Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

You should probably stop playing DIKU MMOs then. Unfortunately your choices are slim.

Caliane said:

There are a number of precedents of games with skills,etc being from gear. It makes progression pretty easy to create in a risk/reward. Since loot is directly creating your progress. Alot of people do not like it though. Might be a little to random. no one likes to feel like its their gear that is making them good. All gear no skill, remarks, etc. An rpg will never allow players to be on a completely even playing field like a fps, but it should try to find a way to have some semblance of it.

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Valid point, but if gear simply grants the ability to use skills/build your skill set, then its not the gear making you good. Its spending those points properly within their tree/building your character how you want and being effective that makes you good.

Then again, gear has to be looked at differently in a game like that. It wouldn"t be able to reserve -all- worthwhile loot to rare drops off rare named. Crafting would be -huge- in a game like that, for sure.

Could even allow socketing for +skill bonuses OR +stat bonuses, too....A myriad of ways to allow the gear to provide skills without it being the gear that makes you better....Raid Bracer of Fire wouldn"t provide a stronger fireball than Group Bracer of Fire---it just may have more +fire skill to allow you to get to that bigger fireball easier. But theoretically someone in group gear, if they focused on +fire skill, would be able to have the same fireball as a raider--just at a sacrafice of other things which the raider wouldn"t necessarily sacrifice. (hp/mana/ac/stats/+skill from other schools, etc)

One thing I"ve wondered is if any game will ever go back to having a limited number of skills usable at any given time, like EQ (I believe Guild Wars did it also).

I remember reading a WoW Dev interview some time back and I remember them saying it was one of their regrets with WoW, was not limiting the number of skills usable at any given time.

I"m not really sure what system I prefer, both have their pluses and minuses. I remember it being frustrating sometimes in EQ when you didn"t have the right skill up when you needed it...but on the flip side, choosing which skills you would need at any given time added a little twist into the equation, at times.

I still feel the EQ way, 8 spells or what ever it was, is preferable over WoW and much better than the epic fail of EQ2. It was strategic in some ways, picking the right spell setup/synergies rather than having 300 buttons ready for mashing on your interface. More is not always better...

Well, let"s be honest, in EQ it really only worked because for 99% of the content 8 spells was all you needed. To be fair the same is true of WoW but there are times when you go "oh shit" and are thankful you don"t have to sit down to mem Divine Intervention to prevent having to run back after a wipe.

At the same time, 8 spell gems isn"t much different in terms of goold ol" strategery as choosing talents are in WoW. I don"t take reckoning because it"s a terrible talent in much the same way I never mem"d Elnerick"s Entombment of Ice because it was such a shitty root (fucking DD component broke the root half the goddamn time.)

Not entirely the same but the concept is similar.

Honestly, WoW does have a good balance in this regard. You really only need to worry about 3~6 abilities in your standard play, but you have 20+ at your disposal for unique situations that crop up. The biggest difference between EQ and WoW in this regard is you don"t have to sit down to mem the spell, which keeps in WoW"s theme of twitch response gameplay.

EQ2 did kind of screw the pooch on making 30 dps abilities per class each with minimal impact though but they"re looking to rectify it.

bobyab said:

I still feel the EQ way, 8 spells or what ever it was, is preferable over WoW and much better than the epic fail of EQ2. It was strategic in some ways, picking the right spell setup/synergies rather than having 300 buttons ready for mashing on your interface. More is not always better...

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Another MMO (Chronicles of Spellborn, I believe) was going a similar route, where you could only have like 6 spells/abilities on the bar at one time. It sounded interesting, with having to choose what kind of playstyle you would use in the upcoming fight; going to be up close and personal, or darting in and out of the fray, etc.

I too would like to see a bit more of a minimalist approach when it comes to available abilities, as fighting a dragon in the heat of the moment can make pushing ALT+7 rather difficult.

VG did something like that too with clerics, though they may have shelved the idea after I gave up on the beta. I remember at one point I had like 5 "divine spells" and I could only pick 2 to use.

It was a neat concept, like mini-talents only without having to go to a trainer to swap.

yeah, I hate the overkill on abilities that seems to be all the rage these days(with melee classes anyway). Spending a whole fight staring at the hotbars and buff window is boring as hell. I liked little mechanics like "push" in everquest and stuff like voidzones in wow that made you pay attention to the fight in your main screen instead of playing a glorified 2d minesweeper mini-game with your silly hotkey icon bar. =P

Can"t remember if its an upcoming MMO, or an out and failed one, but I remember one mmo having 6 hotbars of 5-6 keys. You only had access to 1 hot bar at a time though. After you used an ability or a set period of time passed, your hotbar rotated to the next one.

Since said game also had/has/will have chaining attacks, you have to take that into account also. It seems to me that the system would fail if you cut your stuff down to 5-6 abilities and just put them on every hotbar however.

