Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

Mrniceguy · 2026-07-14T13:13:36-0400

Tol said:
lol its the only real content that even exists in these shitty tab-target hotbar-based MMOs

Which is exactly why you don't get it, MMOs can't be a hard genre. They will always be an easy genre, games don't need to be hard to be enjoyable.

Tol · 2026-07-14T13:56:32-0400

Mrniceguy said:
Which is exactly why you don't get it, MMOs can't be a hard genre. They will always be an easy genre, games don't need to be hard to be enjoyable.

No ones saying it needs to be on the level of challenger league in LoL, but you might as well just play VRchat if you want an immersive world or a shitty number-goes-up grind game like project gorgon at that point. It's not about difficulty, it's about being even slightly engaging to play. Zerg raids absolutely bore the living shit out of me and camping dungeon mobs might even be worse. I can't say the same for mythic/savage content because it's usually engaging. There are people out there who enjoy clicking their Cheal macro button once per minute or so for hours on end, week after week and I think thats the most unenjoyable thing possible

Arden · 2026-07-14T15:23:27-0400

Mrniceguy said:
Which is exactly why you don't get it, MMOs can't be a hard genre. They will always be an easy genre, games don't need to be hard to be enjoyable.

Games generally need to be at least be challenging to be enjoyable (unless you are a small child).

But it's fair to say that more challenging doesn't necessarily equal more enjoyable.

jayrebb · 2026-07-14T15:46:05-0400

Flobee said:
I had a conversation with their new class Dev about backstab, and abilities more generally, a few months ago because they fully normalize weapon damage for ability calculations. Its a big reason that Backstab feels lame IMO. My suggestion was to use a sliding normalization formula (which I provided an example of) so they could dial it in for specific abilities. The result being that you could make it feel better to use a high damage weapon vs just only focusing on ratio which is how it currently is. This would help backstab feel juicy with a slower mainhand, 2hand weapons could feel better in general etc. Gives you some play with, to use BS as an example, do I keep the high damage primary for fatty backstabs or take this faster better ratio weapon for more white damage. Because there is a adjustable variable you can change it easily for specific abilities as well.

Seems more fun to me but he dismissed it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You can somewhat achieve the same effect by just piling on more flat damage bonus but its going to make scaling feel bad. Normalization is boring

What you suggested means changing the way melee weapons work. They have been pretty set on a level-based scaling formula that predominantly uses your current level and your current main stat as the drivers of increased potential damage. This makes weapon damage fairly unimportant (I.E. not a huge deal if you got that 38 damage 2hander instead of that 45 damage 2hander versus getting the same upgrade in EverQuest). A driving factor behind it not mattering much is something called max hit. Yes, your max hit goes up with a higher damage weapon in MNM.

However........

Unlike EverQuest which the game is based, the frequency of a max-hit is well....infrequent. EverQuest skills for weapons significantly increased your chance to score maximum hits as you leveled. By level 40ish to 50ish you were quad attacking for nearly your total damage potential with your weapon 80-90% of the time. Seeing a low hit was occasional. EverQuest was designed around the presumption that players should be hitting for their maximium damage potential very often, even far before level 60 or getting any stats. Stats didn't matter as much in EverQuest as your weapon skill and your weapon damage. This made weapon upgrades noticeable and tangible. The normalization isn't just 1 skill or backstab. This is a core design decision for the way weapons are currently calculated and implemented in MNM. They have a vision for scaling that emphasizes levels and primary stats, and changing that vision and adding exceptions for specific skills to spice up the importance of weapon damage is something they are not going to be interested in-- because it's a deviation from the core design that levels/primary stat are king.

Flobee · 2026-07-14T15:52:12-0400

jayrebb said:
What you suggested means changing the way melee weapons work. They have been pretty set on a level-based scaling formula that predominantly uses your current level and your current main stat as the drivers of increased potential damage. This makes weapon damage fairly unimportant (I.E. not a huge deal if you got that 38 damage 2hander instead of that 45 damage 2hander versus getting the same upgrade in EverQuest). A driving factor behind it not mattering much is something called max hit. Yes, your max hit goes up with a higher damage weapon in MNM.

However........

