Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

First post in this thread, but I have a simple suggestion from the non-armchair developer segment of the MMO population. I have no aspirations of being a game developer or anything more than someone who plays them for fun. That said, take whatever release date you end up with after this long and winding road...and shove it back a couple of months. I don"t care if you play the game daily and it seems ready, or your metrics and math tell you it"s ready, or every beta tester says it"s the best thing ever and you should put it out tomorrow. Just take those two months and make it better. I don"t think you"ll regret it. If you half-ass any part of the game you will be doomed to failure. In today"s MMO landscape I don"t know that it is even possible to recover from a botched first few months.

Just some advice from the peanut gallery.

G

PS: Jobs suck. People like their class. They like that their class has unique components. They pick classes because they want that unique set of components. They don"t want to be a generic character defined by a UO-like skillcap. It"s generally the "fluff" around a class rather than the hard numbers that attract players in the first place.

findar said:

LDoN had a good concept in this but no one since has really fleshed it out or expanded upon it.

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Oh my god! Now please put this into perspective. When did you start playing EQ? Did you ever play in Blackburrow, Runneye, Unrest, CT, Sol A/B, Guk, Kaesora, Kanor, Sebilis or Chardok?

The whole concept of EQ was based on STATIC dungeons with STATIC spawns and groups moving from one STATIC camp to another. There was zero randomly generated dungeon content, in fact everything was planned and because it had all been worked out nicely, it also required the group to plan ahead and actually go into brainstorming mode before taking up the challenge.The big thing about EQ was that something huge unfolded in front of you and the more you found out about it, the more you were impressed by the depth and complexity.

LDoN on the other hand was the exact opposite. It was based on modules that were cut&pasted together. Nothing really unfolded, in fact all you got from it was a Deja Vu, that you had seen this or that module before in some other mission. LDoN was the attempt to make something out of nothing and you as a player could feel it!

LDoN never fit in. It wasn"t evolutionary, it was something else, it was simply a different game within the game. LDoN is like the child you have from that bitch back when you were totally drunk at the party and cannot remember anything - it should never have happend.

Zehn - Vhex said:

Man, can you imagine WoW with sub-jobbing? I don"t think there"s a spreadsheet program around that would be able to handle the number crunching at EJ. They"d have to call in Nasa to figure that shit out.

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You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Zehn - Vhex again.

Gilgamel said:

People like their class. They like that their class has unique components. They pick classes because they want that unique set of components.

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Exactly. Even with the job system people will gravitate towards the class they enjoy most. I"d link you my post where I went over this, but I lost all my links when I reformatted recently and I"m too lazy to search through all my posts to find them again.

After leveling through a system once or twice, the process becomes more and more of a grind. When you are doing this repeatedly on the same character it doesn"t feel like a grind at all.

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Huh? How do you figure? Doing content X. amount of times is no more boring because I"m doing it on the same character, if anything I"d say it"s more boring.

This is balanced by players wanting so much more of it.

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Which is another issue, every time something drops half the raid is going to roll on it, the amount of drama and guild politics that"d go into loot will be mind exploding.

Co-incidentally, the last 24 hours have revealed the first solid information regarding FFXIV Online.



Of interest, given the current discussion :

Very flexible and easy to change your lifestyle and jobs on the go.

If you change your weapon, you are basically changing jobs and you can do this anywhere and almost at any time.

Getting invited to a group which has too many of your current class? No problem, switch to a healer or whatever class they lack numbers in. After the adventure is over, switch back to your previous class, gardener for instance.

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The hybrid leveling aspect, that was expected, has been revealed :

Weapons and your equipment has their own "levels". You need to coordinate your equipment to reach whatever goal and power you"re aiming at.

* In Final Fantasy XIV there"s a larger focus on the level of your item you"re using, instead of your own levels and skills.
* You"re able to switch from warrior to a healer on your own, when solo playing - soloing becomes a whole lot more fun and easier
* Changing your "job" is as simple as switching your weapon, you can relax and not feel a lot of stress
* The "holy trinity" type of jobs have been avoided, the jobs of FFXIV are more neutral
* Square Soft promises a lot of freedom in Eorzea. Almost unrestricted.


