f13.net

The player community has been busy sort of polling itself over 10 months, and they polled for both the PVP and NON PVP players.

Link to all surveys (http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=41561)

Gender/ Age Breakdown

Male: 96%
Female: 4%

PVE: 24-34 main age bracket
PVP: 20-24 main age bracket
RP PVP: 20-34 main age bracket

Server Choices

PVE: 31%
PVP: 37%
RP PVP: 32%

Looting

Blood Money: 37%
Partial Item+Blood Money: 38%

I know we talk about looting here. In Age of Conan they plan to use blood money as rewards for kills, and then that can be used to purchase PVP resources.

Stealing From Other Players - Reminds me of UO

In PVP Zones: 53%

Item Decay

Through Useage: 68%

Average Guild Size Breakdown - Of Guilds planning to play

0-25: 20%
26-50 players: 22%
51-75: 14%

Players Currently In A Guild Planning To Play AOC

Yes: 42%
No: 58%

Almost half the respondents belong to a pre-existing guild, which is why I continue to bitch about making games more guild friendly.

Show Previous Guild Affiliations - would be nice to know to detect moochers

Yes: 62%
No: 38%

Will you upgrade for the game?

Yes: 52%
No: 27%
Undecided: 20%

What Games (Top 5) Are You Leaving To Play AOC?

World of Warcraft: 62%
Vanguard: 14%
Guildwars: 13%
LoTR: 12%
EVE: 10

Any player community that exists before they get into a beta consists of Hardcore, guildy types that would generally skew any survey to be completely useless. They are completely misrepresentative of the genre and no one should be wasting time with such statistics.

Let's see:
14% are playing Vanguard.
62% were previously in guilds.
52% would upgrade.
68% want item decay.

I don't even want to go further, all I've got is:

:oh_i_see:

Basically, if the CRM at Funcom listens to a word these "fans" have to say, it's insta-fail time for Conan.

I'm not so sure. I skimmed over the game specific type stuff because I agree that there's no way they can really decide some of those things.

But out of the items I did list, I pretty much think that anyone who's played an MMORPG before could easily make a choice based on the information currently available. Last year not many people were willing to upgrade for DX10 games, but that's slowly beginning to change.

Look at the questions though. This is the type of survey where you can judge an entire existing fanbase and know to stay the hell away from them. How many people were surveyed if you can find that out.

I refuse to click the link. I don't want to be infected by.... that.

Who gives a fuck what the community wants? Communities are schizophrenic rabid cats. What kind of game are the devs interested in making? What are they going to contribute to the genere? Those are general questions for me, because I'm not so hyped about AOC. I mean, after the shiny of pretending to be a mostly naked Arnold shaking a sword at a grimy witch doctor wears off, what's going to be left for gameplay?

That survey is so clearly skewed the wrong way it isn't funny. Item decay fucks the casual guy hard. And who the hell claims they are going to upgrade hardware for a game that is barely in beta? The hardcore, that's who.  Interesting that there are no CoX or EQ2 players represented.

There were 9,091  individual respondents to the survey that I can tell. Again I agree with you about the game specific type of questions and that's why I didn't list those.  But most people who have played at least 1 MMORPG before could probably make a reasonably informed decision about the things I did list.

The only real thing I got out of this as a guildmaster was just a basic snapshot of the community I could potentially be a part of, where people are likely to be, the age ranges I will be recruiting from, and how much of the population is already in some sort of guild.

As a community rep I'm sure they could data mine better info from their forums about ages, etc. But at least they could see a small snapshot of the type of community they are dealing with.

lol

No, you got no such snapshot. What is at the AOC site now is not the community. It's just the freaks and geeks.

Basically, you're missing my point. This isn't "the community." Unless, you know, you think Outliers represent the community.

Looting, stealing, item decay. Interesting focus. I'm surprised that they didn't ask players whether they wanted to be kicked in the nuts repeatedly. Where are the results of the survey asking if players wanted a shallow level curve or that wanted PvP that doesn't require many more hours of PvE to maintain it? It sounds to me that they're going down the path of Shadowbane - catering to enthusiastic and hungry wolves that want a system that punishes losers even more than it rewards victors. That way lies the discovery that there are a fairly small number of such wolves, and that the sheep don't want to play with them. Oh yeah, and that the wolves don't want to be each others' sheep either and quit after the sheep have gone.

Yeah a lot of their PVP game does seem to incorporate Shadowbane concepts, but at this point no one truly knows the extent of the PVE grind or resource gathering grind.

DAOC, CoX, etc were mentioned as games people were planning to leave but they weren't the top 5 in number of responses.

