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Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO
- Thread starter Flobee
- Start date
So what games do you like, I’m genuinely curious. Seem like the guys who hate all games but play them anyway. You like path of exile 2? Lemme guess
If all your points are correct and you have foretold the future (past would indicate any new mmo will fail), so what? Why do you keep posting this sentiment with such passion? You could be level a 22 paladin by now if you were grinding instead of posting, try to be more productive.
Hekotat
FoH nuclear response team
- 12,828
- 12,882
Quaid
Trump's Staff
- 12,204
- 8,653
Hey that’s a big milestone! Congratulations for sure.
I wonder how the concurrent count by day is gonna look. If they’re getting new accounts logging in near the end of the test that probably indicates positive word of mouth of the ongoing test itself. That’d be a big deal. People that buy a product from word of mouth (someone they know) are way more likely to become ongoing purchasers.
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Flobee
Vyemm Raider
- 2,987
- 3,474
So I'm not sure how much more I'll be able to play today so figure I'll drop a little of my feedback here to see how ya'll feel. This test was by far the one I spent the most time on. Overall game feels much much better than it has previously. I played a few classes to 5+ with my highest being a 10 fighter. Kits are feeling more coherent, starting to feel how they want them to play. For the Fighter specifically, its awesome. Exactly how I'd want a continuation of EQ warrior to feel. Solid DPS, incredibly tanky with minimal utility. Class will be awesome to twink, and if you get buffs, or you are prepared (potions, bandages, etc) it solos pretty well, at least at this level. Downtime is obviously the main issue but chain killing low blues is doable. Grouping is a lot of fun too as you obviously fill the tank role well, although its mostly limited to holding agro on a single target in most circumstances as of right now.
I only grouped on Fighter and a little on Paladin, partially by choice, partially due to when I play, but that does lead into my main negative. It doesn't really seem worthwhile to group, especially not with more than 3-4 people if your goal is XP. Its not that grouping is slower, its just that the travel and setup time tended to be long enough that its not really viable in most cases. Had more than one case where we spent most of our time grabbing LFGs, waiting for them to get to us, then having someone leave and having to rep them. Repeat.
I think this is caused by a few things, the most obvious being what is repeated constantly in this thread so I won't belabor it; we're all mostly Dadquesting and don't have time to fully dedicate like we used to, especially on temporary characters. Setting that aside I do think a few things will help with this:
1. Mob difficulty - its just too easy to kill stuff currently. I'm a primarily solo player so this is against my own interests, but harder enemies will provide greater incentives to group up. If I can just solo on a "bad" solo class, even if its slightly less efficient, I'm likely to do so. This is a tricky balance because I 100% want to be able to solo some, but I think increasing mob difficulty is a good idea and it sounds like that is the teams intention.
2. Game knowledge - People just don't know where to go for specific levels so they're not standing around in the sweet group spots forming groups. We'll eventually know where good stuff drops and will congregate in those spots. This will resolve itself
3. Risk/Reward - Kind of ties into #1 but I don't think I actually ever died outside of messing around on the pvp server. I suspect this shifts as one progresses later but up to 10 I felt pretty capable of keeping my risk minimized at all times.
4. Buff durations - I'm not saying I want this to change, but SoW from a level 8 lasts for an hour, as do most buffs from what I've seen. An hour is a solid grind session before a trip back to sell etc.
Other random thoughts
I really like how quests are shaping up. I think some % of people will find the interaction system with MUD commands to be annoying, but I enjoy them. There will need to be some work on ensuring the correct key-words are emphasized in the text as I ran into one quest where I needed to /take report but the word report was never used it was called "papers" so I ended up having to search Discord to figure that out. Just QA stuff really.
The little bit of unique itemization I saw was spot on. Got a sick lifetap proc dagger at like level 7 and it completely transformed how playing felt for me. Big fan of this type of thing and I'm hopeful it continues during progression. I've not spoiled much but did see a few quests for items later on that look really cool so I think this is going to be a big positive for the game.