The core system of Final Fantasy XIV will be the so-called "Armory System" (might be renamed later). It"s focused on your character"s equipment. In order to change a play style, you change your equipment parts. Something which is done in real-time.

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And it has a form of mission generation (understand this is talking about NPC Guilds not player Guilds) :

Guild System

* Passes of "trust" exists that you get from guilds
* There"s something called a "Leave", it isn"t a quest, it"s a card
* Mixing your own Leaves with other players Leaves is possible
* Visiting the Adventurers Guild you can obtain Guild Leaves
* Even when your skill is low you can get Leaves
* The approx time of completing a Leave is around 30 to 40 minutes
* You"re able to set who and how many can do a Leave
* Even if only one player carries a Leave, other players can join regardless if they have the Leave or not
* Contests of the Leave changes every week
* You can carry as many Leave cards as you want
* Apperently the Guild Leaves are quite beautiful, designed like tarot cards

FFXIV sports a complex, advanced and interesting guild system. There are so called permits/licenses in the form of illustrated cards that match missions that your character has to complete. You can share these licenses, i.e having the card or not having it and also decide on how many that can be part of a mission.

The level of each player is mostly non-relevent, but some licenses has a certain level requirement. These wont take longer than 40 minutes to complete approx. Oh and you can carry several licenses at the same time.

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Azrayne said:

Huh? How do you figure? Doing content X. amount of times is no more boring because I"m doing it on the same character, if anything I"d say it"s more boring.

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I totally agree here. I do not think a job system necessitates that I complete Elwynn forest 10x on the same character. Content is content. If I have to repeat it, the vehicle isn"t the main problem. Of course I think a superior concept for character advancement is majority skill-based, rather than level-based, so my long-sword skill would carry over from being a bard to a warrior. My lute and drum skills wouldn"t transfer to the warrior, nor would my warrior"s heavy armor and two-handed skills transfer to the bard, assuming typical fantasy stereotypes.

Which is another issue, every time something drops half the raid is going to roll on it, the amount of drama and guild politics that"d go into loot will be mind exploding.

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I suppose if your guild"s leadership are morons. The generally accepted practice involving everything from 5 to 40-man is you get the loot that is related to what you"re there doing. You"re a paladin? You get a big claymore. You"re a rogue? You get nasty shivs. If it goes to rot you can get it for off-spec or maybe-spec or whatever.

Primary role->Secondary role->Tertiary role/alts->Salvage->Rot

The dual-spec system introduced in WoW just recently highlighted this issue for many on these boards, and I assume most guilds did the same as mine - we made everyone adhere to two particular agendas and expanded loot distribution along those lines.

Agraza said:

I suppose if your guild"s leadership are morons. The generally accepted practice involving everything from 5 to 40-man is you get the loot that is related to what you"re there doing. You"re a paladin? You get a big claymore. You"re a rogue? You get nasty shivs. If it goes to rot you can get it for off-spec or maybe-spec or whatever.

Primary role->Secondary role->Tertiary role/alts->Salvage->Rot

The dual-spec system introduced in WoW just recently highlighted this issue for many on these boards, and I assume most guilds did the same as mine - we made everyone adhere to two particular agendas and expanded loot distribution along those lines.

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The majority of MMO players don"t exclusively play with their guilds. It won"t be an issue inguild, but in a PUG situation I can imagine it getting annoying fast.

I used that system for pugs too. I did it in random 5 mans, as does...everyone with two brain cells to rub together on Ysera. I did it every Saturday to a first-come first-serve 25-man pug in Naxxramas and Ulduar.

Leadership is the most relevant factor. Every system has flaws. Designing character advancement around potential loot problems is pinching a penny to lose a dime.

Most pugs agree on loot rules beforehand.

*COUGHCOUGH*

You could even further solve the problem by letting people choose their loot off a mob rather then it being a random drop. Then all pugs do is random to see who gets loot rights and then they can pick whatever the fuck item they want rather then it being a clusterfuck of all 5 people arguing over the merit of off-spec"s.

*COUGHCOUGH*

Anyways...