Ninen said:

Can"t remember if its an upcoming MMO, or an out and failed one, but I remember one mmo having 6 hotbars of 5-6 keys. You only had access to 1 hot bar at a time though. After you used an ability or a set period of time passed, your hotbar rotated to the next one.

Since said game also had/has/will have chaining attacks, you have to take that into account also. It seems to me that the system would fail if you cut your stuff down to 5-6 abilities and just put them on every hotbar however.

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Chronicles of Spellborn is that game.

Believe said:

One thing I"ve wondered is if any game will ever go back to having a limited number of skills usable at any given time, like EQ (I believe Guild Wars did it also).

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Guildwars did it. It was (is?) a neat subgame of getting the right missions, and collecting the various skills from bosses so you could have a large variety. You had access to 2 elite slots and 6 base slots.

For those who haven"t played Guildwars, you run with the above skills. A number of low level quests give you basic abilities. However, when you fight a named boss in a mission with a specific ability that you do not have, then you can run that mission with a "capture" ability in a slot (so you run with only 7 abilities). When the boss uses his special ability, you use the capture and learn the ability. That"s a CCG mechanic, and one that works well.

EQ"s 8 spell limit was an attempt to reproduce the basic of AD&D spellcasting where you memorise spells. The original didn"t work well in a MMO setup who is faster paced than a pen-n-paper campaign where you can refresh spells between most encounters, so the limited slot+mana bar was an attempt to reproduce the dynamic.

There are two ways to go in my opinion (which is, of course, worth shit):

Strict roles, long leveling, tied to your character who fills a needed role and is "special" because of that. Community builds around that in the EQ model and as much as I loved that to death, I don"t think it is viable anymore. Well, at least it isn"t 7 mill subs viable hey?

Flex roles, short leveling and go to town. I do think that the only way to make community work with this is either a job system (hence at least always the same avatar name) or a strict guild system combined with mods that track such stuff. I mean, really... in EQ my main was "Celeris". Uninspired of course but hey man, it was "99, On BN I was Advers@ry for christ"s sake. Sadly that led to me being Cel* (Celsham, Celwar, Celrog etc) in WoW"s beta and it carried into retail. Why? Because I wanted people to know who the hell I was... and it was a trend many of my eventual guildmates followed sadly.

Meh, tie flags, achievments, rep, money, tradeskills and so on to the player and not the account and I think you"ve taken a big v3.0 step already. The single name/token or whatever is icing but it is pretty damned tasty icing. FF almost hit it.

Zehn - Vhex said:

Well, let"s be honest, in EQ it really only worked because for 99% of the content 8 spells was all you needed.

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Agreed. At least for some classes it worked. If you were a buff heavy class it sucked. A limited number of spell icons / gems / hot keys is great for nostalgia, but I suspect if it was the only system in use folks would complain about how two thirds of their slots are taken by buffs and how dumb that was.

EQ1 recognized the limitation introducing various systems to try and lessen the pain :


1) allowing you to save and load specific sets of spells;

2) moving towards all buffs having group versions (though sometimes with lesser stat boosts than single target versions);

3) increasing the number of gems to 9 then 10 via AAs.

As another aside, I don"t know what asshat (ok, I do but I willl still be a dick about it) went with the Fireball1 through Fireball15 or whatever system but I shit you not, when I saw that in beta I actually assumed it was just for beta.

Give new spell/ability ranks fucking names. To do otherwise is not only lazy but seriously missing an easy obfuscation opportunity. Your mouth-breathers will always just use *new spell* and you can have that 5-10% love for those that figure out a rain beats a lure or whatever it might be. More imprtantly though, the grind hides better when it isn"t all just bullshit abilty.v.x stuff.

Northerner said:

As another aside, I don"t know what asshat (ok, I do but I willl still be a dick about it) went with the Fireball1 through Fireball15 or whatever system but I shit you not, when I saw that in beta I actually assumed it was just for beta.

Give new spell/ability ranks fucking names. To do otherwise is not only lazy but seriously missing an easy obfuscation opportunity. Your mouth-breathers will always just use *new spell* and you can have that 5-10% love for those that figure out a rain beats a lure or whatever it might be. More imprtantly though, the grind hides better when it isn"t all just bullshit abilty.v.x stuff.

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/signed

In a big way. Huge. Massive. Yes, oh yes. Please.

Flight said:

/signed

In a big way. Huge. Massive. Yes, oh yes. Please.

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Amen, Second, I hear ya Brother and all that!

Happy I am not the only person to look at spell names in WoW and say "really? That was so unimportant you didn"t feel you needed new names?"

Or, and I think this is the case, they for some reason made a design decision wherein new spell names were thought to be the "least desirable" of the outcomes?

I"d actually prefer to see a system like WAR, where spells don"t have ranks and just automatically upgrade their values based on your level. To me it makes much more sense (as much as an invented system of magic makes sense) and there"s less having to worry about coming up with (for the dev"s) and knowing (for the players) 15 different words for fire or ice or explosion.

