name them all Zehn or Vhex. 8(

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tip from the pros: just stick an X in front and your cool multiplier skyrockets

tad10 said:

You can disagree all you want but you"ll continue to be wrong so I"m not going to argue this further. There"s a reason "every dev goes back to the pitiful excuse that PvP is balanced for group content"

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This reason being what exactly? You can"t prove GvG is more balanced than 1v1. You can prove that it has been attempted more often without successfully attaining balance.

But I"ll tell you what: if you can balance rock-paper-scissors so that any one of the three has an even chance to win against any of the other two I"ll concede defeat

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That, by definition, isn"t RPS. Great, you"ll concede defeat if I was actually masterminding PvP design on an MMO and showed you different. I"m glad you"ve set the terms of your surrender so realistically. I don"t view this as an epeen contest. All I"m saying is that GvG has thus far been based on a flawed concept and has continually failed to meet expectations. Try a new angle.

You know, in playing M:tG I never equated it to rock-paper-scissors and placing two decks against each other could result in different results every single time.

And I"ll add that in your example it seems pretty clear that the healer would kick the shit out of the dps every time.

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Why? This assumes he has 2x the resources of the DPS. If he spends his mana fighting how he does he also spend it healing? He can"t do both to full effect. Don"t debuffs last for finite periods? And what if our DPS has heals too?! ZOMG internet implosion!

Zehn - Vhex said:

If you say, "BUT I ENJOY THE RANDOM FEELING OF RANDOM LOOT, IT"S LIKE A SUPRISE BOX OF CHOCOLATES EVERY TIME!"...

Well that just makes you an asshole.

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Not an asshole. It"s relatively simple, and something that EQ "knew" very well. Random rewards are far more addictive than fixed rewards.

Note that I said "addictive". Not fun. It"s actually funifyou get rewarded. As long as people walk out from the encounter with an equipment upgrade, it"s good, unless you"re an asshole that only thinks about his e-peen, which, alas, is common.

A good idea is Sunwell"s sunmote trading. You get an item that is useful in itself, but if no one can use it as it is, you can swap it for a different useful item. Sure, you can"t pick the weapon over the ring, but you can turn the moonkin tunic into a rogue tunic. Or vice versaandthe boss drops both. Instant or delayed satisfaction.

The fact is, you should not endlessly farm a boss for a couple of drops. That"s a minor failure in the WoW system: the tiers are far more sharply defined than they should be. There should be a continuum of bosses, ranging from heroic endbosses to Kil"Jaeden, and these bosses should drop a continuum of loot, ranging from ilvl110 to ilvl112, 115, 117... 155, 158, up to 161.

Which ties in...

The fact that we have to clear though roughly 7 bosses and 4 hours worth of trash clearing to finally get to encounters where we can actually use the loot? Really rapes the fun.

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Exactly. I consider SSC to be one of the best example of raiding. You enter, and you go do the boss you want, more or less. For all of its vaunted focus on "winged dungeons", most of TBC is still horribly linear. The very concept of "gear check" bosses at the entrance of a raid zone is retarded; a boss should drop loot in balance with its difficulty, not of its zone. Ditto for "EZ-mode bosses" which are "rewards for completing the previous zone".

You want a good raid zone? Think SSC. Think SSRA Temple in EQ. Zones where your guild can go and test itself against the boss it wants to defeat, and go "farm" the bosses they know they can beat. In the order they want (a quick farm boss before "try" night, or a quick kill after six defeats in a row, to stave depression at another failed night).

Ssra Temple had WAYYYYYYYYY to much trash. I would hardly lump that into "quick raid zone"

I"ve always been a guy that falls on the realism side of gaming, in games that couldn"t be farther from "realistic".

I"ll laugh my butt off and ask out loud how on earth the rat dropped a "Rusted Claymore" but not utter a peep as my Shaman casts a magic spell that sprouts a totem from the ground that stops my friends from being afraid...

It"s a weird world we "live in".

I am and always have been a "realistic loot" guy. I"d argue to the high heavens that boss mobs that have large loot tables should represent that loot visually (hear the screams from design right now?).

