Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

RobXIII said:

You are arguing that players mow through content faster than developers produce it. But I think the discussion is about spawn monopolization, and not players getting bored with raid content. Making lots of options available for exp grinding and dungeons (multiple level appropriate dungeon options, raid zone options) with some travel time between it can make an instance-less game work. Of course you always have super in demand items getting monopolized. Think how Jboots were in EQ1 before they changed it to a quest. A line out the door lol.

But yeah it's 2026, and I feel like I don't have time for the more punishing aspects of a game like hard CR, level loss, etc. EQ1 now lets you pay to fix a problem they caused: preventing level loss by paying more in your sub. Blech

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No, the argument about monopolizing spawns was to simply throw more content into the game. Which means you are trying to create enough content that not everyone can possibly consume it without competition. That simply is impossible. Full stop. A dev team simply can NOT create more content than the player base can run through without competing with each other. Unless, as I said, you build a world so large that you just never see the vast majority of other players (EVE). Which, in that case, you build a huge world that is completely empty apart from the oasis of content you put in place. EVE gets away with this because space is, by definition, 99% empty.

Ya know simple variable spawn rates and windows really did mix things up - while yes, (an even smaller number than normal) some did still 24/7 camp it - it did allow guilds of various time zones and regions muster. So sure, the CoE tier will have a bro 24/7 camping it to call spawn, the FoH tier will have a force there 24/7 while the "smaller noob" guilds will come and go while they are in their play windows, all really with a /chance/ at "the thing" ... then spread that out to 2 or 3 things...and it becomes improbable for the FoH tier to full force camp large variable windows on multi camps.. or they get to super large of a guild that well... they have the room to take in essentially anyone that even wants to casually "raid" and their competition becomes the same... so you get like 3 top tier guilds that anyone really would have a chance to join if they have an ounce of wanting to "end game raid"... how is that not an "okay place to be" ?

Take even classic EQ. In basic it had 4 things, without adding the variable of PoA/Sky & Phinny - you had the main 4 = Vox - Nag - PoF and PoH -- when respawn windows overlapped between even two of those, people had to pick and choose - each one had a different variable of dedication and means to "get to" let alone "camp" and that allowed others to have a /chance/ at a target not dedicated to by "the big guy(s)"

Throw in PoA/Sky and usually guilds that did that would just do /that/ for a week or so because of the investment needed to do so- leaving everything on the ground for everyone else.

Does EVERYONE get a chance EVERY POSSIBLE TIME for a mob? No... is that what we all think is needed to "succeed"?

I was just catching up on the messages, so forgive me if this reply is like 5 pages late LOL... damn you guys are fast.

As for the discussion about the game and many games these days going in to Early Access to be able to raise money to complete the games, I believe this has to do with the simple fact that making a fully fledged out triple A MMORPG costs way, way more than anyone can afford outside of a corporation.

The reality is that what we are seeing these days are the developers themselves saying "Hey i can do better than my overloards will let me do, but I don't have the money to do it." When you get right down to it, the consumers are taking on the role of being the financier for these games. In a way, the developers are outsourcing their time and effort to their new employers; the consumers.

Us being the employers means that we are taking all the risk, and the harsh reality is that most game ideas fail. It's only because the big corporations pump tons of money in to it to keep the development going that they eventually get to a releasable version of any game. They literally invest hundreds of millions of dollars in HOPES that they will get a game that will recoup their investment and then some.

Every time we kickstart a new game or pay for early access, we the consumers are taking on the role of being the one taking the risk. And, as history has shown us, the VAST majority of the time, we lose our investment.

The thing is though, it's our responsibility to make wise decisions in what we invest in and what we do not.

For example, it wasn't Brad's fault that I wasted money on Pantheon early on. It was my fault for not listening to all the people saying don't do it. I spent the money, and I lost that money. In direct contrast, I put way more research in to Ashes of Creation before making my decision this time, and ultimately, my decision to NOT put money in to Ashes of Creation paid off for me.

So far, I like what I have seen for MnM. If they can show some sort of path to end game before Early Access comes out, I will invest in to the game. But, if after Early Access opens they don't make any progress towards their goals with in the first two months, I will stop investing in it (aka paying my $15 a month). I'm not throwing good money at bad like I did with Pantheon.

