Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Bizanich said:

Speaking of this, I irrationally miss the fact that you could sometimes see what mobs had for loot by having a weapon in their hand. It was nice to see "Hey, he"s got the item!" and have it add so much more pressure to kill the guy if it was a difficult mob.

It"s a minor touch that has fallen by the wayside.

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That"s not irrational at all. Its a visceral and intuitive aspect, of what you expect.
The problem comes from actual gameplay. If he"s not holding the weapon you want. Do you skip him? what about itemizing other classes? Why would my caster want to kill the melee npc, if hes always going to have melee equipment?

machineman said:

Personally, I don"t believe EQ"s system was anything but "the way it happened to work out". There really wasn"t any kind of psychological testing going on to determine what the human psyche prefers, and how to get them to punish themselves.

This post is classic nostalgia/rose colored glasses.

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I didn"t mean to imply that it was intentional, because I agree with you, it wasn"t intentional on the EQ developers part at all. They just built the game the way they thought was best, and it happened to have alot of strong reinforcements.

Caliane said:

That"s not irrational at all. Its a visceral and intuitive aspect, of what you expect.
The problem comes from actual gameplay. If he"s not holding the weapon you want. Do you skip him? what about itemizing other classes? Why would my caster want to kill the melee npc, if hes always going to have melee equipment?

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I think one of the larger problems has been the inability to tie these mobs to something more than just "loot".

What if there were just as important things he "dropped" such as integral story/lore information for a larger piece of the puzzle? and what if that information wasn"t always the same?

So ya, you could skip him, but there is also a chance he could reveal a key piece of information to a much larger quest....

Also, how about insuring that there is never a big boss loot table that doesn"t drop at least one item specific to the party engaging it. You may not want it, you might have better, but at worst it"s an item you could sell/refine/trade or use for certain situations that weren"t common?

Ngruk said:

I think one of the larger problems has been the inability to tie these mobs to something more than just "loot".

What if there were just as important things he "dropped" such as integral story/lore information for a larger piece of the puzzle? and what if that information wasn"t always the same?

So ya, you could skip him, but there is also a chance he could reveal a key piece of information to a much larger quest....

Also, how about insuring that there is never a big boss loot table that doesn"t drop at least one item specific to the party engaging it. You may not want it, you might have better, but at worst it"s an item you could sell/refine/trade or use for certain situations that weren"t common?

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Danuser is so going to kick your arse.

It"s good to be the king sometimes

Ngruk said:

I think one of the larger problems has been the inability to tie these mobs to something more than just "loot".

What if there were just as important things he "dropped" such as integral story/lore information for a larger piece of the puzzle? and what if that information wasn"t always the same?

So ya, you could skip him, but there is also a chance he could reveal a key piece of information to a much larger quest....

Also, how about insuring that there is never a big boss loot table that doesn"t drop at least one item specific to the party engaging it. You may not want it, you might have better, but at worst it"s an item you could sell/refine/trade or use for certain situations that weren"t common?

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Well quest related things are good the first time. But loot is what gets people going back and redoing things. Or taking part in quests/raids/adventures that they themselves don"t have specific stakes in.
Nobody likes random quest drops if that"s what you are suggesting..

Of course, if objects aren"t all bind on pickup, and thus are tradable for a healthy marketplace, then that also reduces the issue as well.

Caliane said:

Well quest related things are good the first time. But loot is what gets people going back and redoing things. Or taking part in quests/raids/adventures that they themselves don"t have specific stakes in.
Nobody likes random quest drops if that"s what you are suggesting..

Of course, if objects aren"t all bind on pickup, and thus are tradable for a healthy marketplace, then that also reduces the issue as well.

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All I hear people saying is what"s in it for me? How can I progress my character by killing this rare raid boss? If it"s an mmo and it"s about community, it shouldn"t matter if every single player benefits from a kill. On my magician, I was just as happy and excited when Derekor the Vindicator spawned because I wanted our tanks to be wearing that chestplate. It didn"t matter to me that I personally wasn"t getting anything. My guid was benefiting, therefore in the long run I am benefitting. I don"t think that makes me masochistic.