I have also ALWAYS been a HUGE fan of "raid" specific loot, or group specific loot when it comes to larger or more involved things.

When we downed Nagafen I can remember EVERY item being an "end of the world" DR for someone. Now I am running back and forth in Kara and there are many mobs dropping multiple purples that NO ONE rolls for.

If loot were tied to the group in the instance, or the player class/race doing the quest I"d love it. I absolutely HATE the fact (and I know it"s not random) that I end a decent quest line and the 3-4 items to choose from, not one is useable by my class, but worse yet if they were appropriate level gear they aren"t items my class uses... I"d love to have the option to convert a selection if items I can"t use to more gold rather than vendor an item after for next to nothing.

One more thing. "Trash" is another weird mechanic. Understanding that these zones require a crap ton of man hours which equals a crap ton of dollars, and you hopefully see the need to keep people engaged. I think WoW has done some great things with shrinking the size and volume of some of the raids. Heck what is it, 2 pulls to Mags? They given us "bite sized" raiding like no one else. But there are still the upper end folks who DO want the 3-4 hour 1-2 day long dungeon grind of "trash" and bosses. I know I do, when I have time.

There is no answer for "trash" other than to make it not feel like trash right? I do believe you can implement traps, puzzles and more but like everything else these days those become obsolete after the first group runs them, and posts all answers and solutions to the Wiki. Everyone after that loses that sense of accomplishment and fun that go with seeing and doing things for the first time.

Mobs offer a variable that traps and puzzles cannot, the REAL chance of death and wipes, which makes the instance and completing it less than a guaranteed thing.

Oh and a question. Someone tell me what the proper rotation and timing is for Netherspite. First time we did it, we nailed it. Did it with another group last night and it was an utter disaster. 2 tanks take red right? What is max stacks of red before you need to move out? DPS DURING the phase out? Healers take blue beams? Someone said no mana classes should take blue, I disagree in that the mana drain is offset by the + heal buffs.

Green beam is the killer. We had problems with it and it ended up dooming us all night. Twice we had him under 10 with no one to intercept and regen him at the end.

Done Prince twice now as well, 1 as healer 1 at MT, 2-0, fun fight. I decided last night that the doorway option is the worst option imo. The two critical factors in RL combat are firepower and mobility. If you doorway the party for the fight your chances of an "unlucky" infernal go up exponentially. A doorway infernal guarantees 2 clicks of pain since party must move through it to get away, and remain in LOS and range for heals. Take the party ANYWHERE in the open with room around you, and call out an infernal direction, right or left, and mark one person, when one pops near party everyone moves in pre-destined direction. Later in the fight if you start to get wedged somewhere, look for the marked guy, move with them.

Ngruk said:

I"ve always been a guy that falls on the realism side of gaming, in games that couldn"t be farther from "realistic".

I"ll laugh my butt off and ask out loud how on earth the rat dropped a "Rusted Claymore" but not utter a peep as my Shaman casts a magic spell that sprouts a totem from the ground that stops my friends from being afraid...

It"s a weird world we "live in".

I am and always have been a "realistic loot" guy. I"d argue to the high heavens that boss mobs that have large loot tables should represent that loot visually (hear the screams from design right now?).

I have also ALWAYS been a HUGE fan of "raid" specific loot, or group specific loot when it comes to larger or more involved things.

When we downed Nagafen I can remember EVERY item being an "end of the world" DR for someone. Now I am running back and forth in Kara and there are many mobs dropping multiple purples that NO ONE rolls for.

If loot were tied to the group in the instance, or the player class/race doing the quest I"d love it. I absolutely HATE the fact (and I know it"s not random) that I end a decent quest line and the 3-4 items to choose from, not one is useable by my class, but worse yet if they were appropriate level gear they aren"t items my class uses... I"d love to have the option to convert a selection if items I can"t use to more gold rather than vendor an item after for next to nothing.

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Be careful what you say on these boards Curt, because 3 years from now someone will kill a boss in your game that drops something inconsistent with it"s type/lore and someone will dig up this post.