Merchant system is basically a non-factor once you're used to it. You do end up with town-chores but having that to break up the normal grind loop isn't a bad thing honestly and I would suggest ignoring the haters on this one.
Crafting seems pretty cool, but I don't like the fact that you can't skillup on failed combines (I think). If this was implemented to avoid spamming easy/cheap recipes with high trivials for skillups perhaps a better way to circumvent this would be better. As of now its pretty annoying to level the skills up with failure rates the way they are.
Bag swapping for various crafts is a bit tedious, but I guess if thats the intended gameplay I can live with it. Same with swapping in harvesting tools. I'm all about keeping things feeling tactile and minimizing QoL stuff but for me personally I would be happy with the ability to harvest without having to swap out my weapon constantly.
Overall I had a lot of fun and I'm quite optimistic about this game. I'm tempted to beg around for an Alpha key but if I'm honest I have too much stuff I need to be getting done to be playing this. In fact I'm hoping my personal project is wrapping up before this releases as I suspect its going to impact my freetime for a while at least. All my 2c, curious to hear from other people who are actually playing it and have opinions rather than our normal theory crafting know-it-alls.
I only grouped on Fighter and a little on Paladin, partially by choice, partially due to when I play, but that does lead into my main negative. It doesn't really seem worthwhile to group, especially not with more than 3-4 people if your goal is XP. Its not that grouping is slower, its just that the travel and setup time tended to be long enough that its not really viable in most cases. Had more than one case where we spent most of our time grabbing LFGs, waiting for them to get to us, then having someone leave and having to rep them. Repeat.
I think this is caused by a few things, the most obvious being what is repeated constantly in this thread so I won't belabor it; we're all mostly Dadquesting and don't have time to fully dedicate like we used to, especially on temporary characters. Setting that aside I do think a few things will help with this:
1. Mob difficulty - its just too easy to kill stuff currently. I'm a primarily solo player so this is against my own interests, but harder enemies will provide greater incentives to group up. If I can just solo on a "bad" solo class, even if its slightly less efficient, I'm likely to do so. This is a tricky balance because I 100% want to be able to solo some, but I think increasing mob difficulty is a good idea and it sounds like that is the teams intention.
2. Game knowledge - People just don't know where to go for specific levels so they're not standing around in the sweet group spots forming groups. We'll eventually know where good stuff drops and will congregate in those spots. This will resolve itself
3. Risk/Reward - Kind of ties into #1 but I don't think I actually ever died outside of messing around on the pvp server. I suspect this shifts as one progresses later but up to 10 I felt pretty capable of keeping my risk minimized at all times.
4. Buff durations - I'm not saying I want this to change, but SoW from a level 8 lasts for an hour, as do most buffs from what I've seen. An hour is a solid grind session before a trip back to sell etc.
Other random thoughts
I really like how quests are shaping up. I think some % of people will find the interaction system with MUD commands to be annoying, but I enjoy them. There will need to be some work on ensuring the correct key-words are emphasized in the text as I ran into one quest where I needed to /take report but the word report was never used it was called "papers" so I ended up having to search Discord to figure that out. Just QA stuff really.
The little bit of unique itemization I saw was spot on. Got a sick lifetap proc dagger at like level 7 and it completely transformed how playing felt for me. Big fan of this type of thing and I'm hopeful it continues during progression. I've not spoiled much but did see a few quests for items later on that look really cool so I think this is going to be a big positive for the game.
Merchant system is basically a non-factor once you're used to it. You do end up with town-chores but having that to break up the normal grind loop isn't a bad thing honestly and I would suggest ignoring the haters on this one.
Crafting seems pretty cool, but I don't like the fact that you can't skillup on failed combines (I think). If this was implemented to avoid spamming easy/cheap recipes with high trivials for skillups perhaps a better way to circumvent this would be better. As of now its pretty annoying to level the skills up with failure rates the way they are.
