Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Agreed. The bigger issue is design targets.

You guys here, for the most part, I"d call min/max players. You"ll squeeze every ounce of DPS from every gear slot and ability possible and a DPS meter is a pre-req. Min/Maxxers play top end PVP and raid high end content, which based on metrics and the % of players that have entered these instances, attain those scores, an EXTREMELY small portion of the 11mm players.

That puts you guys in a VERY small group. Add to that, this group is also the vocal majority in public forums, and I think it becomes somewhat clearer why the conversations go the way they do.

That"s not wrong or bad, hell that"s great, but it"s also a very narrow perspective from a very small group when compared to the masses, for WOW anyway.

Not sure if I made a point with that post or not. It"s early and I am busy

Sure Ngruk, but what does that have to do with a single player using a publically available spreadsheet or publically available perfectly commented code (simulationcraft - Google CodeorRawr - Home)
can predict the impact of some changes more exactly than a developer?

That puts you guys in a VERY small group. Add to that, this group is also the vocal majority in public forums, and I think it becomes somewhat clearer why the conversations go the way they do.

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Err, no no no. Sorry but maybe on a few forums like EJ, but most people on the warcraft public forums are the worst kind of mouthbreathers who never should be listened too.

Genjiro said:

Hell tons of the changes you saw from EQ to WoW were things that guildmembers would bitch about in /guildchat that we didn"t like or just thought were retarded. So yea, I think you can chalk up a good many of those changes from EQ-->WoW as simply those guys actually listening to players they knew (for the most part) weren"t morons.

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The difference is, even when Blizzard does something lame, they go "Ok, that"s lame." then takes it out of the game. This is the mark of a company that *GASP* plays it"s own games.

Ngruk said:

Agreed. The bigger issue is design targets.

You guys here, for the most part, I"d call min/max players. You"ll squeeze every ounce of DPS from every gear slot and ability possible and a DPS meter is a pre-req. Min/Maxxers play top end PVP and raid high end content, which based on metrics and the % of players that have entered these instances, attain those scores, an EXTREMELY small portion of the 11mm players.

That puts you guys in a VERY small group. Add to that, this group is also the vocal majority in public forums, and I think it becomes somewhat clearer why the conversations go the way they do.

That"s not wrong or bad, hell that"s great, but it"s also a very narrow perspective from a very small group when compared to the masses, for WOW anyway.

Not sure if I made a point with that post or not. It"s early and I am busy

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That"s why if you want to create a game that appeals to a broad player base, 38Studios is going to have to actively pursue those sections of the WoW/various other MMO demographics for their perspectives and feedback. It won"t come to you like it will from the "harder"-core players, and I"m guessing you realize that.

Has anyone thought about having a game mechanic where all PvP is done through instances and when you zone into those PvP instances the coding changes your gear/weapons etc to have mechanic adjustments that are positive for the PvP and when you zone back out into the PvE world the system adjusts those mechanics back to the PvE criteria? Then you can have one set of stuff which has dual stats and the two won"t ever have to compete with each other.

I don"t understand why being a "hardcore" MMO player excludes you from seeing the "casual" point of view, or somehow renders it null and void for absolutely no reason. I like the exact same things a "casual" player likes in the game, I just play the game a little bit more seriously than some of them do. I like the 5 man dungeons, I like the badass solo shit, I like all the little things that makes WoW great, that keeps people logging in day in and day out. I *love* the questing in WotLK, I enjoy PvP (when it doesn"t suck complete donkey nuts), I enjoy literally every aspect of the game that is fun, be it designed for casual, hardcore, or a fucking elephant on steroids.

Why, then, would you not specifically design a game that I loved all the way around? I get my friends to play, and they get their friends to play, and so on and so forth. We create a community, we create feedback, discussion, and turn the game into a hobby. We make it interesting in ways that no game developer could, because that"s the beauty of the MMO genre. Most importantly, we understand the what and the why we like a good majority of the time, and are able to communicate it coherently. Why would you short my opinion because there"s "so few" of me, rather than hold it in a higher regard?

Ogun Nagoura said:

Has anyone thought about having a game mechanic where all PvP is done through instances and when you zone into those PvP instances the coding changes your gear/weapons etc to have mechanic adjustments that are positive for the PvP and when you zone back out into the PvE world the system adjusts those mechanics back to the PvE criteria? Then you can have one set of stuff which has dual stats and the two won"t ever have to compete with each other.