Mr Element said:

All I hear people saying is what"s in it for me? How can I progress my character by killing this rare raid boss? If it"s an mmo and it"s about community, it shouldn"t matter if every single player benefits from a kill. On my magician, I was just as happy and excited when Derekor the Vindicator spawned because I wanted our tanks to be wearing that chestplate. It didn"t matter to me that I personally wasn"t getting anything. My guid was benefiting, therefore in the long run I am benefitting. I don"t think that makes me masochistic.

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That"s still loot. And your tanks being able to tank better in turn gets you better loot. This is just classic progression.

Now imagine Vindi drops a scrap of paper that only one person can read, and all it does is let him tell you a story. You going to want to do that again? Sorry, I"m not. And it has nothing to do with being anti-community.

Ngruk said:

I think one of the larger problems has been the inability to tie these mobs to something more than just "loot".

What if there were just as important things he "dropped" such as integral story/lore information for a larger piece of the puzzle? and what if that information wasn"t always the same?

So ya, you could skip him, but there is also a chance he could reveal a key piece of information to a much larger quest....

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You might be onto something. It would be alot better in these games to have alot more "random" quests pop up in the game as opposed to running around clicking on people with a "!" above their head. WOW has a small few quests of that nature where a item drops off a mob and it leads to a quest. I would love to see alot more quests come randomly from killing a mob. AKA a boss mob as you say might not be visably carrying the sword you want but he also has a chance of dropping a medallion with a seal on it that leads you to talking to a old order of knights, the medallion ends up being the former property of a knight who disappeared 35 years ago and the quest leads you to now seeking to find out what became of him.

Alot of quests could drop fairly randomly, with Guk as an example the medallion could drop off of any boss mob in the zone with a X% chance of dropping, the number depending on the quest.

If you think about lore and the fantasy gener of storylines the characters are not usually running around seeking the quests they end up doing, they more stumble into them. I would love to see a shift more towards that compared to the selective seeking out of quests we see atm. In the early levels the simple "tasks" can still be a major component, but as you get more powerful the quests should at least sometimes be something that finds you and you should be drawn into the storyline and along a path rather then having to go seek them out all the time.

I am a big proponent of randomizing quests more or at least linking them to the world more then the population centers of NPC"s. A letter sitting on a desk deep in a dungeon that is able to be picked up after killing the wizard could start a quest. Alot more quests in these games should start out there in the world, unlike WOW which has 90% of the quests starting in the cities and population centers.

Also, beyond just quests the way people get certain spells, certain skills, certain potions or poison recipes, certain blacksmithing patterns, ect... these need to be world drops ALOT more. The chance of putting certain skills and information in places like the library in Kaesora was just wasted, and the spells were instead simply made random world drops. When you have a ancient library with lost information of a fallen empire why the heck would you not utilize that to impart old knowledge to the players such as the above? WOW did this abit with the recipe in Scholomance that dropped after killing the lady of the house, it had a few blacksmithing recipes, but it hardly touched the surface of what it could have done. It makes sense that engineering recipes should exist in certain areas of Gnomeregan, it would make sense that a certain spell for the Warlock class might exist in Duskfall somewhere. I woud rather get alot more of my spells and character building stuff from doing stuff and going places rather then just buying them all from a NPC the minute I hit X level.

Tropics said:

You might be onto something. It would be alot better in these games to have alot more "random" quests pop up in the game as opposed to running around clicking on people with a "!" above their head. WOW has a small few quests of that nature where a item drops off a mob and it leads to a quest. I would love to see alot more quests come randomly from killing a mob. AKA a boss mob as you say might not be visably carrying the sword you want but he also has a chance of dropping a medallion with a seal on it that leads you to talking to a old order of knights, the medallion ends up being the former property of a knight who disappeared 35 years ago and the quest leads you to now seeking to find out what became of him.