Unlike EverQuest which the game is based, the frequency of a max-hit is well....infrequent. EverQuest skills for weapons significantly increased your chance to score maximum hits as you leveled. By level 40ish to 50ish you were quad attacking for nearly your total damage potential with your weapon 80-90% of the time. Seeing a low hit was occasional. EverQuest was designed around the presumption that players should be hitting for their maximium damage potential very often, even far before level 60 or getting any stats. Stats didn't matter as much in EverQuest as your weapon skill and your weapon damage. This made weapon upgrades noticeable and tangible. The normalization isn't just 1 skill or backstab. This is a core design decision for the way weapons are currently calculated and implemented in MNM. They have a vision for scaling that emphasizes levels and primary stats, and changing that vision and adding exceptions for specific skills to spice up the importance of weapon damage is something they are not going to be interested in-- because it's a deviation from the core design that levels/primary stat are king.

I get what you're saying, but it actually doesn't mean any of that. Its a very simple suggestion to provide a variable that can be passed into an ability calculation (only abilities!) to increase the impact of weapon damage to the roll. Some bad code below to explain. This has 0 impact on anything outside of abilities, and even then ONLY the abilities you want to be impacted. The default is always the same normalization they already do.

Code:

if (IsAbility)
                {
                    // 2.0 is the base floor, 0.2 is the "Wiggle" factor.
                    // Increase 0.2 to favor slow weapons more.

                    const float WiggleFactor = 0.2f;
                    const float DynamicStandard = 2.0f + (SourcePrimaryDelay * WiggleFactor);

                    float NormalizedWeaponBase = (SourcePrimaryDamage / SourcePrimaryDelay) * DynamicStandard;
                    // Ensure abilities at least use the raw weapon damage if it's higher than the normalized version
                    float FinalBase = FMath::Max(NormalizedWeaponBase, SourcePrimaryDamage);

                    EffectiveWeaponDamage = FinalBase * WeaponAbilityMultiplier;

                }
                else
                {
                    EffectiveWeaponDamage = SourcePrimaryDamage * WeaponAbilityMultiplier;
                }

To be clear, not doing this is totally fine and their decision to make. I just think weapon damage being normalized for abilities feels bad and its noticeable. This is a method to fix that in the cases the devs wanted to do so thats all.

EDIT: Not sure if full context is in that snippet to make my point and not going to dig up the original conversation to do so. My spaghetti will have to suffice for the point

bolok · 2026-07-14T15:54:39-0400

jayrebb said:
What you suggested means changing the way melee weapons work. They have been pretty set on a level-based scaling formula that predominantly uses your current level and your current main stat as the drivers of increased potential damage. This makes weapon damage fairly unimportant (I.E. not a huge deal if you got that 38 damage 2hander instead of that 45 damage 2hander versus getting the same upgrade in EverQuest). A driving factor behind it not mattering much is something called max hit. Yes, your max hit goes up with a higher damage weapon in MNM.

However........

Unlike EverQuest which the game is based, the frequency of a max-hit is well....infrequent. EverQuest skills for weapons significantly increased your chance to score maximum hits as you leveled. By level 40ish to 50ish you were quad attacking for nearly your total damage potential with your weapon 80-90% of the time. Seeing a low hit was occasional. EverQuest was designed around the presumption that players should be hitting for their maximium damage potential very often, even far before level 60 or getting any stats. Stats didn't matter as much in EverQuest as your weapon skill and your weapon damage. This made weapon upgrades noticeable and tangible. The normalization isn't just 1 skill or backstab. This is a core design decision for the way weapons are currently calculated and implemented in MNM. They have a vision for scaling that emphasizes levels and primary stats, and changing that vision and adding exceptions for specific skills to spice up the importance of weapon damage is something they are not going to be interested in-- because it's a deviation from the core design that levels/primary stat are king.

Except the there’s precious little evidence of weapon dmg mattering for max hit and plenty of people continuously going wtf, why does my dagger have a higher max hit than this slow ass 2h. It’s way too keyed off ratio. It makes entire swathes of weapon never the correct choice to use. Makes me feel bad for the artists honestly.

Flobee · 2026-07-14T15:56:37-0400

bolok said:
Except the there’s precious little evidence of weapon dmg mattering for max hit and plenty of people continuously going wtf, why does my dagger have a higher max hit than this slow ass 2h. It’s way too keyed off ratio. It makes entire swathes of weapon never the correct choice to use. Makes me feel bad for the artists honestly.

THAT is a result on ONLY the ratio mattering for abilities and is exactly my point

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Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

Mrniceguy

Blackwing Lair Raider

Tol

Trakanon Raider

Arden

Vyemm Raider

jayrebb

Ssraeszha Raider

Flobee

Ahn'Qiraj Raider

bolok

Trakanon Raider

Flobee

Ahn'Qiraj Raider