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PvP... instances... with... different rulesets... therefore... NOT fucking over PvE...

I"M LOOKIN" AT YOU ARENA!

Ngruk said:

Agreed. The bigger issue is design targets.

You guys here, for the most part, I"d call min/max players. You"ll squeeze every ounce of DPS from every gear slot and ability possible and a DPS meter is a pre-req. Min/Maxxers play top end PVP and raid high end content, which based on metrics and the % of players that have entered these instances, attain those scores, an EXTREMELY small portion of the 11mm players.

That puts you guys in a VERY small group. Add to that, this group is also the vocal majority in public forums, and I think it becomes somewhat clearer why the conversations go the way they do.

That"s not wrong or bad, hell that"s great, but it"s also a very narrow perspective from a very small group when compared to the masses, for WOW anyway.

Not sure if I made a point with that post or not. It"s early and I am busy

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Quick couple of things to point out:

First, obviously, this board was built on certain individuals being "better" than the developers of EQ and rubbing their noses in poo every time they screwed up. Let"s just say for a moment that two of the biggest voices in the raiding community went to Blizzard and are now two of the most important people on the dev team. I don"t hear one of them (the short one) talk very often, but I can tell you -- and you should know this yourself -- that the one most would assume would be the most h4rdc0r3 1337 is actually a populist perhaps to a fault.

We have our way of playing, but that doesn"t exclude us from understanding that it"s not the only way the game is played.

[Edit] Despite myself...Darph, while the D.U.M.B. system you outlined is at least a decent idea, one of the reasons having separate rulesets is nice is because some things which make a gamefunin PvE arebrokenin PvP. Aside from that, no class really resembles what it was at launch, and for the last 3+ years power levels have been in a tug of war between PvP balance and PvE balance...therefore I honestly don"t see what the big difference is between WoW"s model and the DUMB system. We lose out on all kinds of potentially fun stuff because it would be OP in PvP. Aint it great?

Give me a break Darph, City of Heroes has the absolute most casual retarded mmo gamers of any game I"ve played, and are far more casual than even the casuals of the WoW playerbase. Most are just comic nerds who found a home in the one mmo they enjoy.

If those people have zero difficulty grasping the concepts of a separate rules system, the knuckle dragging mongoloids in a game like WoW would be just fine. Don"t be overly sensational, a fireball that does 500 dmg in pve and when you click the pvp tab in the ability description it says 350 dmg versus players is not some kind of EvE technical-lingo entry barriers we are talking about here---looking at two different dps numbers or durations on cc for pve vs pvp on a tab requires a functioning brain and that"s it, especially when the math is already done for people.

Ngruk said:

Agreed. The bigger issue is design targets.

You guys here, for the most part, I"d call min/max players. You"ll squeeze every ounce of DPS from every gear slot and ability possible and a DPS meter is a pre-req. Min/Maxxers play top end PVP and raid high end content, which based on metrics and the % of players that have entered these instances, attain those scores, an EXTREMELY small portion of the 11mm players.

That puts you guys in a VERY small group. Add to that, this group is also the vocal majority in public forums, and I think it becomes somewhat clearer why the conversations go the way they do.

That"s not wrong or bad, hell that"s great, but it"s also a very narrow perspective from a very small group when compared to the masses, for WOW anyway.

Not sure if I made a point with that post or not. It"s early and I am busy

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You balance abilities/skills/player power at zero gear. If the whole package is also balanced at Endgame/min-max/crazy high number etc; then there"s a very good chance that it"ll be balanced at all points in between. This is of course assuming you"re using sane formulas.

And if everything in the playerbase is balanced at any point in the timeline, that frees up dev time for new content.

This doesn"t sound sexy, o no. I"ll give you that. But creating items/talents/spells by iLevel (which Blizzard already does) is already this un-sexy methodology. If they followed through with this, then a good number of their balance issues would disappear; freeing up folks for the crazy stuff.

Damn, some people just sound like idiots in this thread.

I"m sure Curt was just like all of us before he started making his own game, as in, he couldn"t understand how companies couldn"t do things that just seem so obvious to the players.

Well guess what, now he knows what it takes to do these "simple little things", and on his own dime...and you guys are going to tell him straight up he"s wrong?

/sigh

Anyways, nothing else to contribute to this thread, but it is nice getting some insight from someone who knows/is learning the process of creating such a complex game rather than people bitching about other people"s games nonstop.

I"m not a doctor; I cannot understand how surgeons amputate the wrong foot.