God knows it is hard to give any validation to opinions that differ from your own.

Righ, who touched you the wrong way in UO/SB ? How are they catering to the 'hungry wolves' anyways? Isn't this an unofficial survey? Take a deep breath. It will be ok, just don't play it. Please.


Oh come on, if you dont think a good percentage of the player base of this game haven't been following it I think you are way off base. You think it will be people that see it in EB games, and go SWEET!? Wow burnouts are becoming more and more prevelant, and they are looking for their next shiny. The genre is larger now, and more people than just the hardcores have signed up for beta. Schild calling anybody 'the freaks and geeks' is pretty laughable anyways.

If Funcom is expecting to only draw subscribers from people following the game at this stage, they are screwed. AoC never comes up in guild or forum discussions that I see other than here at f13. That is more than 50 active MMOG players who either don't know or don't care about AoC.  None of them are PvP people so that might explain it, but that is also a major problem for Funcom.  The lack of mainstream buzz on this game surprises me. I heard more people talking about Vanguard pre-release than I do about AoC.

Slayer, I'm with you on the "oh look the wolves shit again, how passe" but your just wrong wrong wrong if you don't see that unlike with the wii, Schild is right this time.

This survey was filled out by raging mmo fanboi tards.  Who early adopt a game when all that exists is a coming soon .jpg and a forum.  They want in on the ground level so they can maximize what they seem to perceive as their influence on the game in its incubation stages.  They will on average will play all of 6 weeks before they quit to the next big thing.  Listening to your "community" before your game hits OB is fucking retarded.  This survey proves that either Funcom doesn't get it or this is just some community rep giving these dickwads something to do & nobody is going to even show these numbers to anyone who makes actual game design decisions.

Given the slow pace at which AoC has released ANYTHING resembling information, I'd go with the "This is just info to get the forum jacktards talking again."

Fuck, here it is nearly a year after the head-chopping video, and we still know shit about the game itself.  Hell, I just had to google to find out more info, because the infrequent mailing list updates haven't told me squat.

All said, their marketing is crap right now, they need to kick it up if they're anywhere near release.  Like shiz said, I don't know anyone outside of this fanatical group that knows about AoC.  That's a good 75 people I come into contact on a regular basis, some noobs some old MMO vets.  You'd think at least a few of them would have heard about it.   Then again, they don't know shit about WAR, either.

Well, the fact the NDA is still up doesn't help.

If the NDA's up, the onus is on the company itself to spread information.  Something I'm just not seeing any real effort being put into by Funcom.  Are the AOC newsletters even monthly?  I seem to recall them being quarterly, but my mail's on the other computer and it's defragging right now so I can't check.  That's really not frequent enough, imo. WAR finds enough info to release each month, no reason AOC shouldn't either if the game's going to have the depth they're talking about.

QFT. Even a monthly, "Hey, we're still working on this game we want you to buy. Here's some shiny.jpg. Enjoy!" would be better than this. Is the game awful? Horribly ugly? Never coming out? Why the :nda: even from official channels?

This is one area where EA Mythic is kicking Funcom's ass, IMO. Mythic has a marketing plan and it shows. Funcom is more like "Hey, it's been three months. Do we have any shit that ain't broke that we can show those idiots?"

November 30th Mounted Combat (http://www.lotd.org/index.php/topic,6441.0.html)

Dec 14th Gamespy Preview Update (http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/age-of-conan-hyborian-adventures/841640p1.html)

Gamespot Dec 07 Preview Update (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ageofconanhyborianadventures/news.html?sid=6184059&mode=previews)

Voodoo Extreme Dec 07 Update (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/previews/35834/Age-of-Conan-Progress-Report/p1/c1)


IGN Dec 07 Preview (http://pc.ign.com/articles/841/841709p1.html)

1UP Dec 07 Review (http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3165045)

Basically they are doing their information releases every month, keeping their beta pool small, and polishing the game.  What we are told is that in January they are going to start letting the masses in, and start doing more info dumps.

Considering that many games have let too many people in when the game was crap maybe keeping it small until shortly before release is not such a bad idea.

See, that's great if you go to Gamespot, Gamewhore, I'magamemaggivemeadvertisingdollars.com or any of the other fucking commercalized whoring spots on a regular basis.  I don't.  I sign-up to the company's mailing list so they can point me there, and that's failing.  Hard.

They're restricting themselves to the hardcore fanboys from the start, as they're the ones who seek out the information. If the company doesn't give enough of a damn to send me updates, I'm not going to take time out of my day to go looking because I've got other shit to do.  Like play games.

Wah Wah Wah.  You want them to make you a sandwich too?