They have shown that they can design a good game, and that's worth at least one month of me investing $15 in to their early access. They need to show they can continue that progress in a meaningful way beyond the initial early access offering.

Kaines said:

Sweet. So you are going to single-handedly pay for all the developers / infrastructure needed to keep the game alive? I envy your wealth, good sir.

If not, then I suggest you think beyond your own personal interests and think about what will create a COMMERCIALLY VIABLE product that enough people want to play actually keep the game alive.

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YES!

Cmon argue in good faith. You and five others not liking the game is fine. Your opinions are also fine, but your diatribes on what this game needs to be are not. We all know they making an homage to EQ, and as such want it to be exactly like it was in 1999. We also know they have thousands logging in to consistently alpha test their game. It's not a stretch to assume those thousands, myself included, will subscribe through EA and during release. Saying slop like, "This game sucks because no instancing!" or "We already have these problems solved!" is kinda dense when you know what the project is aiming to be. It's never going to be WOW fellas. If you want WOW, go play WOW classic. It already exists and sounds like the perfect game for you! I tried it, hated it but have numerous friends that loved it and are on the classic servers to this day! Good for them, I don't parade around acting like WOW needs to be more like EQ to really be successful.

And, just to add to what I just said, I wanted to point out that its not like we are all against buying new games from big corporations. The only reason we are so dead set on looking to small startup offerings is because in the past decade, the big software corporations have moved away from making GOOD GAMES and instead pumping out EITHER politically-motivated shit or heavily micro-transactioned shit.

The corporations have fucked us as consumers, and people are fed up with it.

That's why we look to independent developers now. It's the only way to get an actual game that is a FULL GAME and not just a micro-transaction filled political hit job pretending to be a game.

But, going to independent developers means that we are getting games that are made for tens of thousands of dollars rather than millions of dollars. At the end of the day, money does matter, and these games do show that lack of investment.

I think we, as consumers, need to realize what we are giving up in order to get away from the bullshit the industry has forced on us. It's a trade off. You are definitely going to lose some quality, depth of content, and time to market. But, at least you don't have to pay $70 for the game and another $200 in micro transactions while being forced fed the day's current political bullshit.

vegetoeeVegetoee said:

YES!

Cmon argue in good faith. You and five others not liking the game is fine. Your opinions are also fine, but your diatribes on what this game needs to be are not. We all know they making an homage to EQ, and as such want it to be exactly like it was in 1999. We also know they have thousands logging in to consistently alpha test their game. It's not a stretch to assume those thousands, myself included, will subscribe through EA and during release. Saying slop like, "This game sucks because no instancing!" or "We already have these problems solved!" is kinda dense when you know what the project is aiming to be. It's never going to be WOW fellas. If you want WOW, go play WOW classic. It already exists and sounds like the perfect game for you! I tried it, hated it but have numerous friends that loved it and are on the classic servers to this day! Good for them, I don't parade around acting like WOW needs to be more like EQ to really be successful.

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We also know what the market is like in 2026 and what players are will accept as long-term viable subscription based games. Logging in to sit around and not be able to progress your character because 100 poopsockers have raid targets on rotation lockdowns doesn't work. You want to argue in good faith? FINE. Give me the commerically viable end-game design model that doesn't use instances, doesn't create a game world so large and empty that you never see anyone, and ALSO allows meaningful progression of your character whenever you log in.

GO!

Kaines said:

We also know what the market is like in 2026 and what players are will accept as long-term viable subscription based games. Logging in to sit around and not be able to progress your character because 100 poopsockers have raid targets on rotation lockdowns doesn't work. You want to argue in good faith? FINE. Give me the commerically viable end-game design model that doesn't use instances, doesn't create a game world so large and empty that you never see anyone, and ALSO allows meaningful progression of your character whenever you log in.

GO!

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I have to completely agree on this one. So many times in the past when I played EQ, I would login and literally have no where to play and just log back out. Every time, it lead me to leave the game.

You have to have something to do when you login each time. There has to be something you can progress even if it isn't the main goal you are trying to achieve at that time.

This is one of the reasons that I actually really love Lord of the Rings Online. There's a gazillion different things to do in that game, so every time I login, I have something I can accomplish no matter if I only have 30 minutes to play or five hours to play.

Some things are purely cosmetic while others are character progression-based. The thing is, there's always some goal I can be progression towards when I login.

