Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

Kirun said:

You don't need to sit in their design meetings to see where this is headed. Unless you believe game development is some mystical black box accessible only to the initiated. You can infer intent from decisions. If you leave meat on the floor, you don’t have to "conclude" dogs will show up. They just do.

It's not "jumping to conclusions" when the conclusions are the logical endpoint of the choices being made. It's forecasting based on precedent. If you repeatedly choose the ingredients for a tire fire, don't be shocked when someone notices the smoke before you strike the match. When every major system nods directly to EQ-era assumptions (forced grouping, travel friction, contested bosses, corpse retrieval, no instancing, no fast travel, no robust solo path, etc.) it's not like I have to be communicating with them telepathically to know where their heads are at.

And when people raise concerns, the answers we keep getting aren't solutions. It's responses like, "we have ideas", "trust the vision", "it worked before", and the age old classic "this game isn't for everyone." You can call that "jumping to conclusions" if it makes you feel better, but in game development (and business in general) silence isn't neutrality. If you leave a vacuum, people will fill it with what's observable.

Right now, what’s observable is: A nostalgia-heavy design ethos, a refusal to acknowledge how different the MMO market is in 2025, and zero visible systems that address known, predictable problems like poopsocking, low population fragmentation, or time-gated group bottlenecks. If the devs have something clever up their sleeve, great, show it. But until then, criticism isn't some kind of clairvoyance, it's just reacting to what's actually there.

Pretending concerns are invalid or leaping to some kind of conclusion because they weren't carved into a developer stone tablet is how every doomed niche MMO community talks before the post-mortem.

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Hekotat said:

Sounds like you got it all figured out, when is your mmo releasing again so I can check it out? Because as far as I can tell this is the only thing on the horizon that is worth a shit. It may not be perfect but if I can pal around with friends and adventure it's a winner to me. If you're looking for something more modern I hear WoW now has a single button click to play your character now, maybe that'll be right up your alley. That should help alleviate some of your concerns since it's the only MMO really left standing anymore and it's a mere husk of it's former self.

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Pasteton said:

It’s also worth noting that at end game there are more haste items and mana regen options so it’s not as tilting that they have a lvl 20 mob with that stuff . I like the idea of contested content, but level locked and such good gear at those levels is big gay.

will be fun times getting the items to spawn raid mobs at end game, drama will definitely ensue in this game

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Drapdis said:

That guy is basically an npc. He has posted the same thing for months. Most likely schizophrenic or mentally disturbed in some way. He isn’t looking for something more modern, he is looking to argue that he is right about something thats impossible to be right about.

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Valorath said:

lol this guy joined a month ago and has only posted in this thread. Welcome to FoH, bro!

This forum has been around for 20+ years, and it started because people loved EverQuest. Imagine finding people mooning over that "feeling" here still. Shocking.

Argue mechanics and implementation all you want, that's what the forum is here for. Kirun makes great points, and channels his inner Lithose .

At the end of the day, these guys are going to make a game that they want to make - they’ve made that clear. Maybe they listen to posters here, maybe they don’t. Maybe they make a killer game that lasts for 20’yeara so we can all die together playing an EQ memberberries type game. Maybe they fail and their game is dead in 2027.

Either way, my team and I will get our moneys worth of enjoyment out of this, I’m certain.

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Kirun said:

The classic MMO forum playbook - Step 1: someone points out structural issues. Step 2: instead of addressing a single point raised, you demand they build their own MMO. Step 3: accuse them of mental instability. Step 4: declare victory. Truly, the Socratic method thrives here.

Let's get a few things straight -

Nobody needs to ship a competing game to notice design pitfalls any more than you need to direct a film to know Cats was a disaster. Critique isn't invalid because it hurts your feelings. If anything, the fact that your only counterargument is "make your own MMO then!!" kind of proves you don't have one. So spare me the "where's YOUR MMO, huh??" routine. Nobody asked you to build a restaurant to know the food tastes like shit. That's not how critique works in any medium, ever. If the only valid opinion is, "I love it, don't question anything," congratulations, you're part of a cult.

And the funniest part? You all keep proving the exact point you think you're debunking: There is no defense of the design itself, only a defense of your feelings about the design. I've brought it up countless times because not one person has addressed:

1. How a 1999 retention model survives in 2025

2. How a group-only game functions with a niche population

3. How a no-instancing raiding ecosystem avoids collapse

4. How a subscription-only revenue model funds ongoing development (to be fair, people keep throwing out a "5K subs is all that's needed!" number with nothing concrete to back it up - so I guess that's at least something)

5. How ignoring modern player behavior magically produces "community"

You can screech "OPINION!!" until your dentures rattle, but these are objective realities in the MMO space. The fact that they trigger you doesn't make them less true.

And this idea that "it’s the only thing on the horizon worth a shit" is exactly why these discussions matter. When a niche project positions itself as the last bastion of old-school MMO design, it's not unreasonable to ask whether it actually understands the reasons those mechanics worked in 1999, or why they failed everywhere they've been revived since.

As for the "he’s an NPC, he's schizophrenic" stuff? Now we're just having meltdowns. If the best defense of MnM is to imply that anyone who questions design choices is mentally unwell, maybe the design choices aren't as bulletproof as you think. Forums exist to interrogate ideas. If your position can't withstand scrutiny, the problem isn't the scrutiny.

You keep insisting criticism = hatred because you can't articulate why these systems are good. Just that you remember liking them once, when you were younger, had fewer responsibilities, and the genre was new. That's called nostalgia.

If MnM turns out great, fantastic, I'd love to be wrong and I'll be the first person to admit it. But pretending valid concerns don't exist because it's "the only thing left worth a shit" isn't a defense, it's a confession that your standards have collapsed so far that anything even resembling EQ gets a free pass. And if that's the case, you obviously don't want a discussion, you just want to worship the shrine. And shrines don't make good MMOs.

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Drapdis said:

Dude what do you want people to say back to you? We don’t make the game. God damn lol.

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