Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

Gravel said:

So is their gameplay cycle even more downtime between kills?

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How else r u gonna toast marshmallows n sing koombaya around the fire man

MNM goldenage is already over. Its basically just a jew daycare for middle aged men now.

Gravel said:

So is their gameplay cycle even more downtime between kills?

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Won't know until we see what these "burst damage" changes look like. I figure after Monk and Rogue reworks it would shape up. Since those are 2 "white-damage" based classes in alpha testing so far, they will be getting some type of combat abilities more in line with the new vision.

If they don't do this, and just add burst on top of current TTK, with no other changes-- it will be accused of being a WoW clone. Which is anathema to the community.

The community will slurp up whatever change they make because this game will be even more perfect

When EQ was new, the player base was so small (and with mostly no other frame of reference) timed mobs, etc, worked. Not because it was a good system, but because the game never exploded in terms of popularity so to speak. When WoW launched, it became popular quite fast, but the only fix they had to do was mostly hardware. We all remember the opening months, where lag was so bad that when you did the animation to bend down to loot something, you kept moving in a floaty bent down position. It took months to fix that. But adding millions of players to the game didn't really impact peoples enjoyment of the game other than login queues and in game possibly crowded quest locations. But an increase in player count never limited your ability to do X content.

So, while I am not a game dev, that is the way I would look at any base system of a game. "What if the game exploded like wow?" Say suddenly a new, not thought of market, started playing for whatever reason. Suddenly your servers are chocked, it is a luxury problem for a dev, as they need to invest in hardware/servers, but they're being paid for by a massive customer base. However, once they get in, how do the number of players affect the players themselves? If a limited beta of two to three guilds can create such ridiculous drama thing as the one a few pages back in terms of world/raid spawns, then that is not a good system.

I am not saying you need to make a game that tries to cater to everyone (that would probably end up catering to noone). You can have lots of old school systems like slower leveling, no/limited maps, more focus on group play, slower group play where you sit around a camp and don't constantly move, corpse runs, trains (and not have mobs tethered). All of these are EQ like, and while for sure limiting the amount of players interested in it, the game still works so to speak no matter how many players you add to it.

There are many things EQ did that I miss from MMOs today, but a PvE world where everything is contested? That's not good design imo. You can absolutely have some things contested, and I love larger zones/dungeons where you do camp checks and see other people playing. Especially some high level areas mixed with low level areas where you suddenly get mega buffed by a 30 level higher player that runs by on the way to some dark corner of the zone. But to have all content required to "progress" contested? No. That's not something that would not cause problems if your game became a success. Unless the idea is to have very small servers, but again... 2-3 guilds are enough to cause such issues, it would be the death for any "casual" raiding guild. So they would never form, why would they?

Droigan said:

You can have lots of old school systems like slower leveling, no/limited maps, more focus on group play, slower group play where you sit around a camp and don't constantly move, corpse runs, trains (and not have mobs tethered). All of these are EQ like, and while for sure limiting the amount of players interested in it, the game still works so to speak no matter how many players you add to it.

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Exactly this.

Lately the standard talking point has moved away from the nonsensical 'maybe this game isn't for you/this is a niche game', to 'you say you want old-school systems, but then you don't want xyz'. It's now turned into 'unless you agree with us implementing every dated system from a 30 year old game, then you don't really want to play a classic era inspired MMORPG'.

You can preserve so much about a classic-feel MMO, and still remove a ton of the old warts.

Quaid said:

Exactly this.

Lately the standard talking point has moved away from the nonsensical 'maybe this game isn't for you/this is a niche game', to 'you say you want old-school systems, but then you don't want xyz'. It's now turned into 'unless you agree with us implementing every dated system from a 30 year old game, then you don't really want to play a classic era inspired MMORPG'.

You can preserve so much about a classic-feel MMO, and still remove a ton of the old warts.

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I always find it weird when self proclaimed classic MMO grognards hate on people wanting things like instances and first to engage/combat lock when those things pre-date EQ by a few years. Brad should have copied less Diku and instead studied what Sierra was doing with The Realm.

Neno said:

I always find it weird when self proclaimed classic MMO grognards hate on people wanting things like instances and first to engage/combat lock when those things pre-date EQ by a few years. Brad should have copied less Diku and instead studied what Sierra was doing with The Realm.