The flip side of that being that I was insanely dissapointed when I realised that my characters spell graphics would never upgrade in WoW. Using the exact same (rather gimpy looking) fireball at level 80 as I did at level 1 just seems wrong on so many levels, and nothing makes you feel like you"ve progressed your character quite like being able to make an even bigger and badder explosion.

Azrayne said:

I"d actually prefer to see a system like WAR, where spells don"t have ranks and just automatically upgrade their values based on your level. To me it makes much more sense (as much as an invented system of magic makes sense) and there"s less having to worry about coming up with (for the dev"s) and knowing (for the players) 15 different words for fire or ice or explosion.

The flip side of that being that I was insanely dissapointed when I realised that my characters spell graphics would never upgrade in WoW. Using the exact same (rather gimpy looking) fireball at level 80 as I did at level 1 just seems wrong on so many levels, and nothing makes you feel like you"ve progressed your character quite like being able to make an even bigger and badder explosion.

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I don"t like the system WAR and similar MMOs use of skills/spells automatically upgrading. As I level up I want new shiny toys to look forward to; I want to anticipate being rewarded by a new ability with a new name and better graphics.

The WAR system means you obtain far fewer new abilities as you level up. It makes the grind feel worse. Having the old ability scale up in power as you increase in levels beyond obtaining it, so that the new ability is just the old ability +1 level worth of power when you get it, is almost as bad.

There"s a balance where the ability has scaled up a little after obtaining it, by leveling some, but the new skill is more than just the old skill at a level below, with a final levels scaling.



I"m not explaining that very clearly. You get a dd at lvl 10 that does 100 damage. By lvl 15 the abilities progression is such that it should do 150 damage. If the level 10 ability scales to increase damage by 10 a lvl it is doing 140 damage at lvl 14; at lvl 15 I get my new spell in the line and it does 150 damage.

There"s no big carrot for me there; no slap on the back or feeling of having achieved something special when I get my new spell.

So lets introduce the spell at lvl 10 with its 100 damage. The lvl 15 upgrade will still give its 150 damage, how are we going to make it feel special and retain the scaling ? There are two options :


i) don"t scale the spell at all so its still doing 100 damage at lvl 14;

ii) scale it so that the damage increases by 5, instead of 10, per level; at lvl 14 it has increased in power and its doing 120, but still leaving a nice feel of gaining power at lvl 15. more damage, a few more particle effects and suddenly lvl 15 feels special - I"ve hit a milestone.

In the mean time I"ve picked up other abilities that fill in my dps.


I just really dislike the " get an ability once and it scales for the rest of the game" approach. It makes sense from a lore perspective, but in effect it means you are going to be rewarded with far fewer abilities through the leveling process - its just less obvious feelings of accomplishment and less anticipation and looking forward to new levels.

My mantra is "MMOs need more fun hooks" and the scaling system is just the opposite of that.

I actually felt the exact opposite, with a ranking system you often go level after level without upgrading your core abilities. Hitting a new level, going to the trainer and finding out I got a new rank of mana shield and dampen magic always pissed me off.

With a scaling system, I know that every time I level up I"m getting a noticeable increase in power, which is cool.

Though you did suggest a nice compromise. Have limited but noticeable scaling, then every so often a new rank with a larger jump in power, maybe a ramped up spell effect, and a new name.

Ngruk said:

Or, and I think this is the case, they for some reason made a design decision wherein new spell names were thought to be the "least desirable" of the outcomes?

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Not sure what you mean there mate; do you mean they just couldn"t come up with a good naming system or they were dumbing it down for the immature market ?

Azrayne said:

I actually felt the exact opposite, with a ranking system you often go level after level without upgrading your core abilities. Hitting a new level, going to the trainer and finding out I got a new rank of mana shield and dampen magic always pissed me off.

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A further debate is how you obtain new spells/abilities. Do you visit a trainer ? Do you buy them off a vendor ? Are there multiple lvl"s of the same ability a la" EQ1 (in latter expansions) and EQ2 ? Are some of them mob drops ? Do you get some of them automatically ? Are some of them only available by being crafted ?



We need a white board, a zillion yellow stickies and a couple weeks brainstorming. I call an FOH MMO-camp once a year.

Now here is an interesting idea - some of the highest level abilities and spells are only available by being crafted. Some rare crafting recipes are time locked - eg only characters with near 100% history of subscription have enough training skill points to be able to reach those recipes. Initially only characters with at or near 100% subscription history would be able to make them, though that exclusivity would obviously deteriorate over time. ie allocate crafting skill points over time, similar to the Eve system


edit : The "using the EvE skills system" thing is aimed at subscription retention as much as anything else - as EvE players know, you"re happy having your sub running even when you aren"t playing because you char is increasing in "skills". I will be hugely surprised if the next MMO that uses an EvE type skill system doesn"t retain big numbers of non-playing subs, for this reason).