Basically. This game's mission statement is to be a focused experience on a smaller budget which also means a smaller development time. Anything crazy like a 5-year development time would mean really bad things for it.
Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO
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tad10
Elisha Dushku
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Yes OT/DT combat system made every class more fun also heroic leaps for monks ;-). That is probably top of my list for Pantheon.
With respect to quests - I can live with them if:
1. No forced multi-quests. Quest loot always drops of mobs, not only when you have the quest (EQ style quest loot). Backflagging multi quests was the most infuriating part of VG and LOTRO quests.
2. Avoid 10 bear ass quests.
3. And as mentioned Quest Hubs.
Holy shit I go to watch a football game and come back to 4 pages including Aradune's return.
Welcome back , very much looking forward to details and kickstarter.
Besides what else has been said by others let me add this,
Contested content is ok.
Welcome back , very much looking forward to details and kickstarter.
Besides what else has been said by others let me add this,
Contested content is ok.
As does using a modern engine like Unity, which allows you to develop and work with a prototype in months, not years like it used to be. It almost feels like cheating
tad10
Elisha Dushku
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Nice. Willing to spill the beans on whether it'll have OT/DT combat? Or if not, a rough ETA for the Kickstarter (you said Jan last month - first half of Jan? 2nd half of Jan?)As does using a modern engine like Unity, which allows you to develop and work with a prototype in months, not years like it used to be. It almost feels like cheating
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Well yeah for quests I don't think you need a quest giver > get quest objective > turn in > get next quest type of setup at all. Quests can be more integrated, you have your little journal thing and it keeps track of various things, you kill a bunch of orcs then after say 20, you find a note on one of them that explains they've been amassing weapons in some camp in the forest of whereverthefuckstupidelfishname. If you actually ran to that camp before finding the note, the first orc you kill there would open a new journal entry that says it's a bit curious there's a camp in such a remote place and you should try seeing if you can find more information, which after killing 20orcs complete first step and 2nd step at the same time advancing to 3rd step. Multiple point of entries to the questline, backward completion and shit like that, it's been done but very poorly before.
Would work fine because you wouldn't have many quests in your game, since you don't design it to level off quests. So you'd have I don't know maybe 50questlines total, so making sure you can start the questlines at different points and shit wouldn't be a whole lot of works vs most modern mmos which end up with 1500quests.
With the low amount of quests you'd have, quest hubs and collecting bear ass quests would make no sense. You might have one peasant in a town that starts the quest for you, but that's basically the only quest in the area and it's just one questline, which you could start from wherever that's pertinent to the quest anyway.
Other than that for solo content, I really liked the crafting/gathering/diplomacy(when it was the card game) systems. Crafting could be a bit less grindy and instead focus on various branches of specialization to extend time needed to complete, so you could master one aspect of your craft faster than Vanguard which was grindy as all fuck, but you'd need about as much/more time to master every aspect of a particular trade, for example weaponsmithing vs just mastering how to make swords.
tad10
Elisha Dushku
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No room for dip at release. Focus. FOCUS! That's a lot of development for what was little used by the majority of the VG crowd. But I certainly hope there's crafting - I actually didn't mind VG's crafting system with the mini-game and doing turn ins on work-orders for swag and I usually hate crafting. Though yeah, it was grindy as fuck, so I didn't get past 25 or 30 ;-) Unfortunately, given the nature of the beast I think PRotF will have to be a bit grindy or people will run through whatever content is there.
Terial
Trakanon Raider
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Awesome! Welcome back Brad! Looking forward to all of the news and updates! Having been in the game development industry i can totally understand your comment about this being the only thing you ever want to do. It's so rewarding and so much fun, yet one of the most challenging jobs I've ever had! Really looking forward to your insight and feedback.
zzeris
King Turd of Shit Hill
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Brad,
Glad to see you back. I'm also glad this is a small project. You will focus on the little things that can make this game fun to play. No need for higher end computers, massive quest chains, voice-overs, and all the fluff that is common for this genre. Just a good looking game that hopefully focuses on the world...and your interactions with it. Hopefully you will provide first person views because immersion and exploring are high on my priority list. Enjoy the combat but sub for the world.
Glad to see you back. I'm also glad this is a small project. You will focus on the little things that can make this game fun to play. No need for higher end computers, massive quest chains, voice-overs, and all the fluff that is common for this genre. Just a good looking game that hopefully focuses on the world...and your interactions with it. Hopefully you will provide first person views because immersion and exploring are high on my priority list. Enjoy the combat but sub for the world.
You can probably add Ikik to the team, too. I didn't realize that was him inthis picture. Or if it's not him, it's his doppelganger.
BilboFaggins
N00b
- 302
- 22
First off, good luck on the new game. When my brother and I met you at this years SoE Live, I could tell your heart wasn't in the right place there. You needed to be creating the next REAL Mmorpg, and thank God you took the leap to try to do that.
