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

I kinda feel bad now for raging, maybe he is a nice guy ;p

But today I'm an angry drunk, and that's exactly why I should be taking my frustrations out by decapitating some orcs and blowing up goblins with fireballs. These MMO people they aren't in the games business, they are providing a public service. They need to make another world, one that I can escape to from this one. That's more or less what EQ felt like, an alternative universe inside my monitor. As soon as you start adding an Auction Hous, LFG tool, mini map and all the other shit all over my screen, it kills that and just starts to feel like another call of duty experience. And I don't need any more games like that. I got Arkham Origins like 4 days ago and can't even be bothered to install the mofo. I spent all day pissing about making something in wordpress and even that was more emotionally satisfying than any game I've played in the past 10 years.

The answer to how to make people feel special at level one is clearly to give them enormous shoulderpads. Shoulderpads make everyone feel awesome. And particle effects. Like, giant flaming shoulderpads maybe. With a skull on them. A flaming skull.

Hopefully our industry moves past "levels" as progression.

bomb brad's email with legit questions gentlemen. can't have a bunch of people asking him how he's going to WoW the game up and give him any ideas.

boxers or briefs? srs bsns

Regarding the zoned vs seamless discussion.... it's almost as if how well it's implemented is more important than what is implemented. Pretty amazing notion, eh?

If all they can do well is zones, then they should probably have zones. That will however make me think they can't do other things very well because having to stop a player with a 'now loading' screen is kinda lame and I'm starting to really expect developers to come up with more creative ways to mask zoning than a fucking loading screen. The only difference between WoW and EQ was that WoW didn't kick you in the balls with a loading screen every time the color of grass changed, but it was still very much built like a game with zones.

To fix leashing they just need to create areas with ID tags (hell, call them zones internally for all I care). If you're a goblin living in a goblin cave, you belong in that goblin cave so want wander out of it, and if someone invades your cave you'll chase them until they're far enough outside your goblin cave you feel safe enough to stop chasing them. If you're a lion on a great plain, you'll chase someone until they're far enough out of your territory to feel safe. But the notion we need zone lines to control leashing is some head-in-the-ass thinking.

Zone lines created a natural distinction between areas, for both players and mobs, which can be great. But we should expect devs to figure out ways to take the positive effects of outdated mechanics and systems and find newer ways to create the same affects (what WoW managed to do time and again).

Basically, create a world using notions of zones in design and art and gameplay, and then work really fucking hard to mask the fact.

Agraza_sl said:

boxers or briefs? srs bsns

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"lol wats ur favorite ice queem? also voxels pls? :3 i wanna be a voxel hero day 1 cuz im special"

Schags_sl said:

Hopefully our industry moves past "levels" as progression.

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Shrug. Levels give people an easy measure of power, and I don't mind. You're level 10. You go into an area with level 15 baddies. You have a general idea what to expect, where you belong, etc. And it gives devs an easy structure to design the game around.

What would you suggest as an alternative?

popsicledeath_sl said:

Shrug. Levels give people an easy measure of power, and I don't mind. You're level 10. You go into an area with level 15 baddies. You have a general idea what to expect, where you belong, etc. And it gives devs an easy structure to design the game around.

What would you suggest as an alternative?

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Honestly I'm with you on this also. From the[email protected]/* <![CDATA[ */!function(t,e,r,n,c,a,p){try{t=document.currentScript||function(){for(t=document.getElementsByTagName('script'),e=t.length;e--if(t[e].getAttribute('data-cfhash'))return t[e]}();if(t&&(c=t.previousSibling)){p=t.parentNode;if(a=c.getAttribute('data-cfemail')){for(e='',r='0x'+a.substr(0,2)|0,n=2;a.length-n;n+=2)e+='%'+('0'+('0x'+a.substr(n,2)^r).toString(16)).slice(-2);p.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(decodeURIComponent(e)),c)}p.removeChild(t)}}catch(u){}}()/* ]]> */days to modern RPG's , I just prefer to see the lvl also. Every attempt at there are no levels means it's called a different name. TSW can scream there are no levels all it wants , but you aren't going into Dungeon X unless you are QL so and so. It's a waste of resources and time to me to come up with another cutesy name for a level. And on that note I hate level scaling. I want to come back to a low level zone and go godzilla mode at times without some silly forced scaling.

popsicledeath_sl said:

The only difference between WoW and EQ was that WoW didn't kick you in the balls with a loading screen every time the color of grass changed, but it was still very much built like a game with zones.

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Jesus christ, are you serious? A loading screen "kicked you in the balls"? WTF? If a loading screen pisses you off you have no business in this thread at all. Seriously.

gogojira_sl said:

Depends on the MMO for me. Considering the nature of this game, levels seem the right way to go.

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True enough , I get EVE's system works for it for example. It's a different environment though , and I just think that trying to break the DnD roots of the classes and overall ideas it's easier to stick with levels in something like this , especially with his likely limited resources compared to other games.

Furious_sl said:

I doubt Sony will lend any of its Tech to a former employee.

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Why not? SOE pretty much owes everything to EQ. All they had before that was Tanarus and Infantry. They would never have Star Wars Galaxies, DCUO, etc... if not for EQ.