The "BUT EVERYBODY WILL WANT EVERYTHING IT WILL BE CHAOS OMG!" argument falls flat on it"s face when pugs have been managing just fine for nearly a decade now. When we pugged Nagafen it was agreed upon before hand that all loot would be randomed for regardless of class. If you didn"t like it, gtfo.

When we pugged planar gods it was agreed that everybody who didn"t get flagged could random on the loot and the winner gets to award it to whomever they choose. If you didn"t like it, you gtfo.

In the handful of WoW pugs we ran it was always declared NBG spec first (for the one or two guys who were forced into a spec they didn"t normally play for the sake of getting the raid off the ground. Thank god WoW has the job-system lite or half our pugs would go nowhere) would random. On droppable items same rule applied because honestly at this point who the fuck cares about gold.

When it comes to things like that, the playerbase will adapt. We adapted as we went from set pieces to multi-class tokens now to all-class trophies. We adapted as our classes went from single-role to multiple viable roles.

Besides, at least now when that druid recuit ninja-loots an Ashkandi and then /gquits you know he"ll at least be able to use it.

Utnayan said:

And thank God.

Randomly generated content with tile sets that randomly pattern with random boss mobs and loot with no rhyme or reason to why it is in the game world is ridiculous.

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There"s a big difference between random generation and procedural generation.

Case in point: LDON/AO dungeons missions vs... EVE"s galaxy. EVE used procedural generation to create and populate their galaxy (cue in the geekish story of them stopping and restarting the process using a hardcoded "42" as the initial seed for the generator. Because any geek knows 42 is the answer)

A very good procedural system (and that"s hard. Nearly as hard as handcrafted stuff) will make things that have sense.

Eve also had the advantage of being set in space. And the thing about that is space is big. Really big. Huge, mind-bogglingly big.

So when space turns out to be a huge bunch of largely nothing, nobody really bats an eyelash. Plus it"s been proven that anybody who plays Eve is also legally a sociopath so we can"t really take their word for anything.

Dymus said:

Let me flip this around a bit then. The benefits to the final fantasy job system are good for their game.
But since there is a tradeoff for everything what did they give up?
What was made weaker or what was missing because this was included?
How is this any better than having multiple characters with multiple classes and couldn"t be solved in other ways?
And if it is so obvious of a benefit for every game why has it not been used in any game since?

I"ll be honest, I"m not convinced it"s worth the cost, but I like hearing other opinions.

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In brief, I"ve suggested the "job system" adds massive replayability to the game and will cause people to spend more time and get more enjoyment from content that has taken painstaking effort to create.

Taking into account Zehns present and past posting on the matter, loot appears to be a red herring and is not an issue.


I agree that the major problem I see is how to deal with content and quests that players may already have completed, especially, for example, when they have multiple rewards, some of which benefit certain classes over others.



Quid pro quo


1. Is this (completed quests and content) really a problem ? How damaging would it be to allow people to complete the same quest multiple times, given that each time they have legitimately leveled and worked on that new class.

2. Do you see any other way of dealing with this potential issue ?

It"s a suspension of disbelief thing. Again, the whole "Why does Arugal have five heads" issue that"s inherent with questing in a multiplayer setting. The fact that I can save the town from maurading goblins as many times as I can make characters already isn"t much of a stretch from it"s the same guy doing it.

Now, to put this slightly in perspective, on Monday Chillmaw was killed nearly 125,000 times.

World of Warcraft Top List

Now granted Chillmaw is undead and the Lich King is pretty powerful and from a roleplaying purist standpoint you could say he just puts in a little overtime ressurecting him. And when you figure there"s roughly 200+ some odd Lich Kings out there maybe you can justify it. Who knows, maybe he raises Dracolich"s faster then then I can eat a funsize bag of M&M"s (which is pretty goddamn fast).

But this whole "do you think players will be able to get over killing a mob twice? Or will their fragile minds be shattered?" thing is kind of a silly question. Chillmaw dies twice every second. Unless you"re one of the "special" children who skim over my posts looking for something to take out of context and argue with, Chillmaw died at least 40 times while you read this post.

I think I"ll get over it.

What job systems really do:
1. Keep everything under the same character name.
--Equipment, titles, achievements, reputations, factions etc etc.
---Alleviates the grind vs. having an alt.