With that said, I have one favor to ask. The first time any game designer ore developer comes to you and suggests implementing a system where you go run through treadmill-driven dungeon instances to collect tickets that you can bring back to the prize vendor in town to buy gear... Kick him in the nuts so hard that his balls shoot out of his skull.
This instanced dungeon crap is a big part of what killed MMORPGs. We don't need prize vendors handing us the best gear in the game. If some jack ass back at town has all the best gear and he wants us to go clean dungeons in exchange for his gear, why wouldn't we just kill him and take the gear. Much easier than going to a dungeon a thousand times in a row.
I just can't stand modern MMOs. All the pathetic one-path treadmill-driven dungeons and completion tickets to take back to the prize vendor in town. So fucking stupid. If you want to make it possible to have rare spawn mobs in non-instanced dungeons that drop rare items that any class can use, you simply make the dropped item a rare craft material, and make it so you can commission a crafter to use it to make your class-specific gear. You don't need a fucking ticket vendor and instance runs.
Old EQ with non-instanced dungeons and rare spawns with rare drops and chase items was the best ever. We actually socialized and made friends in game because we weren't running all over a dungeon spamming buttons non stop. You had time to actually say stuff to the group during pulls and shit. 10000000% better than today's MMOs.
With that said, I have one favor to ask. The first time any game designer ore developer comes to you and suggests implementing a system where you go run through treadmill-driven dungeon instances to collect tickets that you can bring back to the prize vendor in town to buy gear... Kick him in the nuts so hard that his balls shoot out of his skull.
This instanced dungeon crap is a big part of what killed MMORPGs. We don't need prize vendors handing us the best gear in the game. If some jack ass back at town has all the best gear and he wants us to go clean dungeons in exchange for his gear, why wouldn't we just kill him and take the gear. Much easier than going to a dungeon a thousand times in a row.
I just can't stand modern MMOs. All the pathetic one-path treadmill-driven dungeons and completion tickets to take back to the prize vendor in town. So fucking stupid. If you want to make it possible to have rare spawn mobs in non-instanced dungeons that drop rare items that any class can use, you simply make the dropped item a rare craft material, and make it so you can commission a crafter to use it to make your class-specific gear. You don't need a fucking ticket vendor and instance runs.
Old EQ with non-instanced dungeons and rare spawns with rare drops and chase items was the best ever. We actually socialized and made friends in game because we weren't running all over a dungeon spamming buttons non stop. You had time to actually say stuff to the group during pulls and shit. 10000000% better than today's MMOs.
Welcome back, old friend. Here's to your mmog being a success - it's our only hope.As does using a modern engine like Unity, which allows you to develop and work with a prototype in months, not years like it used to be. It almost feels like cheating
(And if it isn't, you know we're brutally honest.)
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Yeah I doubt there's time for Diplomacy, but it was really a great time killer/relaxed activity for when you didn't want to level and shit. Since you play the computer exclusively and it cheats, I don't know how much care needs to go in balancing though, so it wouldn't be as bad as a real CCG, plus you probably can get away with no graphics on most of the cards. I guess this is the kind of shit that'd go as a milestone for the kickstarter though, like get more than x$, "we hire some people on the side to work on a diplomacy minigame!"
The crafting minigame was fine. Hell in FFXIV which has a similar system, crafting was extremely fun imo, even if a bit grindy. Loved the fact leveling other tradeskills gave you skills to use in the minigame too, so there was a completion/collection aspect, even if limited. Probably want to keep crafting more focused if the game is meant to have solid crafting and shit, but can use the same systems even within a single crafting. Like Weaponsmithing has Swords, Axes, Maces, Spears, Fist Weapons branches for example, and each of these come with a set of shareable usable skill so working on all of them would make you a stronger crafter than only focusing on one, but at the same time you would obviously progress slower from having to level everything, shit like that.
Anyway this is all secondary but I find these systems nice as a break from leveling. In the end though as long as the combat is good I don't really give a fuck.
Tauro
Bronze Knight of the Realm
- 371
- 26
Hmmm, thats really strange.. why would Sony register a domain for a game they dont own or distribute? Even if they helped with the legal stuff its still strange they registered it, cant be that complicated
So the involvement of Sony seems to be much deeper than i thought... will Brad distribute his game via Sony and use their infrastructure (billing/network/servers/etc)?
Oh, and wb Brad btw... good to have you post here!
Welcome back, Brad.
In reply to what other posters mentioned earlier: making the Loot interesting is one of the hardest challenges in a new MMO imo.
In Everquest, if you were an average Joe like me (not one of those players that were camping Guk within 4 weeks from release) the Loot-meta game was like this:
I just do not see that happening again, since all the above relied on several other game-mechanics that are considered player-unfriendly:
If you take one or a few of the above away, it will have a direct effect on the loot meta game. I think it all worked together in some way, with unforeseen effects, some of which were actually cool and some of which are looking cool in hindsight, with rose-colored glasses on. For instance, I was never a dungeon-dweller/grouper, so I never felt the frustration of having to share a camp with 17 other groups. I was just glad that I could buy that RTT from some guy that actually did that stuff.