I prefer the term logical to realistic, and I prefer games, as well as any creative work like books or movies, to have a consistent logic to them, no matter how far outside reality that logic is.

Faille said:

I prefer the term logical to realistic, and I prefer games, as well as any creative work like books or movies, to have a consistent logic to them, no matter how far outside reality that logic is.

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"Internal Consistency"

It doesn"t have to always be "logical" but it darn well better be internally consistent. Once a rule is established in a fantasy world it shouldn"t be broken except under very unique circumstances. It doesn"t always need to make sense but it does need to be consistent.

Faille said:

I prefer the term logical to realistic, and I prefer games, as well as any creative work like books or movies, to have a consistent logic to them, no matter how far outside reality that logic is.

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Or as Frank Herbert said, "The masses demand continuity." And I completely agree. There"s a million terms for it, but when it fails it"s usually due to bad planning, regardless of whether it"s storytelling, programming, or what have you. Any walk of life.

It"s why I now say "Medusa Spider!" any time a retarded plot twist occurs.

Ngruk said:

Oh and a question. Someone tell me what the proper rotation and timing is for Netherspite. First time we did it, we nailed it. Did it with another group last night and it was an utter disaster. 2 tanks take red right? What is max stacks of red before you need to move out? DPS DURING the phase out? Healers take blue beams? Someone said no mana classes should take blue, I disagree in that the mana drain is offset by the + heal buffs.

Green beam is the killer. We had problems with it and it ended up dooming us all night. Twice we had him under 10 with no one to intercept and regen him at the end.

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Red beam is tricky for tanks the first time. The thing to do with it is dance in and out of the red beam as a tank. So you take it for a second, dance out for a second, then back in. You should never have it stack more than a 5-10, if you can do the dance in/out correctly. This way you only need 1 tank on him per phase.

Green beam should be taken by rogues since they have no mana, I forget who the 2nd phase class usually is (hunters I think?).

Blue beams should be taken by warlocks and shadow priests, the warlock can JUST drain life and won"t need a heal until the very end. The shadow priest will need some heals, but VE+flay will be decent. A warlock can solo an entire blue phase, for the 2nd one you will probably need 2 people, like a mage+priest.

Many newbie groups all run to the windows when Netherspite phases out, once you kill him a few times it becomes pretty easy to stay in during the phase out time, you just all need to be good about avoiding his frontal AoE and his tail (basically constantly running through him), and the tank has to be extremely fast on pickup. Its actually one of the easiest fights to tank, and is a fight that is very dependent on 10 people playing smartly and not doing dumb things like running into other peoples beams or missing their turn or dying to all the splash damage thats mostly avoidable.

Re: job system, the reason Blizzard won"t ever implement it is that it removes tight binding between yourself and your character. While for hardcore players its really all about raid encounter challenges or arena, for the vast majority of players its about you creating an online "persona" and having a defined set of gear, talents, hair, class, hearth point, etc, etc. I doubt we"ll ever see a MMO from a company that views itself as a world builder and storyteller allow for you to so easily fundamentally change your character. Just the 2 talent tree feature they are going to introduce in WOTLK probably consumed massive amounts of internal debate, and only sheer player pressure put it through.

Blizzard also has vast internal data on how many alts people have, if a large majority of the playerbase has 0-1 alts there is little incentive for them to ever think about a job system.

There is a real danger in making your game so easy, so predictable, so "instantly fulfilling" that nobody plays very long because its boring. While everyone says they hate trash, random loot, insta-gibs from bosses, 1 talent trees, honor farming, etc, etc, etc WoW is in many ways a sum of all these parts, take too many away and you will have a game that isn"t as much fun or time-consuming as you think.

There"s a few different ways to do Netherspite.

You only need one tank per red beam per phase. Hop in the red beam, heal up to full, and then hop back out. Wash, rinse, repeat, and you shouldn"t get any more than 14 stacks of it, tops. You can go up pretty high on them as an epic geared tank, almost to the point where you can just sit in the beam the entire time and not even come close to dying. Anyone with a shield and/or plate-like armor (da bears, for example) should be able to hold the red beam. I"ve even used a Holy Paladin a few times.

