Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

I think a lot of the big things from a high level have been covered, but I'm only able to skim -thread moves to fast. I really hope to see, from a non-systems point of view:

-Narrow windy dungeons that get tougher the deeper you go, with the best loot, with some big crazy thing at the end to raid
-First-person view fine for parts of the dungeons - not everything needs to be zoomed out to space
-Races that look how should they look based on lore - not around making all females cute and attractive and all males look like super heroes. Bearded dwarven women, fat trolls, stupid ogres please.

(Then of course a billion other things everyone else has already said)

Neric had posted this back on the FoH boards awhile back. It did a great job of illustrating the experience of EQ. Seems fitting to put it here.

Spoilered for length.

Hatorade_sl said:

Why not just attach skills to gear, the longer you use it or whatever the stronger it gets or unlocks better skills/spells. FF IX did this, made gear very meaningful. Put magic spells on robes, tank stuff on shields etc but don't limit who can use what so if you have a wizard hat and a cleric mace maybe you can haste and heal. Keep the best skills on the core pieces or make that fireball do more damage if you are in all cloth.

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Plz no, it reminds me way too much about what they are doing to EQN,... I know what they are doing is different but that is no way to use gear IMHO...

Draegan_sl said:

I've been an advocate for moving as far away from the current world design theory where you have 5x newbie 1-10 zones, 4x newbie 10-20 zones, 3x 20-30 zones, 3x 30-40 zones, and then 2x 40-50 zones and 1x 50 zone. Build a world and then populate it with POIs or areas that are dedicated to certain level ranges, but building a world based on level progression that funnels you into only certain areas is a waste of space in my opinion. I'd like a reason for all players to play in the majority of my world for the duration of their time playing, and not just 2-3 zones.

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That was what made certain zones in eq special. Having a random high level named in a newbie zone. It was even cool when you got to close to the named and went splat.

The biggest thing to get right is making a world where you feel in it. 1st person view in dungeons always made me feel right there. Stupid mechanics like leashing break that immersion.

Quaid_sl said:

Agreed. I fully intend to donate to the kickstarter, but the chances of the official forums being a better place for discussion than rerolled are pretty minimal, despite the measures you are taking.

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I do think he will get the most honest feedback here but there are plenty of posters here that think most of wow's features are the cats meow and will argue for them in any game.

shabushabu_sl said:

This is a brilliant post sir.

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Tolan_sl said:

I dig this post. You expose an important flaw in the design of modern MMO "conveniences".

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It's very true. People don't often think about design in a holistic, systems-level sense. They think of it in parts: like class design, the death penalty, dungeon design, world design, et al independently. Usually different teams are responsible for different mechanics, like a quest designer vs. a dungeon designer vs. a class designer. For these things to work well, they have to work well together. And while there is obvious communication amongst teams on a project, you can certainly notice and pick in modern games how this communication seemingly fails terribly, right on its face, because these elements seem so independent and disconnected.

There's no real utility for a speed movement buff in WoW. It's just extra filler to give a class. In EverQuest, it wasneededif you wanted to die less, and you certainly cared about dying less. The world design and the death penalty had a direct correlation to the strength of the SoW buff, and all three worked together. In WoW, nothing works together consistently because nothing has to - the design doesn't support it because it doesn't have to. It doesn't make a difference if you give a speed movement buff to a hunter, rogue, or a druid - so just give it to all three. And in the next pack, just give it to every class as a talent or whatever. There's no inherent vision (ugh) to the design, just randomly mashing parts together. Yes, there is sometimes good synergy among the classes in a raid setting, but this synergy is constantly in flux, changing from patch to patch because the designers have no idea of a holistic design over time, over the course of the product. They mash design mechanics together depending on who's in charge and what the customers or marketing groups say, and have no vision of their product themselves, which hurts the health of the game (see LFR).

I'm curious what everyone thinks about twinking or getting rid of binding equipment. It was one of my very favorite things in EQ and really helped the economy. I know that items need to leave the system, so what about items that don't boe but have a played time on them, where they eventually break and poof.

Items don't really need to leave the system if instancing isn't used. Rare spawns in EQ regulated item influx into the economy pretty well.

Abefroman_sl said:

I'm curious what everyone thinks about twinking or getting rid of binding equipment. It was one of my very favorite things in EQ and really helped the economy. I know that items need to leave the system, so what about items that don't boe but have a played time on them, where they eventually break and poof.

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fuck BOE, and fuck BOP. having ultra rare items being tradable is one of the great things that made EQ what it was. if you want to put a level cap on certain items (even though i don't like that either), i understand, but that was one of the things i REALLY hated about WoW and most modern MMO's.

Tuco_sl said:

What's ironic about MMOs is the incredible stale combat for most classes in EQ allowed people to socialize while medding, auto attacking, waiting for pulls etc. OTOH voip has overtaken text as the primary method of communication.

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To this day I still love EQ's auto attack. It still does the majority of your damage as a tank and is fun to watch procs fire! I'm so tired of fast paced twitch in everything I've played for the past 10 years.

Fizzle? are you guys fucking serious?
You want them to put in a PURPOSELY unresponsive UI, on a RNG?

no, that is stupid.

Draegan_sl said:

I've written out dev theory shit for something like this. If you want to go completely away from action combat and go full auto + situational there is an interesting way to do things that extremely similar to writing a Rift macro or a combat sequence in FF10? 9?