I think one of EQ's biggest issues for a long time was that there literally was only 2 things to do in the game; watch the experience bar slowly move from left to right or chase the next gear upgrade. Both of those goals depended on two things; a good camp and a group that can work that camp. If there were no camps open or you couldn't get the right group members together wanting to do that camp (if it was open), then you literally had nothing to do but sit and bullshit in chat.

I think you can go back and forth on these arguments all day and there are probably plenty of examples over the last couple of decades both for and against it. However, I think it ultimately comes down the big picture of the game. Either all the variables work in harmony to create a game that the audience enjoys or it does not. There have been plenty of games who have taken a more retro approach to a game and it succeed and there have been games who have taken very modern approaches with cinematic appearances and flopped. We can anticipate through various experiences why it should or should not work but when you consider the entirety of the game, it very well may be exactly what the playerbase enjoys.

Diablo 4 had every reason to be an incredible game. They should have learned a lot of lessons from D3, which ended up being quite enjoyable in the end, and they brought a lot of innovation to their systems which ultimately ended up being overly and unnecessarily complicated and cumbersome and now they're spending a large portion of their development time rolling things back and correcting their implementation. Runescape is very much in the same boat. Their player base would much rather prefer OSR and they just released a road map and entire video filled with apologies and why they have to correct everything they have done in their new version of RS.

Again, we've tipped our toe into MnM's pool and there is certainly enough experience on these boards to probably save them some headaches. However, I feel like we're drawing far too many conclusions and assuming its just not going to work based on our own experiences and hopes for the next MMO. I didn't think Valheim would work, Enshrouded, etc. They are in a sea of survival building games where a number of other games have come and gone but they did extremely well. For whatever reason, many games have copied and pasted their formula and didn't work and on paper, there's no reason it shouldn't have but they did.

We've said it before, EQ was a whole lot of timing and existed in a time that was very different. The game is what it is... you embrace it and try to make it better or its not for you. I think one of the greatest faults of MMO's over the last decade is casting a vision and then drifting away from what the game was intended to be. I felt like Warhammer, Rift, and several others fell victim to listening to far too many opinions (probably some suits too) and trying appease the masses. You can't. FFXIV is my best example for the very opposite of this... for me, their approach to the how much they handcuff you to the MSQ keeps me from their game and I'm a big FF fan but they've never deviated from that approach. They've provided some options but its still very much a part of their DNA and it remains an extremely successful game.

I say all of this as much to myself as anyone. I respect their approach, I hope we can fine tune and make it the best version of itself, but I hope they do not deviate too far from the game the hoped it to be from the start. I think its very timely and there is a place for it if they can execute their vision. Just some morning thoughts in reflection of my own pickiness.

Kaines said:

We also know what the market is like in 2026 and what players are will accept as long-term viable subscription based games. Logging in to sit around and not be able to progress your character because 100 poopsockers have raid targets on rotation lockdowns doesn't work. You want to argue in good faith? FINE. Give me the commerically viable end-game design model that doesn't use instances, doesn't create a game world so large and empty that you never see anyone, and ALSO allows meaningful progression of your character whenever you log in.

GO!

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We do? Who is this we and market you speak of? Since when have EQ clones popped up on the market only to fail? I can count numberous WOW clones and WOW flavors all of which have failed, but nothing from the EQ sphere.

As for design, you can instance without instancing you know? There are fun, immersive ways of doing such things! The same with the world. You can make a vast world with fun things to do in it. I think the question is, will this team have enough funds to do such a thing? If you cater to the instancing crowd, you will not. You will have people play it for 1-3 months then quit as it's just like everything else that came after WOW and they'll just go back to WOW or find other games to play.

vegetoeeVegetoee said:

We do? Who is this we and market you speak of? Since when have EQ clones popped up on the market only to fail? I can count numberous WOW clones and WOW flavors all of which have failed, but nothing from the EQ sphere.

As for design, you can instance without instancing you know? There are fun, immersive ways of doing such things! The same with the world. You can make a vast world with fun things to do in it. I think the question is, will this team have enough funds to do such a thing? If you cater to the instancing crowd, you will not. You will have people play it for 1-3 months then quit as it's just like everything else that came after WOW and they'll just go back to WOW or find other games to play.

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You can deny the reality of the market all you want and stick your head in the sand. We have just as many WoW clones that have been successful as well that we can point to and say that the market still has a demand there.