Blue beam is a bit trickier, and 9 times out of 10 you"re going to need the majority of heals on the blue beam taker. A warlock here is the preferred choice due to life drain being able to heal them to full nearly instantly at higher ticks. Shadow priest here is also a good choice for the VE healing. If you"re going to use mage or something else that can"t heal itself, you"ll probably need two per phase, switching out at around a 20 stack. Quick note, the blue beam increases your damage done and your damage taken, so a healer should never ever be in the blue beam unless you have absolutely no one left to take it. Even a protection warrior is a better choice here.

Green beam is reserved typically for rogues and warriors, and a lot of times I"ll switch in the green beam for phase two after taking red beam for phase 1. If you have any good healers that know what they"re doing, sometimes they"ll like to jump in it for some extra healing. They"re a bunch of crazy goddamn bastards though, so unless you"re sure of their pro-ness I wouldn"t allow it. It only takes one retard to severely fuck up the green beam and cause you to wipe.

The banish phase can be done a few different ways, but probably the easiest way is to just ignore it. If you tank Netherspite up by the door (which you should), if you have *everyone* run back to the wall during banish, he won"t do shit but sit there and look at you. If one person stays behind, though, he"ll breathe on the whole raid, so it"s all or none. You can also opt to stay in and fight him, dropping a searing totem on one side and having the raid chill on the other. He usually targets the totem to breathe on, but sometimes will melee a random target in range for absolutely no reason. Why he can melee when he"s banished, I"ll never understand, but it happens. The latter method is definitely the much quicker method, so if you"re having problems with the beams you might want to give it a shot.

Ngruk said:

I"ve always been a guy..

One more thing. "Trash" is another weird mechanic..

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The sunwell loot swapping mechanic is nice, but you still end up with terrible drops. We still need dozens of conq/protector (pal/pri/war and shm/mag/war respecively) but we tend to get nothing but vanquisher (rog/dru/hunter).

It"s terrible. Flat out. Terrible. Like I said, random can add fun to the game so long as it"s not bullshit. And random loot drops is bullshit.

Anyways...

Nobody enjoys trash. Ask any end game guild. It"s horrible. There"s absolutely no trash clearing between Brutallis and Felmyst and it"s great. Between Illidari Council and Illidan. It"s great.

There is no challenge, no real threat in trash either. You mentioned how puzzles, traps and other gimics would become trivial the second time through. Well, so is trash. Healers take turns going afk since trash is so mind-numbingly boring.

Don"t take that to mean you should make it kick in the balls hard because where there"s challenge, there should be reward. Since the only reward for killing trash is that you don"t have to clear it again for 2 hours...well..

I understand there needs to be some so that a zone feels alive. However, there are good ways to do it and bad ways.

Let"s take Hyjal for example. It"s terrible. You kill 8 waves of mobs. Yawn? They wasted so much potential. What they should have done is as you kill mobs you get "gold" that you can spend on upgrading the defending base. You can buy goblin land mines to place and blow up trash waves, you can upgrade the towers to fire arrows and then cannoballs. You can upgrade the troops in the base to do more damage. Etc...etc...

Make it more interactive. Make it a unique experience.

Instead we just have our Paladin lay down consecrate and I have my drinking bird chain cast holy light on him. Yay?

Trash needs to be an encounter. Not just mobs with abilities placed about willy-nilly.

Anyways...

Re: job system, the reason Blizzard won"t ever implement it is that it removes tight binding between yourself and your character.

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Already debunked that myth. Class is no different then talent spec, gear or any other changeable aspect. We"ve already had half a dozen if not more people reroll. Hell, I did. I was a priest pre-TBC and then went Paladin. People still know who I am, what I am. In fact not being able to just change my class did more to hurt my identity because I had to pick a new name. I lost part of my identity.

The strongest argument against the job system is that it makes no sense from a roleplay standpoint. I"d argue so what? The population of Orgrimmar is roughly just over 150. Yet there"s only 2 houses. Where the hell does everyone sleep? In fact I"ve been to Orgrimmar, when do they sleep?