Alot of quests could drop fairly randomly, with Guk as an example the medallion could drop off of any boss mob in the zone with a X% chance of dropping, the number depending on the quest.

If you think about lore and the fantasy gener of storylines the characters are not usually running around seeking the quests they end up doing, they more stumble into them. I would love to see a shift more towards that compared to the selective seeking out of quests we see atm. In the early levels the simple "tasks" can still be a major component, but as you get more powerful the quests should at least sometimes be something that finds you and you should be drawn into the storyline and along a path rather then having to go seek them out all the time.

I am a big proponent of randomizing quests more or at least linking them to the world more then the population centers of NPC"s. A letter sitting on a desk deep in a dungeon that is able to be picked up after killing the wizard could start a quest. Alot more quests in these games should start out there in the world, unlike WOW which has 90% of the quests starting in the cities and population centers.

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Apparently, you never had to farm for the Quel sarrar book in wow. Random quest drops are bad bad news. They stopped doing them for a reason.

The goldshire ones were fun. no doubt. And even the event ones like the letters, etc. But if anything like that will be in the game, it needs to be part of the "world is a toy" mentality. Just something odd and fun, that isn"t progression based.

Caliane said:

Apparently, you never had to farm for the Quel sarrar book in wow. Random quest drops are bad bad news. They stopped doing them for a reason.

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I editted my post above to add some stuff. As I said in the stuff I added, this stuff does not need to be some rare drop. Instead that book you mention could just have easily been a world spawn in a library area deep in Dire Maul. You fight through Dire Maul, you get to a library deep in the zone, and when you have cleared it you can loot the book which is on a book shelf there and it becomes bound to that person who loots it.

Bad implementation is simply that, bad implementation. It does not mean things can not be done properly. If the decision is made that the King drops the certain quest starting item every time then great, do that. Much like the quest that started on Van Cleef.

Ngruk said:

So ya, you could skip him, but there is also a chance he could reveal a key piece of information to a much larger quest....

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That sends an adventurer and possibly his group on a mission that will take anywhere from a day to a week that will end in either an epic boss battle or a really neet cutscene that eventually nets you a fairly neat piece of loot...

It all ends in loot. Or if you choose not to use loot so much, whatever you use for character progression. No one is going to kill some pain in the ass mob to do a pain in the ass quest if there"s no point to doing it, no matter if the cutscene was directed by James Cameron and the writing was done by the unholy anal baby of William Shakespeare and Fyodor fucking Dostoyevsky. It"s just a fact of life.

Well, RPers might do it, but those little fuckers run around on your server cybering bar stools and yiffing at stop lights. Not sure I"d design anything but secure muzzle for those creepy shitheads, let alone any feature of a multi-million dollar game. But *shrug*.

Ensuring tradeskill/useful item drops from bosses is an idea that needs to be implemented about 4 years ago, though. Creating costs for a group to raid is actually fairly important, but you should also give them the means to sustain that raid via raiding, and not by grinding bullshit dailies and heroics that they don"t need or want anymore.

You mean like the hundreds of quests in WoW that start from an object in the world? Except maybe it"s first click, first serve? You aren"t discussing anything different than what"s been done before. Drops from bosses? Yeah.. you mean like Sapp neck, Aten neck, the new Algalon quest, etc. etc.

Caliane said:

Apparently, you never had to farm for the Quel sarrar book in wow. Random quest drops are bad bad news. They stopped doing them for a reason.

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I"m pretty sure this isn"t the sort of quest drop Ngruk was outlining.

Sounded more dynamic or branching.


If it was part of a system that, i) was fun and, ii) couldn"t be easily spoilered all over the web, it would be a huge leap forward for MMO"s.


This kind of thinking would also feed into the class/skill system , as could the quest mechanics in question.