That"s basically it. It takes away alts, and allows you to keep equipment.

A problem a job system creates is, how do you level up those other jobs that is not a strict mob grind? Do you get all the quests back? Are the reset? Is there new content?

If the quests are reset, it destroys the continuity of the game. You may laugh at the immersion aspect of these games, but many people love them and if they"re rescuing the same princess for the 4th time on the same character, they might not like that. That population is pretty decent in size.

If the quest are NOT reset, then you are now tasking the developers to create a large amount of content for every level range. This means more money.

Now is this more money well spent? Is everyone going to level up multiple jobs? The majority of players sit at the top level and do that content. All players are eventually funneled into an "end game" where the money spent on this content is used the most, by the largest segment of the games population. If more people are spending time leveling up other jobs than playing the "end game" then money is wisely spent making more level 30 content than max level content, but I don"t think that would be the case.

If you truly want to make a job system where leveling and content is available for everyone at all times that is repeated the least then you can"t have levels.

OMG FFXIV.

And perhaps what Funcom is doing with the Secret World.

If the quests are reset, it destroys the continuity of the game. You may laugh at the immersion aspect of these games, but many people love them and if they"re rescuing the same princess for the 4th time on the same character, they might not like that. That population is pretty decent in size.

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Honestly, I don"t see resetting quests when you swap classes as any more of an immersion breaker than running the same instance to kill the same boss 3 times back to back in an afternoon. In fact I don"t think it would be problematic at all, but I still can"t support the system because I think it robs the player of a huge part of their class/character identity. I think "your toon" loses a lot of its significance when the entirety of what comprises that character (beyond aesthetics) is transient.

I like having "my mage" "my priest" "my druid" as seperate entities, maybe it"s the last straggling remnant of the RP gamer I used to be that hasn"t been killed by the BNet culture of modern online gaming, but I like my characters to have seperates identities and forms.

"Class" loses its meaning when you can swap it around with the press of a button.

Also, what happens to racial restrictions? Do you decide to make it "any class any race" ala EQ2? Do some races get bonuses with certain classes? how does this fit into the overall balance of the game? How does this fit into the lore?

It"s not even a question of immersion so much as basic internal consistancy. For the sake of gameplay you can buy things like instancing, and respawn timers, and so forth, but being able to press a button and magically swap from being a wizard in a dress to a warrior in plate is just too much, imo. Especially since I like to pick a characters race/appearance with their class in mind. The character I want my mage to be is very different to the character I want my warrior to be, or my rogue to be.

Job systems are fucking retarded how are you people still talking about this shit.

True on the instance argument. The more resetting you have the closer to Diablo you get. Which isn"t a bad thing, you just have to make sure you design your game around that.

Draegan said:

True on the instance argument. The more resetting you have the closer to Diablo you get. Which isn"t a bad thing, you just have to make sure you design your game around that.

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Well I"d say it is a bad thing. I love Diablo, but if I wanted Diablo I"d play Diablo. I think the constant movement towards Diablo style design philosophy is a bad thing for the genre.

So roll up different characters every time if that"s your thing. It"s a little extra legwork but if it means that much to you, do it. Or fuck, they could make it so that you can choose whether or not to have the same character name on all your alts, make sure all loot is BoA, allow you to "family" your own characters to link factions and other such nonsense and viola.

The ultimate goal here has and will always be removing the annoying bullshit involved with alts to streamline them and make them more attractive for players. Several games do this already with exp bonuses, heirloom items and so on and so forth.

I honestly don"t care how you do it in the end. But alts are a -very- big part of replayability and the more you promote it and make it a feature the better.

Other things would do wonders as well. I -really- wish they"d make all the low level dungeons in WoW 2~3 mannable. Back when I was leveling my alt army there was -always- 1 or 2 other people in the same zone. The chances of a tank, healer and 3 to go though? Slim to fucking none.

It doesn"t help that the WoW LFG tool doesn"t allow you to queue up on alts. I imagine it"s coming but it would be nice if you could select which character you actually want to group on. I ~want~ to do instances on my alts, but I"m going to farm dailies on my main in the meantime.

Anyways...