You are completely right, i don"t work in the industry i cant comprehend how to not give a class a iwin button and then realize after 2 days of it going live that it was a bad idea in the first place even though we knew about the change for over a month.

Believe said:

Damn, some people just sound like idiots in this thread.

I"m sure Curt was just like all of us before he started making his own game, as in, he couldn"t understand how companies couldn"t do things that just seem so obvious to the players.

Well guess what, now he knows what it takes to do these "simple little things", and on his own dime...and you guys are going to tell him straight up he"s wrong?

/sigh

Anyways, nothing else to contribute to this thread, but it is nice getting some insight from someone who knows/is learning the process of creating such a complex game rather than people bitching about other people"s games nonstop.

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Oh I was, and I might even have a little left of the "How in the hell could you be so dumb??" when it comes to talking to Danu...err Designers.

Key for me was meeting Jason Roberts. This guy is flat out one of the smartest human beings I"ve ever met and has a perspective on design that, upon talking to him, makes you realize that true game design of something of this magnitude, is a gift. To be able to think rationally when presented with a design discussion, and allow all potential tangents to be a part of an answer, is mind blowing to me.

Most of us think of game design, well I say most on an assumption, as a gamey visible game looking thing if that makes sense. Rare is the person who, during a discussion on any aspect of design, thinks in "chart form". I can"t find a better term than that. Jason has the ability to visualize an entire game system in some way that allows him to give feedback on design questions and ideas on some sort of meta level.

So often I"ve come up to him and said "Dude, how cool would it be if....(insert kick ass gamer thought on a design feature/aspect)"

To which he usually replies:
(few second pause to collect thoughts)
"Ok, well, that sounds cool but have you thought of the effect on X? Now also realize that means Y, Z, AA and B through P are going to be affected this way, that way, and that way as well. I can do it, but it"s likely going to cost enough hours to force us to eliminate A, F and G, because those are dependent on Q, which is now seriously going to have to change."

Ya, he"s that smart, AND it"s cool to see someone that ISN"T buying into the Curt is right theory! (A theory many allow me to walk around with at work, but few actually buy into it

The even cooler part is the VERY rare time when I come up with something that actually IS cool. He"s the first to say it and explain the process of how it might work, how it might even be cooler than I thought....

I was a complete game design stud in my mind before this company existed.

This company has given me the chance to realize that creating this thing (which by the way is so far beyond huge it"s like trying to truly understand how much a billion really is in a physical, visual sense) is so big, so incredibly huge, if you don"t just set your mind to making it happen, if you sit back and start to think too deep on how big it is and how much COULD go wrong, you are in trouble.

Having said that I wouldn"t change a thing (though I have often wondered why someone didn"t smack me and say "Dude, just make a console FPS").

Ngruk said:

"Ok, well, that sounds cool but have you thought of the effect on X? Now also realize that means Y, Z, AA and B through P are going to be affected this way

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You do realize you"re talking to a community that when presented with X, will find every conceivable exploit possible, including the PY134 your guy didn"t even think about?

Some people may not understand from a technical standpoint or a dollars standpoint why some things aren"t exactly feasible. But when it comes to how the game mechanics themsleves interact with eachother this isn"t WoW general or Darph"s head we"re talking about.

Oh I get that.

It"s one thing to play a game enough to the point you know it inside and out, and can find ways to manipulate and exploit the content.

It"s an entirely different thing to be able to visualize that before it"s even in game. That"s what I am talking about. Few people possess that skill.

I think like many people I looked at game design, before 38, as the lesser of the talented disciplines ONLY because "anyone" could do it. Artists and Engineers, to me, were often times thought of as schooled and taught disciplines.

But to see this thing being made, it"s clear that the better designers are not only incredibly gifted story crafters and content creators, but they understand how to mix with the other disciplines to see their creations come to life.

Ngruk said:

Oh I get that.

It"s one thing to play a game enough to the point you know it inside and out, and can find ways to manipulate and exploit the content.

It"s an entirely different thing to be able to visualize that before it"s even in game. That"s what I am talking about. Few people possess that skill.

I think like many people I looked at game design, before 38, as the lesser of the talented disciplines ONLY because "anyone" could do it. Artists and Engineers, to me, were often times thought of as schooled and taught disciplines.

But to see this thing being made, it"s clear that the better designers are not only incredibly gifted story crafters and content creators, but they understand how to mix with the other disciplines to see their creations come to life.