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You only posted that so you can be like "LOOK I KNOW ABOUT AN MMO BEFORE EQ AND UO!"

Parzival already found Halliday's egg bro

They can make open world raids that only provide rewards in some circumstances. Like the OoW epic 2.0 mobs only gave loot when the raid was performing a quest step.

But then it respawned in 15 minutes and wandered around contributing to the atmosphere. You could kill it again, but without someone on the quest you got nothing.

That doesn't have to be the solution to every issue.

Likewise you can force spawns with quests or consumable turn-ins so you can schedule content around your group instead of batphoning when something pops. Again, no instancing needed. It's in the world. You may have had to compete in a more dispersed manner for the quest steps or material farming.

I definitely agree with tags for loot. DPS racing is toxic. But you shouldn't necessarily need the tag for quest credit. If some weird goblin spawns that every halfling has to kill to please the mayor, anyone who touches it should make the mayor happy. But maybe whoever touched it first gets to touch it's lifeless nuts. I'll help that dude and go hand in my quest. Multiplayer happiness.

Agraza said:

They can make open world raids that only provide rewards in some circumstances. Like the OoW epic 2.0 mobs only gave loot when the raid was performing a quest step.

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I said this here a few months ago, i don't think the people still complaining care. They just want instances and they're just looking for whatever reason to complain.

fanaskin said:

the pvp server is totally fine 9/10's of the pop are carebears who would never look cross at you

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This is true due to what's left. It wasn't always this way.

Mid-late beta pvpers have long moved on. There is 1 or 2 guilds that attack eachother, but nobody is actively looking for pvp regardless of level range.

fanaskin said:

I've been playing since beginning may, it was that way the whole time in my experience, nobody wanted to pvp at all just level.

I pitched this server to my UO friends as a "pre trammel" sheep mixed in with wolves experience because that's exactly what it is. The only real pvper's are a handful of RP gankers and the top end guilds fighting each other, or high level necro's who can wreck entire groups solo because they want to camp a spawn for an alt and they just take it. there never was a hardcore pvp go at people everyday thing I saw from 0-50

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Random PKs weren't a thing for the most part you're right. There was a lot of faction-esque pvp (collectives of players from other pvp games) settling old scores for the first 3-4 weeks of the server, who were mostly interested in identifying who was who from where, and then catching them somewhere and killing them.

Not all of these guilds would kill random people. However, Zek, Misty Thicket Thugs, 96 Chicago Bulls, and Park Rangers were extremely active and would kill you on sight if you had a guild tag or got in their way. If you weren't tagged it was likely they'd ignore you, however all 4 of these guilds engaged in random PKing and have no policy against attacking random people if they feel like it.

The danger and threat of pvp was very real for the first month and these guilds were as aggressive as any random pk guild.

Unfortunately those days are over and the so-called "top end guilds" is really just one zerg guild that beats the fuck out of everyone else when they feel like it (and they rarely feel like it, to your point). There is no competition at 60 and it is indeed a one guild server and blue now. The pvp was fun when the guild rivalries were there. Now to your point there is no pvp of note and nothing to concern yourself with. Half the time the top guild won't even attack their "competition" and just focuses on PVE.

fanaskin said:

Im in the competitor guild and its not many people ( maybe 2 groups of people) to the zerg guild solo house and we beat them in contested fights on spawns to where they dont really contest anymore, ive heard from people on the inside they have their own turmoil while also we regularly hunt them down. The other 1/2 a guild Polar imploded because their 60 cleric is insane emo and greedy. I leveled 30-40 with the rogue at the center of it, some good drama where he gets the whale bone spear ( 2 handed spear off king giant that a rogue can backstab for huge numbers) the day after switching then hunts down everyone involved with the drama and pk"d them all was impressive.

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Smiling learning Polar from Ashes of Creation imploded. It would have been interesting if they were a wave 1 invite. Felt bad for the GMs/devs having to deal with them when its unpaid work. Was not aware the zerg was being routed like that. Also good news-- maybe enough to start playing again. Disappointed Shrouded Royals didn't hold together in the 2nd wave invites, but seems they lacked enough people who wanted to push levels.