I think the hype has just started, a little earlier than planned ...

Ngruk said:

I think one of the larger problems has been the inability to tie these mobs to something more than just "loot".

What if there were just as important things he "dropped" such as integral story/lore information for a larger piece of the puzzle? and what if that information wasn"t always the same?

So ya, you could skip him, but there is also a chance he could reveal a key piece of information to a much larger quest....

Also, how about insuring that there is never a big boss loot table that doesn"t drop at least one item specific to the party engaging it. You may not want it, you might have better, but at worst it"s an item you could sell/refine/trade or use for certain situations that weren"t common?

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This is a great way of thinking. There has to be a way to avoid standard loot being the only meaningful progression. Players conceiving loot as the only carrot is problematic in a story driven game.

Your last paragraph reminds me of clickies in EQ perhaps. The idea behind non-formal gear and weapons could be expanded enormously. It would be remarkable to see this done creatively.

Existing in the most basic form we"ve already experienced represents a carrot in itself (hi 2 bags full of clickies that took player johnny 2 years to obtain). But expanding on the idea behind unique items, powerful or not, could unveil a whole new world of fun and innovation.

James said:

It all ends in loot. Or if you choose not to use loot so much, whatever you use for character progression.

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Just a small point on this, if it is at all possible a richer faction system that gives tangible rewards for higher faction with certain groups and making some quests give large amounts of specific faction would be one way to at least mix up the reward. If the quest you speak of took lets say 4 hours instead of a week, and at the end all 5 or however many people doing the quest not only got to follow a cool storyline, get some small gold rewards, but they all got a noticable boost with a critical faction that alot of people in the game want to have, that is not a terrible reward. Granted it goes to loot (you have better faction, now you can buy X gear, get Y enchant, get Z recipe to build the sword of doom) but at least it is a little less blunt about it. I would MUCH rather do an eleborate quest or 20 to get faction then camp furbolgs for 14 freaking hours collecting hundreds of beads to turn in if I have a choice.

James... There are other ways to award, other than attaining loot. It"s the developers jobs to consider it as carrot worthy. Loot is not synonymous with character progression, loot in an advanced game is only one form of character progression.

For example, If i learn how to kick differently after a unique boss fight that upgrades my speed time, that is meaningful and desirous character progression that isn"t in the form of loot.

Which, if you"d bothered to read past the first sentence, you"d see I actually even considered that.

Flight said:

I"m pretty sure this isn"t the sort of quest drop Ngruk was outlining.

Sounded more dynamic or branching.


If it was part of a system that, i) was fun and, ii) couldn"t be easily spoilered all over the web, it would be a huge leap forward for MMO"s.

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The thing about a system like this is that the more you implement like this the less people are going to go camp a single mob for a single quest drop. If there are 20 quests like this in the game people will seek them out and camp them. If the world quests are actually quite common then people dont all go storming to one zone to get one of the few quests, there can be 10 of these quests in every outdoor zone the size of Goldshire. There could be 5 quests like this in a dungeon, some dropping off a mob, one being on a book shelf, one being in a loot chest, ect.... And there can also be the more common ones today that start at a friendly NPC.

As far as making them unable to be spoiled, that would be sweet, good luck (and I really mean that, I WISH it could be done) with that in todays MMORPG world. In all reality with my ideas of putting spell drops in certain zones there is no way that stuff is not going to be told about on websites, but in all reality a trainer in the actual game could let you know that you are ready for learning a certain spell but that the spell has been forgotten and is only rumored to still exist in the library of some deep dark dungeon, then the spoiler site is moot anyhow because the game itself is giving out the hints needed.

Citten said:

For example, If i learn how to kick differently after a unique boss fight that upgrades my speed time, that is meaningful and desirous character progression that isn"t in the form of loot.

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Tranquil shot basically. WOW had alot of really good ideas that they could have ran with and built upon and instead they simply dropped the ball and went on walking just leaving it sitting there.