I just do not see Brad's game(or any game) having the above feature list(or lack of features, like a Bazaar). I am afraid that the Loot Pinata is here to stay. Still, I wish Brad all the best and will be following his project with interest for sure.
I am still playing Everquest to this day and enjoy both the modern adaptations as well as all the old school mechanics that have survived. If there was one complaint I had to make, it would actually be that Itemization has indeed become very predictable and of the "more gooder" type. Numerous clickies and the hunt for Augments through long quests has spiced up things a bit but itemization is still the toughest nut to crack imo. Good luck with that!
Oh, and Death to *any* kind of "grind enough tokens/emblems/seals so you can buy shit from a vendor" system!
In reply to what other posters mentioned earlier: making the Loot interesting is one of the hardest challenges in a new MMO imo.
In Everquest, if you were an average Joe like me (not one of those players that were camping Guk within 4 weeks from release) the Loot-meta game was like this:
- Kill a Gnoll pup and rejoice in finding a Cloth cap on him, or a Small Pouch (2 slots, yay!);
- Contest other players for that decaying skeleton that was wielding a Cracked Staff( 20% damage upgrade for a noob, omg!);
- Try to get your hands on a magic weapon so that you could hunt Wisps once you were big enough;
- Trade your Spiked Collar (omg, uberloot, need a group) for that Giant Snake Fang, that another player had brought all the way from Freeport;
- Still having 5 empty slots by level 10, so that finding rawhide pieces in West Karana was still cool;
- Doing Menken Tabolet quests in Qeynos because the guy actually gave rewards that had like STATS on them and not just some AC. Stats like +1 Dex.....
- Finally sealing that deal with some dude in Freeport that agreed to sell you a Runed Totem Staff(dropped in Splitpaw V 1.0) for 5 PP, and agreeing with him to meet eachother halfway on the bridge in East Karana to do the handover.
- Players being split up in those that were doing dungeons (i.e. groupers that were willing to take some risk of dying) and those that preferred soloing or just slackers like me, which opened up trade possibilities: PP for the groupers, a Runed Totem Staff for me, a lonesome soloing Druid that took forever to level.
- The immense thrill of bumping into a rare wandering spawn in some outdoors zone, and getting an awesome Shield from it that I used for like 10 levels on my Druid (some NPC chick in South Karana).
I just do not see that happening again, since all the above relied on several other game-mechanics that are considered player-unfriendly:
- Slow leveling-curve;
- Low droprate of the better stuff;
- No common Market (Bazaar, tradehouse)
- Distinct Classes(favoring some for certain aspects of the game, like travel);
- Class/player interdependence;
- Dangerous travel through zone-design;
- Harsh death penalty;
- Ultra-rare mobs (as in, never seen it in 14 years of playing);
- No shared banks;
- Average players were pretty weak for quit a long time;
If you take one or a few of the above away, it will have a direct effect on the loot meta game. I think it all worked together in some way, with unforeseen effects, some of which were actually cool and some of which are looking cool in hindsight, with rose-colored glasses on. For instance, I was never a dungeon-dweller/grouper, so I never felt the frustration of having to share a camp with 17 other groups. I was just glad that I could buy that RTT from some guy that actually did that stuff.
I just do not see Brad's game(or any game) having the above feature list(or lack of features, like a Bazaar). I am afraid that the Loot Pinata is here to stay. Still, I wish Brad all the best and will be following his project with interest for sure.
I am still playing Everquest to this day and enjoy both the modern adaptations as well as all the old school mechanics that have survived. If there was one complaint I had to make, it would actually be that Itemization has indeed become very predictable and of the "more gooder" type. Numerous clickies and the hunt for Augments through long quests has spiced up things a bit but itemization is still the toughest nut to crack imo. Good luck with that!
Oh, and Death to *any* kind of "grind enough tokens/emblems/seals so you can buy shit from a vendor" system!
Quineloe
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 6,978
- 4,463
Things I think I'd like
No splitting of the player base into two RVR enemy factions.
Factions like EQ had them. That was fun.
The first few "tiers" of items players obtain should not be magical. Getting some leather, upgrading that to chainmail and upgrading that to bronze was rewarding and fun. That way, you can postpone the stat mudflation for longer, if you can't figure out a better system, which seems unlikely, since I can't either.
A low level cap, so the levels can take longer and therefore less leveling content is required.
also what I am really waiting for:
A world that is actually changing over time. That would be true next gen MMORPG
No splitting of the player base into two RVR enemy factions.
Factions like EQ had them. That was fun.
The first few "tiers" of items players obtain should not be magical. Getting some leather, upgrading that to chainmail and upgrading that to bronze was rewarding and fun. That way, you can postpone the stat mudflation for longer, if you can't figure out a better system, which seems unlikely, since I can't either.
A low level cap, so the levels can take longer and therefore less leveling content is required.
also what I am really waiting for:
A world that is actually changing over time. That would be true next gen MMORPG