Besides, it does make sense. Afterall, who thought a baseball pitcher could one day become a game designer? Pretty radically different pursuits in life. I"m sure switching from being a warrior to a priest would be no different. <3

Zehn - Vhex said:

Besides, it does make sense. Afterall, who thought a baseball pitcher could one day become a game designer? Pretty radically different pursuits in life. I"m sure switching from being a warrior to a priest would be no different. <3

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Except that when Curt is doing his job at 38, it doesn"t mean he has lost all of his skill as a pitcher. He is both at once now, as far as skill and ability is concerned.

In a game, your warrior switches his class to a priest and suddenly forgets all of his martial training, he can"t wear heavy armor anymore despite wearing it all of his life, he has poor defenses despite focusing heavily on that before, etc. I realize it"s a fantasy game, but things still need to make sense within the rules that the game world and its lore provides, otherwise people take everything else less seriously. I"m not saying one is better than the other, but you have to decide what your game is trying to achieve. Just a game, or an actual experience that people live through their characters.

There"s also the issue of leveling another class up in the same world. In FFXI, it didn"t matter because there was nothing to do but grind mobs. What happens when you put it in a game like WoW? Do the quests become repeatable? If so, how does that make any sense? You"ve already gone through those events in your characters life, why are they happening again? Players can forgive things like ever-respawning enemies and raid bosses, things that just have to be that way for the game to work, but once you start forcing them to replay the same story scenarios anytime they level a new class your chance at immersion is completely out the window. If not quests, then what?
Like I said, it completely changes your game and it generally wouldn"t be worth it.

Hmm my post got eaten, but the gist of it was that take out all the trash and make it Mini-Bosses that drop lots of equal level blue loot for that tier. Give those minibosses the same mechanics of all the leveling dungeons you went through. This way it isn"t mindless trash clears, but engagements where you"re doing something.

Then on the way you"re getting some spiffy blue gear for offspecs, fillins for rings/amulets etc or enchant materials.

Just be creative I think. Have a mechanic where you have to split the raid up and go two different ways to do something that in a timed event. Kill two mini bosses at the same time in two different wings.

Go run the Black Castle area in AOC, it was pretty cool for doing different things. Avoid tumbling boulders. Stepping on different spots on the floor to deactivate traps. Destroy "seeing eyes". All sorts of things. Why are raids constantly:

-Entrance-Trash-Trash-Trash-Boss-Trash...

Why can"t we take a note from RPGs from the last 20 years? You can add some adventure stuff to the game, maybe some platforming jumping.

Some other game I heard about is where you jump on a catapult, go into first person mode and you can shoot shit down. There are so many different things you could do to make a dungeon fun and challenging at the same time rather than repeating the cycle of CC/Tank/Heal until the boss where you fight a script.

(Don"t get me wrong I love the scripted fights, it"s awesome.) But why not put other crap to mix it up before you get to the boss?

You can easily create a puzzle game where you have to do color recognition to get through an area, that can be random. People just have to pay attention.

Not doing this and just adding trash after trash is just damn lazyness.

Edit:

Good point Graves. How do you level Jobs after your main? Whats the game mechanic involved?

Pretty much everything Zhen said is spot on. I just wanted to say that I agree 100% that a job system would be a great thing. Yeah, NO ONE IS ARGUING it would work in WoW. I mean ultimate fucking "duh".

But in future games, a game similar to WoW in design and exeuction, it could definitely work. I most certainly identify myself with my character, my name, not what class I play. I would love to be able to keep my same character, same gear, etc and just pick up a new skillset.

You could perhaps put some restrictions on it, but honestly the reason I don"t have alts is because I love my main, not because I don"t want to play a different class. If I could have it all on one character, why the hell wouldn"t I?

Even in really hardcore guilds, there is always room for the guy who is very dedicated, with limited playtime, and who plays one spec or one class very well. It is not going to hurt people in terms of finding guilds. It will only HELP because you can conceivably apply to do different things, all with your main character.