Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

Flobee said:

I simply disagree with this.

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And I believe the market will agree with me. We shall see.

Edit: To be clear, you are saying that an Indie-Dev team will be able to do something that AAA studios can't do: Put out content before even casuals are able to completely consume it. Good luck.

vegetoeeVegetoee said:

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!

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You're talking about layered endgame systems with different philosophies that somehow coexist cohesively - contested, non-instanced, socially driven, varied progression paths, etc. That's ambitious. It's also something teams with 100+ developers struggle to execute.

This is a studio that takes eight months+ to finish a starter zone. Eight. Months. And we're supposed to believe they're going to build multiple parallel endgame layers that are tuned, balanced, iterated, and maintained before launch? Or even shortly after? With a mostly part-time team?

You can't simultaneously argue that, "They’re tiny and that's fine." "They don't need mass appeal." "They're just building something small and focused." And then also argue they're going to deliver a multi-tiered, cohesive, non-instanced, anti-poopsock, anti-casual, anti-meta endgame ecosystem that rivals what larger studios attempt and fail at.

You absolutely can design around poopsockers without instancing. You can use lockouts, rotating objectives, dynamic spawn systems, scaling mechanics, reward throttling, soft competition layers, etc. But every single one of those systems takes time to design, test, iterate, and police. Time is the one resource they demonstrably do not have in abundance.

"Think outside the box" only works if you have the manpower to build the thing you're imagining. And the project lead just got done telling us they need you to pay them $15/month for the next few years for the privilege of allowing them to hire the manpower. This whole conversation is exactly why I spent so much time 30 pages ago reiterating that you cannot design around a nostalgic emotional imprint and ignore the structural realities of 2026. Wanting something to feel like old EQ doesn't make it viable in the current market. Designing around emotion without designing around production realities is how you end up with burnout, content drought, and emergency pivots six months in.

But, I really look forward to the, "A REAL EQ SEQUEL JUST HASN'T BEEN TRIED YET!!!" posts in 2 years.

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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You can have things like guild targets, special mobs spawn weekly, daily for guild groups etc. You can have open world bosses lay down barriers and if you wipe outside teams can come in to claim the mob, you can have solo quests that force you to travel the world to obtain special items, titles, lands, etc. You can still do small group content raids ala EQ 2 and dungeons. You can have pvp servers with items you obtain from trophies ala WOW. I mean the list is endless and the ability to make things have sped up, provided people are full time.

Communism has failed every time it has been tried

Flobee said:

Ideally dungeon crawling isn't the only viable strategy for progress

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My group, up to level 20, spent as much time grinding outdoors as we did inside dungeons. There was always somewhere to grind good experience.

Valorath said:

My group, up to level 20, spent as much time grinding outdoors as we did inside dungeons. There was always somewhere to grind good experience.

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I keep finding more and more hidden XP camps, not so much hidden but off the beaten path.

However, they need to do something about the XP rate from that hidden Ashira camp. It's like level 4 XP in an area that's closer to 10+.

mkopec said:

Yeah thats fine when everyone is leveling up. But what happens 6 months in when most of your server pop is now fully maxxed on levels and exp is not an issue anymore? Which is what this game will evolve into eventually, finding items instead of exp.

Unless they add in some sort of AA exp type thing, which brings us back to problems with AA and the divide it causes to your population, let alone the balance issues with it. For example, do you balance new content with 300AA points as a minimum so that its still challenging to those that have 300 or so AA, or do you make it with no AA points considered and it becomes trivial to those that have the 300+AA? More population divide and more cockblocks for those that dont no life this game.

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Uhh that's the nature of games tho, content. You don't have to make empty spaces with smaller content, is what we are saying. You can integrate content into existing areas etc., etc..

mkopec said:

The problem is that youre denying the PREMIUM content. And why is this good? So the rest of the 1400 can aspire to one day do it too? that shit is bonkers thinking. I really do not understand why the use of instancing or sharding is such a no-no to you purists. Shit EQ does it today with its annual progression servers and everyone is happy. Imagine if they didnt shard the dungeons what a shit fest those prog servers would be.

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moonarchia said:

Instances are not a 'make successful' line item, but not having them is an absolute 'make unsuccessful' line item. One of the only reasons EQ is still around is because they added instances into the game. Instances serve to get rid of spawn camping, which is the underlying issue that kills games. This was something the vast majority of EQ players asked for for years. It was a mistake in their design that new games fixed, which is why they got dropped like a brick when better games came out, despite years of sunk costs from players.

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One of the biggest problem i have with modern MMOs is the focus on retention mechanics designed to take advantage of human psychology.

Daily Chores, Weekly chores, feeling like need to log in to finish the battle pass ect. This is the type of shit i don't want in a game.

There is other ways to address end game without adding these atrocious systems to the game. Just look at the 2.0s in EQ. Shorter respawn fights that are triggered as part of quest chains. You can build an end game raiding system around this concept and not have endless poop socking or instance raids, Thus not creating a loop where you log in at a specific time on a specific day to do your weekly raid chores. You can address the "Premium camps" by simply having enough of them that there isn't a "premium camp"