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You see a lot of this working in QA. It"s easy to say "hey, this is wrong" when it"s in application, but it"s different when all you have is a blank piece of paper.

While on one hand, Curt can say things like "You don"t understand the complexities of game design", and he has a person like Jason working for him that can see gameplay suggestions at more than face value. Then you have designers who really design in 1 or 2 dimensions, guys who don"t take the time to think about the long and far reaching implications of their "great idea". I"ve worked with a lot of people like this.

Then again, you have to look at where your game is at, where your game needs to be, what your target audience is, and how to reach that audience.

I also think we"re still talking about completely different levels of game design. Yes, when you"re designing a game at the level that 38S is, you"ve got to have very high-minded designers to be able to pull it off without rapidly escalating budgets and many pieces just not fitting together. However, once you start to have something like a finished product, things start to break down more easily between good ideas and bad ideas.

Let"s go back to WoW again, cause, well, why not.

Good ideas/bad implementation:

- Tokenized loot/T5 class breakdown

Tokenized loot was a great idea. What was not great was that, before the T6/T7 breakdown, you had tokens with like 9 specs on them and tokens with 4, meaning some classes got totally screwed. Someone should have caught that. Now tokens are balanced, so well in fact that they kept the same token breakdown for T7.


- Thorium Brotherhood/availability of faction

Yeah, the Thorium Brotherhood was cool. It was stupid-hard to raise, though, and trash farming raids have always been a stupid thing to encourage. DI was your best bet, and the best way to farm DI was to have a mining rogue sneak into BRD. Good times for them. Someone should have looked at just how much it took to raise TB faction, and how important it was, and said "gee...this is retarded."


- Wintergrasp/distribution of objectives (lack thereof)

I stand by Wintergrasp as a cool idea. However, making the entire important part of the fight take place in the very front caused highly predictable issues as well as complete tedium. Someone should have looked at WG and said "gee, we"re not encouraging players to go anywhere but the front workshops and the keep."


- Resist fights in TAQ/lack of resist gear outside of TAQ

Tigole admitted that he didn"t realize that there was basically no good NR gear in the game which didn"t drop off of Green Dragons, and bless him for that I suppose. Someone should have noticed "hey, uh, these NR-mandatory fights? Where are people getting the gear?"


- CE faction weapon tokens in RAQ/CE faction availability

The weapon tokens you got from RAQ required Exalted CE to use. That was a stupid, boring, competitive grind. Raiding it out required like 40 RAQ runs. Someone should have run some numbers on that and said "do we really expect players to do this?"

- Tokens in ZG/tokens in ZG

If you don"t know how stupid these were, you probably weren"t there. Another mistake Tigole owned up to later. In fact, he admitted the entire loot setup in ZG was terrible. Good for him. However, someone should have looked at the loot tables and said "uh...what? How are people supposed to know what any of this is?"


You get the idea. Those are basic design decisions that don"t really require a flowchart to figure out; they require a person who plays the game and has a pulse to stupid-check.

I wouldn"t put those skills too far apart. Different sides to the same coin and all that. "Hrmn...how could players exploit this?" isn"t much different then a player saying, "Hrmn...how can I exploit this?" when you"re looking at abilities on a case by case basis.

I know what you"re saying, don"t get me wrong. To use a terrible analogy (and it is terrible) a prison designer has to keep in mind every single detail down to the brick to keeping prisoners in. The prisoner however, all he has to figure out is how to break just one wall and there are far more prisoners then prison designers.

Anyways...

A great deal of game design and the occasional guru that "gets it" really is something you do see in other areas. There are D/B guys that internalize the entire system, there are coders that can swallow the entire base and know how changes here will impact over there intuitively and there are even marketing weasels that just know a move is bad or good from instinct. These are key players and although I may flatter myself overly, I have been that guy in some settings.

It all comes with a huge caveat however. Once you are on the inside, your perspective is irreversibly changed and will be regardless of your intentions. I"ve seen it dozens of times myself when looking at systems from the outside or as a consultant versus the few times I"ve been become part of the maintenance or core group dealing with said system. Your focus of necessity narrows and your priorities skew. Sometimes the shit you say at meetings is just to impress and is less to improve, not because you are an asshole but because that"s what it takes to be a team player or team builder. It isn"t that you don"t believe what you are saying, it"s that your perspective and priorities have changed and that affects everything.

Much like anything, exceptional people make even the hardest science into more of an art than expected but none of them are immune to group-think in a business setting.