Bag swapping for various crafts is a bit tedious, but I guess if thats the intended gameplay I can live with it. Same with swapping in harvesting tools. I'm all about keeping things feeling tactile and minimizing QoL stuff but for me personally I would be happy with the ability to harvest without having to swap out my weapon constantly.
Overall I had a lot of fun and I'm quite optimistic about this game. I'm tempted to beg around for an Alpha key but if I'm honest I have too much stuff I need to be getting done to be playing this. In fact I'm hoping my personal project is wrapping up before this releases as I suspect its going to impact my freetime for a while at least. All my 2c, curious to hear from other people who are actually playing it and have opinions rather than our normal theory crafting know-it-alls.
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Quaid
Trump's Staff
- 12,204
- 8,653
Burns
Avatar of War Slayer
- 8,687
- 16,785
Tradeskills: You can skill up on failed combines on tradeskills last I leveled up tradeskills (last long test). I think they only changed gathering profs to make no skill up per fail, as I am pretty sure someone told me they skilled up JC using the wire trick this test (manually put in the next tier base metal bar, when previous goes green).
Buffs were 30 min up until a month or two ago. It sucked. This hour long stuff is much better. You get increased quality of buffs as you level. Even SoW goes from 40% at level 8 to 60% at 60; no need to dick around with the time.
As for quests, I didn't play MUDs and have no nostalgia for them. So I thought the EQ quest system was shit and I think this quest system is shit. At least if they highlighted the keywords, like Adrullan does, it wouldn't be total AIDS.
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Del
Potato del Grande
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This has been acknowledged in the closed testing section of the discord for a while now. The devs have laid out their plans for balancing over the next few months. They want TTK to increase for mobs under level 40 or 45 to help encourage larger groups, and they have also talked about increasing the experience split for groups of 5-6. Expect to see more gradual adjustments heading into beta. The game @45+ feels good for full groups and bad pulls can be quite challenging. TTK for white cons or near white cons is around 30-45 sec with full groups and debuffs start to feel very helpful at this point. Did some Grimtide Sanctum recently and the dungeon is actually scary and stressful.
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Daidraco
Avatar of War Slayer
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I had a bunch of mats and was wasting it on something in alchemy, a red recipe - not once did it succeed (before I noticed) out of 20 tries - but I never got a skill up either. However, other stuff Ive failed at light blue and it did skill up off the fail. So if I had to theorize, theyre using the same logic as leveling and too far above or below your skill has no effect. The Quality of Life stuff you mentioned about tool swapping and bard instruments, etc. is just annoying as shit, I agree. My hotbar shouldnt be filled with weapons/tools/instruments just so I can easily swap them without opening my inventory window. But maybe they'll do a QOL pass later on, who knows?
I think the only thing that this game has thats TRULY disheartening, and it sounds like the Dev's support this... is the min/maxxing of sitting and medding right at the tick of mana regen and then getting back up to melee. Now THAT is some degenerate gameplay type shit. I thought Wizards were actually low APM, but to play them at their max - you're abusing the ticks, being in melee getting stacks of seal of magic, and casting nukes. That shit sounds fucking awful. You dont HAVE to do that - just like you dont have to twist songs as* a bard.. But if the devs are aware of it and support it, thats just awful. Reminds me of the dumb ass end-game combat of ESO where you're midcast cancelling etc.
Pretty much took me completely out of wanting to play most casters.
I think the only thing that this game has thats TRULY disheartening, and it sounds like the Dev's support this... is the min/maxxing of sitting and medding right at the tick of mana regen and then getting back up to melee. Now THAT is some degenerate gameplay type shit. I thought Wizards were actually low APM, but to play them at their max - you're abusing the ticks, being in melee getting stacks of seal of magic, and casting nukes. That shit sounds fucking awful. You dont HAVE to do that - just like you dont have to twist songs as* a bard.. But if the devs are aware of it and support it, thats just awful. Reminds me of the dumb ass end-game combat of ESO where you're midcast cancelling etc.
Pretty much took me completely out of wanting to play most casters.