As for these "fun, immersive" ways of instancing without instancing; NAME THEM. Be specific. I'm through letting the non-instance ball-lickers get away with empty platitudes and generalities of phrases. WHAT DO YOU MEAN? Be specific. Lay it out for us. Regale us with your wisdom and genius game designs.

Flobee said:

The group of people that mow content shouldn't be the designers primary concern. You can't completely cater to no-lifers, thats just not tenable. I'm in no way stating that "lol just make more content" is enough by itself, its a strategy of mitigation. You layer multiple design decisions to reduce the pressure that you're so concerned about. Plenty of ways to do this that could be applied to very specific areas of the game.



Replace the word raid in the above with whatever form MNM "end-game" content takes.

My point isn't that any of these ideas are unique or even good by any real standard, my point is that there is a massive design space for alleviating these issues that isn't just lol infinite instances. I would reiterate that having differences between the "haves" and the "have nots" is both natural and healthy for a community. No-lifing should result in better rewards than dad-questing. If you want welfare raiding that exists in spades already. These problems have essentially only been approached from one perspective. I for one welcome MNM teams attempt to do it differently.

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This is what I have been trying to argue. You don't cater to the poopsockers, not exclusively. You can have multiple stages of end game in which the design philosophies are vary different, yet cohesive and work. It doesn't have to be Raid vs group content. We are at a point now where we can do many things outside of basic raiding and grouping. All of them put together make for a very interesting game design. Not saying MNM will do that, but you don't need to instance to cater to raiders or casuals. You can think outside the box!

Flobee said:

I would reiterate that having differences between the "haves" and the "have nots" is both natural and healthy for a community.

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And I will counter that this is only works if the "have nots" have the perception that they can become the "haves." If you remove that illusion, either by designs that allow players to lock people out of content, or randomness that prevents players from realistically engaging in content, then the "have nots" have no further reason to play. And since well ALL know the "have nots" FAR out populate the "haves" even in fully instanced games like WoW, you are going to eventually crater your own playerbase.

The argument for instancing / phasing isn't to make everyone equal. It's to provide the illusion that you COULD be equal. This works in far more than just video game development.

Flobee said:

I more or less agree with this in principal. I just think you can achieve this without instancing. Instead of equality of access you just need to create a hierarchy that allows players to climb with time invested. So long as players feel like time + effort = results they will continue to chase the carrot. My entire argument being that you can surely do this without just removing all "end-game" content from the world and making it available to everyone simultaneously. This effectively destroys what makes the poop-sockers "special" in your world.

That sense of being special and the drive to achieve that is a lot of what made classic EQ progression work IMO. In other words the problem deserves a fresh approach to solving instead of just reiterating the methods used 20 years ago.

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And now we're back to "throw more content at it". Because the ladder climb of players will ALWAYS out pace the content release of devs. Even if it takes dad-vibes a couple months to climb that ladder after the poopsockers do it in a couple weeks, you are STILL setting yourself up to have more people trying to do content than you can release. You STILL have not solved that problem in a realistic way.

Flobee said:

You have this exact problem with instancing too. You're never going to outpace players ability to consume with developers ability to produce. Thats not really an issue, at least not one that worth fussing over much. The game can be awesome and succeed wildly... while still having a portion of the playerbase "beat" current content faster than it can be churned out. People still raid on P99 man.

Plenty of room to expand what endgame is as well. Horizontal progression games like Runescape or GW1/GW2 can provide some useful examples to pad this out as appropriate. I also think from a technical standpoint this team has created a -very- efficient pipeline for creating content. I suspect they'll pump it out a lot faster than you'd expect once they're in full content mode. We'll have to wait and see if I'm right on that /shrug.

The game can exist in a space between being a flash-in-a-pan failure, and your MMO retirement home.

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Instancing relieves the problem of those who climb the ladder latter actually being able to reach to top BEFORE the next set of content being released. Otherwise, if you stratify your playerbase, as you descirbe, you again remove that illusion of "possibly equal". And you again crater your playerbase. Instancing does NOT solve the player consumation of content problem. It relieves the destruction of illusion of equality that kills MMOs.

Unless they use AI, it simply IMPOSSIBLE to create more content than ANY set of players can play through. Seriously, it's physically impossible unless your playerbase is truly 2 hour a week players. All these other "ideas" are just the same "more content" explanations that have already been countered.