Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

Drapdis said:

I’m not mistaking it for depth because i didn’t say it added depth. Didn’t read the rest of your post. You are being silly!

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Ah, so you didn't read it but felt confident enough to declare it "silly." That about sums up half the online discourse lately.

If it isn't adding depth, then what is the value proposition? Because the only defense I keep seeing for it is either "it makes the world feel alive" or "it creates socialization," and both of those fall apart under scrutiny.

You're right that not every system needs to add depth. But it does need to add something. If downtime isn't adding meaningful decision-making, engagement, or even tension, what's its purpose? If it's just there because "that's how EQ did it", then it's just a relic, not a feature. And I think that's the bigger point people miss when they get defensive about this stuff. Nobody's saying games shouldn’t have pacing or restraint. The argument is that in 2025, if your core loop involves forcing players to do nothing as a means of engineering nostalgia, then it isn't restraint and instead it's regression/inability to innovate.

Punko said:

THJ had extremely low kill times on pretty much everything, given a decent char.

It was huge fun.

Grouping is severely overrated. Having to group for content is not something that contributes to the fun value of MMO's, especially not for average or low skill players.

Being able to progress at any time provides much more fun to the average player.

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I tried THJ and was bored in less than 2 weeks. Soloing in an MMO does nothing for me. I'd rather play a single player RPG at that point.

To each his own.

Del said:

I tried THJ and was bored in less than 2 weeks. Soloing in an MMO does nothing for me. I'd rather play a single player RPG at that point.

To each his own.

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THJ was an ARPG. I tried it for a bit and burned out in less than a month. Just nonstop +better following meta build guides. Blech.

Punko said:

You folks are not the general gaming audience.

Games designed for people like you are simply not popular anymore, and rightfully so.

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Nobody cares. Games are designed for everyone. Get over it. Some are designed for the masses, some are niche. Not every game is for you or I. The end!

Punko said:

I'm fine with not every game being for me, or for mass audiences.

The hilarity that ensues when these games somehow prove not to sell and go broke is well worth it.

Carry on, crusader.

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That's the nature the of gaming and business. If enough people like your product it'll do well, if not, well better luck next time. In MNM's case, they need a consistent base of 5K or so and it'll be alive and well. Not a high mark compared to 99% of games in the industry. I think you and others have a hard time accepting that an oldschool MMO isn't built for you this go round and isn't trying to revamp the industry. It's just a few dudes making a throwback to EQ and hoping to get a few K people like Quarm so they can churn out some fun and interesting stuff.

Why does this bother you so much? Did you too waste cash on vaporware that is Pantheon and AoC?

Why can't mobs be more dangerous than others of the same level but with lower TTK, and yet give a better reward

Seems fine to me

vegetoeeVegetoee said:

In MNM's case, they need a consistent base of 5K or so and it'll be alive and well.

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This "5K subs and they're fine" figure feels more like wishful thinking than math. Where's that number coming from, exactly? Because I can't think of a single live service MMO that's sustaining itself, let alone growing, on 5K active subs.

Even if you assume a generous $15/month sub, that's $75K/month before taxes, merchant fees, or operating costs. Once you start factoring in servers, bandwidth, support staff, legal, infrastructure, art, marketing, QA, and (god forbid) paying the devs something resembling a livable wage, that number evaporates fast. And even if you handwave all that, the problem isn't just financial, it's social. A "niche" MMO with 5K players doesn't have enough density to sustain a healthy world, especially with the omega sized zones MnM are building. You'll end up with ghost towns, fragmented playerbases, and raid ecosystems that collapse as soon as a handful of veterans leave. BDO has a giant world that feels empty as fucking shit and it has 3-4x the players of MnMs 5k number.

Let's put it in perspective: BDO has had 12-20K concurrent players for nearly a decade, with whales funding an entire marketplace of cosmetic addiction, and even they are barely keeping the lights on. But sure, MnM - an indie studio with no monetization plan, no marketing, and a design philosophy straight out of 1999 is going to somehow hit this mythical 5k number. Which nobody can explain to me how/why that's the "magic" number needed to sustain a live service MMO.

Punko said:

You folks are not the general gaming audience.

Games designed for people like you are simply not popular anymore, and rightfully so.

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Punko said:

Besides being an obvious faggot, you are also clearly new.

The fine people of this forum know I waste my money on hookers, cars, and pink polo's.

Now fuck off.

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Objection your honor. Counsel is badgering the witness because he doesn't like what he said rather than questioning what was sad.


At any rate, I had a really good time in the public test. Could it have been harder? Yes of course it could have been, but it didn't take away from the enjoyment that I had playing the game. Therefore, I have to wonder would it have been better or worse if the mobs would have been harder or taking longer to kill? And.. There's no way to know until they make chagnes and I try it out. I think arguing here and making statements of fact based off of unknowns is fine until you all start telling each other to fuck off for not agreeing with your point of view.

Now that all being said, I will point out that in my opinion everything that made EverQuest harder, more complex, or more tedious to play through seemed like it ended up with more people playing their own group as boxes rather than playing with other people. So, while it felt like encourage grouping really meant "run your own group or don't get to play the game cause nobody else is looking for others to join them".

Again, that's just my opinion based on what I saw playing EQ. I am sure your milage will vary.

Personally, I like the ease of grouping in what little grouping I did in the MnM public test. Nobody was super hyper focused and scraming L2Play Noob or anything like that. It was a laid back fun experience. If the game got changed to the point where you either have to be the best of the best at your class or you didn't get a group, I would likely be out. Not because I suck ass at playing games, but rather, because at 52 years old, I got more important things to take care of in my life than having to sit around making spreadsheets and reading wikis in order to play a game.

Does that make me lame? Probably. But, that's also the norm for the average gamer. I sometimes wonder if the elites here realize they are the 1% in gaming and not the norm.