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Kithani
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 1,777
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Yeah this sounds like the complete opposite of “laid back, chat with your group mates while watching TV” gameplay they seem to be shooting for
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Kirun
Buzzfeed Editor
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This is literally a discussion forum. The entire point is to talk about the game - good, bad, or otherwise. If you can't handle someone having a different take, that's not proof they’re "obsessed," it just means you only feel comfortable in an echo chamber. Nobody here is trying to "save" anyone. We're talking about design philosophy, sustainability, and community, because that's what grown adults do when they're capable of forming opinions that aren't just loyalty chants.
Meanwhile, your whole contribution amounts to: "STOP DISAGREEING, YOU'RE MAKING ME FEEL THINGS." Nobody on your side is actually offering counterpoints. Not one person has explained why corpse runs, anti-convenience friction, no instancing, forced downtime, or level-split grouping are good beyond: “Well I like it and it reminds me of being 16 in 1999!” Cool. You like it. That's a feeling, not a design argument.
It's telling that every time someone lays out a thoughtful critique supported by history, player behavior, server population realities, sustainability, psychology, etc. the response is never: "Here is why this mechanic works," "Here's the intended design outcome," or "Here’s why the friction is meaningful." Instead, it's always: "lol why u care so much". Which is what people say when they don't actually have a position, just an attachment.
If all you want is a space where everyone nods along and claps every time someone says "corpse runs were peak game design," then just say that. There are Discords for that. You'll love it there. No dissent, no discussion, just warm nostalgic bathwater to soak in forever.
But don't pretend silence = agreement. Silence just means you've killed the conversation, which is the opposite of the "community" you all claim to enjoy so much.
Translation: "Please reassure me that your criticism comes from a place I approve of, so I don't have to actually address anything you said."
Brother, I don't owe you my Steam library to justify basic literacy in game design. You don't need to know whether I play PoE, Elden Ring, FFXIV, Valheim, Deep Rock, or Tetris on a Walmart toaster. The only reason you want to know what I play is so you can pivot to, "Well THAT game sucks too!" or "LOL go back to Blizzard/KR/MMO lite!". It's just a pre-scripted deflection to avoid the conversation. If you want to actually engage in a discussion, it's pretty obvious to understand what types of games I like.
Why discuss this at length? Because the only chance this game has at lasting longer than Pantheon, Ember's Adrift, Mortal Online, or 6 months of MMO honeymoon dopamine…is if people push back before launch.
If you want MnM to be your forever-game, great. I'd love that too. But pretending that every "modern design lesson" is corruption and every critique is hate? That's how projects die exactly the way they always have. I don't want MnM to fail. I want MnM to stop making the exact, predictable, avoidable mistakes that have killed every "EQ spiritual successor" for 20 years.
I don't dislike slow games. I dislike poorly reasoned design decisions disguised as nostalgia. If you want to build a chill, low-APM, group-focused world? Cool. But don't pretend tedium is sacred, inconvenience is identity, or frustration is community.
Caving to casuals already? Uh oh...
Great, someone let Grandpa out of his cage again. Come on Gramps, Jeopardy is on, and later you can watch Price of Right if you eat all your peas and carrots!
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GuardianX
Perpetually Pessimistic
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Okay this arena event is kinda silly.
I'm 37, last killed a mob that was light blue and the arena spawner is STILL not back after 1.5 hours (2 hour respawn, yikes)? Bruh, my last reward was 1 silver. This isn't game breaking...make his cleanup time be 1 spawn cycle maybe 2 for a sanity check.
I really hope this reward is good because so far it's been hours upon hours of downtime for about 2 silver so far.
I'm 37, last killed a mob that was light blue and the arena spawner is STILL not back after 1.5 hours (2 hour respawn, yikes)? Bruh, my last reward was 1 silver. This isn't game breaking...make his cleanup time be 1 spawn cycle maybe 2 for a sanity check.
I really hope this reward is good because so far it's been hours upon hours of downtime for about 2 silver so far.
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