Essentially you have whatever amount of skills that each have a pulse or tempo rating. You have basic attacks with the tempo of 1 or 2, so they go off every 1-2 "pulses" which could be like every 1.5 seconds or something. You can then have skills like Double attack or Triple Attack that shoot off 1 or two extra attacks every "basic attack". Rogue's basic attack has a tempo of 1, and a warrior would have a tempo of 2. Weapons and gear can augment this (2H warrior would have a tempo of 3? whatever). You can even have different skill levels of Double Attack so there is a chance it fires off.

Then you can add in skills that can be weaved into your pulse system like "expose weakness" a basic attack that has a tempo of 5 that debuffs the target. You can have fire procs, pick pocket procs, slow procs, whatever. But they all have pulses associated with them.

This is some old school MUD principles right here.

You have a UI where you can craft your autoattack sequences. Which is essentially like turning on and off passives but I assume we would figure some way to make it a bit more interesting.

Like a Wizard's basic attack would be a "wand" but at some point you can upgrade your basic attack to a fireball.

Then you your class would have a few action skills like backstab, bash, kick whatever that you can throw it whenever time is appropriate during combat.

Combat then becomes more about positioning and situational awareness of firing off certain abilities.

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Just reading through this thread, about 10 pages back still. You got some pretty interesting ideas I must say. I like the idea of slowing things down and really planning out what your next in game step is.

Aradune_sl said:

What do you guys feel about a spell/ability system where you have a fixed number of slots, so even if you know 100 spells, you can only mem a few at a time. Or, do you prefer the 'as long as I have mana' I can cast what I want?

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I don't like having to pick and choose and swap out spells and/or abilities. Maybe just limit the total number of spells/abilities, period. As in, do I need 4 different spells that basically do the same thing, etc...

Mur_sl said:

For me it was more of a logical thing, (I know I shouldn't try to be logical about an MMORPG). I guess it was that all warriors in EQ were "tanks"...I'd like to see small warriors be bad tanks, but good DPS, and hard to hit. Tanks job should be to take damage...(in my mind, even if it wasn't necessarily so).

No biggie, just my preference. Guess I'd like to see more distinction with certain unique classes available for each Race, with specialized roles in groups.

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I'm kinda thinking along these lines too. That race should matter. I seem to remember playing games where you could make a ridiculous class/race combo, but you were handicapped. Or granted a stat bonus if you picked race/class combos that made sense. I guess it's more personal preference but it does tend to kill the immersion when there's a teeny tiny little MT.

Fubarbox_sl said:

Oh the painful and great memories of a chat window filled with Fizzles....please bring this back. Thats one of my major problems with modern mmo design, there is no feeling of danger anymore. I can still remember times where I was in fear of my characters life. I did things differently out of a sense of respect/fear of the game world I was in. In todays game I have nothing to fear and it really does completely change how you play the game in a negative way imho. Why should I be worried to run through a zone I have never been to at night in a modern mmo...I mean its practically daylight and if I die I will just respawn close by with an insignificant slap on the wrist...

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I remember my spells fizzling out in EQ. I thought it had to do with my skill not being high enough? I never played much, but not only did a fizzled spell cause panic, it was embarrassing! I remember grouping with some guy to work on our racial quests and my spell just fizzled and fizzled and fizzled and he tsk tsk'd me for not working on whatever skill controlled the casting of that particular spell. I felt pretty dumb.
but I don't have a problem with a low skill=fizzle system. There should be consequences! mwaha!

Let people twink.
No leashing.
Many spells in spell book, limited slots to load (10ish)
Make grouping not mandatory but much more efficient to do anything. Ie 300% exp bonus or some shit with a full group
Need consequence for dying.
Well defined classes that can not be swapped or respected on the fly
Slow everything down.
Named in newbie zones
No dyes
Make agro like this, You run buy a mob and it agros you it chases you for x distance then decides your not worth it and goes back to spawn (not on a leash). You agro and attack he chases you farther depending on hate you've created.

also

BRING BACK KITHICOR forest at NIGHT. I'm still scared of that place.

Ohh where have I seen this movie before... Might be a bigger dumpster fire since the last one except instead of smeds/microsoft money he well be using yours. Wish that thread was preserved for history sake as the same pattern is emerging hocking a Vision plus bored reformed EQ neckbeards arm chair deving pining about the EQ99 glory days with Rose Colored Glasses so thick they might as well be ashtrays. I almost feel bad not paying for this level of entertainment as Brad attempts to give the ol dirty sanchez to a community twice. fucking Bravo

With that said I wish you luck Brad only for a longshot wish all these EQ99'ers finally get there game as I understand the nostalgia from my first MMO.

Edit: Where are the fucking internets + -

K13R_sl said:

Ohh where have I seen this movie before... Might be a bigger dumpster fire since the last one except instead of smeds/microsoft money he well be using yours. Wish that thread was preserved for history sake as the same pattern is emerging hocking a Vision plus bored reformed EQ neckbeards arm chair deving pining about the EQ99 glory days with Rose Colored Glasses so thick they might as well be ashtrays. I almost feel bad not paying for this level of entertainment as Brad attempts to give the ol dirty sanchez to a community twice. fucking Bravo

With that said I wish you luck Brad only for a longshot wish all these EQ99'ers finally get there game as I understand the nostalgia from my first MMO.

Edit: Where are the fucking internets + -

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Friends don't let friends post when they're drunk.

Furious_sl said:

Well defined classes that can not be swapped orrespectedon the fly.

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That's a nice new ability I assume that's the Paladin ability, the SK ability would be "tad10 disrepects Furious for 10 damage"