Similarly to how Valve owes its entire empire to the guys who made Counter-Strike. If they had chosen a different engine for that mod, hardly anyone would have installed Steam.

Soygen_sl said:

Sure, but it saves millions of dollars.

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Again, cynicism never gets anything done. We would all still be in africa eating the bugs we picked out of each other's hair, if only cynics got their way. Think of all the trillions of dollars saved if we had stayed on that path. I'm sure you would love it.

Astral Projection_sl said:

Why not? SOE pretty much owes everything to EQ. All they had before that was Tanarus and Infantry. They would never have Star Wars Galaxies, DCUO, etc... if not for EQ.

Similarly to how Valve owes its entire empire to the guys who made Counter-Strike. If they had chosen a different engine for that mod, hardly anyone would have installed Steam.

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Counter-strike was not the initial draw to half life there buddy. Valve had already picked up the quake developers for Team Fortress. Every person who I knew that came from the only good online fps at the time (quake 1 & 2) did it for TFC. Most people could not run CS beta 1. It wasn't until around beta 5.2 that CS started to take off.

What set valve apart was the continued support of their product through updates and mod support. SOE got lucky with EQ and that is why everything they made after EQ was trash.

popsicledeath_sl said:

Shrug. Levels give people an easy measure of power, and I don't mind. You're level 10. You go into an area with level 15 baddies. You have a general idea what to expect, where you belong, etc. And it gives devs an easy structure to design the game around.

What would you suggest as an alternative?

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I just think so much more can be done without levels from a development side of things. We spend years creating content for a 1-50 experience that players blow through and then it's mostly never used again. Factor in the fact that you're making low to level zones for 2+ factions/starting areas and you spend all of that development time on content designed to advance a number. Content for max level players usually suffers, at least the amount provided at launch which leads to people getting bored and quitting not long after.

Levels also cause artificial barriers that help prevent players playing together. Your new buddy just started and you want him to come play with you and your friends but you can't because he's level 1 and you're already 35. Sure there are bandaids like mentoring but that is extra systems that need to be built because of levels.

You can still have progression built into the game. Stuff like having abilities, items and other forms of power boosts found out in the world where you have to find them and it's not just handed to you because your level went up by 1. Add in an AA system similar to EQ and you can still give players the feeling of character progression without them needing to level.

I don't know. I just want a well built world where from day 1 I log in and I'm sent out into a dangerous world to explore and conquer. I don't need 50 levels of grinding to get to the badass part. When I say no levels, I'm also suggesting the world be dangerous enough and your mostly grouping even in "overland zones". You're not running around doing trivial errands, you're out front at the gates where it's like stepping foot into the plane of fear for the first time. Maybe this is why I'm not allowed to be in charge of shit

But there are tons of game with zero barriers as it is. I don't want to step into the game upon character creation and be immediately a hero monster slayer baddass. I want to be fresh adventurer with a rusty sword and pointy stick forced to scrounge for a shield to fight a wolf. And have it take a while to advance on to the wolf pack. The journey from a villager scrub to a true warrior should be what this game is about and take a long damn time to do it. The attempt to remove all the barriers is what has brought us the piles of crap in the recent years.

My friend start the game when I do , or I can roll an alt and level alongside , or better yet throw some high level buffs , and twink the shit out of him EQ style and powerlevel. Don't make the game be worried about such things , design the game for the journey to be a large portion of the game.

This is all great and I dont have a problem with armchair-developing, in fact some of these ideas sound good but all I want from McQuaids game at this point is for it to follow KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Just nail the basics, nail the code, nail the classes then open it up and see what happens.

Tol_sl said:

The answer to how to make people feel special at level one is clearly to give them enormous shoulderpads. Shoulderpads make everyone feel awesome. And particle effects. Like, giant flaming shoulderpads maybe. With a skull on them. A flaming skull.

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I can see the endgame version so clearly already: an infinite tower of gigantic fucking flaming skull shoulderpads, and each and every skull is wearing gigantic fucking flaming skull shoulderpads. Nothing but fire and skulls and shoulders and pads all the way to the heavens. No other MMO could ever possibly be more hardcore than that.

He. Fucking. Roic.

Someone needs to make sure Brad knows how big of a deal gigantic heroic shoulderpads are.

Dulldain_sl said:

This is all great and I dont have a problem with armchair-developing, in fact some of these ideas sound good but all I want from McQuaids game at this point is for it to follow KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Just nail the basics, nail the code, nail the classes then open it up and see what happens.

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An excellent point. And one of the reasons I think I (and others) enjoyed EQ at it's launch.

They didn't worry about leashing mobs , trains , people throwing out level 50 chloro and rubicite twinking their lvl 1 warrior , etc because they were just concerned with getting a 3d version of a class based fantasy mmo going. The accidental things they said they didn't expect was half the damn fun of EQ. Fast forward years later, tons of dev time is spent making safety rails instead of just letting happen what happens.

A specific example I'd give, is don't worry about making every class the exact equal of every other in solo ability. If someone figured out a druid can solo better than a warrior through a combination of abilities , so be it , don't try and bland the classes down to equal mush.