Is that a joke?

Seriously, I can't tell.

Merusk is asking for a good community manager. AOC is already in beta. They should be doing, at the very least, bi-weekly newsletters. It's just that simple.

Not to mention why would you basically outsource your marketing to the gamemags? That might be fine for games like Dreamfall and The Longest Journey but this is the big leagues now. Managing perception of the game at this stage is critical and leaving that in the hands of a bunch of gaming rag flunkies doesn't seem very smart to me.

I'm not defending their community relations by any means, I'm just pointing out that regular information is being released and isn't hard to find if you are following this game.

I am not an AOC Fanb0i yet, but I do feel that this game has the potential to give us the siege warfare experience that Shadowbane couldn't.  I also like Warhammer but I dislike DAOC's current version of how keeps are captured and slip away in no time flat, so I'm watching to see how they shape up as well.

But a company who sends out a monthly newsletter full of fluff can fail to live up to expectations as well as a company that doesn't. The proof for me is when the NDA lifts, I get into a beta, or get suckered into playing a retail version.  All the reviews or newsletters in the world won't matter once I get beyond the PR hype.

Man fucking what? Another game where I have to wait 40-60 levels before I can have fun?

Maybe it's better that they don't advertise it.

P.S. I have the "potential" to get laid by a supermodel. Until it actually happens, it's also known as "bullshit".

If those first 40-60 levels play as interesting as a single-player game, more along the lines of DDO-style dungeon crawls and interesting content rather than WoW-style "kill ten rats" crap, I'm down.

I'm guessing only the first 40 levels are implemented, and that's why the lack of buzz. :drill: Agreed with not wanting to grind to the fun. 20 levels of single player bullshit ftl.

I bet those 20 levels of single player are the only ones with a worthwhile story and cohesive leveling curve + skill gain.

Conan and decent story don't go together. :uhrr: I want lamentations dammit.

The Case Against Item Loot On FFA Servers In AoC (http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?p=810142#post810142) by Axamander...worth a read but not really dispositive.

Those level breakdowns are for a normal server.  They are still working on the ruleset for the RP-PVP and PVP servers, and the last I checked the PVP servers were going to be PVP everywhere or nearly everywhere as soon as you got out of the new player 20 level stuff.

Including PVE games in his LootPVP vs NonlootPVP argument makes his numbers irrelevant. It also makes him look stupid.
Since we all know TR and AC2 are more successful than UO and AC1.

Edit. Misread something.

Wait a minute. Why was that even written? Any game that has the ability to steal off of someone after they get killed is just headed for crap city. Writing an essay on it is such....

such....

OK, it's just stupid. That's not a slight against you DarkSign. I mean, having that as a function in a game is just so unbelievably stupid.

I am all for - however, the game randomly giving you an item based on a kill. But that would be rife with grinding. People would just make high level toons and kill eachother all the time.

Anyway, bad idea. Essay unnecessary.

What was the topic about, again?

Those stats are really good to have, but they aren't in any way a picture of "who will be playing AoC," but rather a snapshot of the sort of player who commits to a beta. Nice reminder to any potential MMO developer that your beta audience might not be the same folks making the bulk of your retail sales. Although with a (probably) niche game like Conan, who knows.

I'd like to see a repeat of the same polls a year from now. That would be interesting.

I like Conan. I like Shadowbane.

But this game will still be crap, no matter who they cater to.

So says the crystal ball.

It seems they're aiming at what the Darkfall devs promised like 9 years ago.

I thought the gender statistics were unusually male-weighted.  Not that I think that women are likely to be the majority in a game based off of the lamentations of the women, but less than 1 in 20?

Also, many cases those percentages exceed or fall below 100%.

God, I almost fell into schild's item loot doesn't belong anywhere trap.

Why is it that with all the PvE shit out there, people still want (or think that) games can be made only one way correctly?

Fuck. We hear all the time: 'MMOs are all crap and they are just EQ rips yada yada yada.' Why is it then when any game comes around that has the slightest chance of even hosting a FFA / PVP heavy ruleset server people doomcast. I mean, FFS, there are plenty of whack the foozle gimme teh shiny games out there. Maybe some of us want a whack the noobie, gimme some regs, and let me take their land and ravage their women kinda game.

I'm sure AoC will fail epically but my god, if they just make another fucking WoW I'm going to lose it. Funcom have a track record of some innovation though (and horrible launches). They were the first MMO I remember playing with flying mounts, heavy use of instances, and their own RvR type fighting. Hopefully in a year I can say, well that FFA / PVP / item loot server sure didn't work out, but at least Funcom has a pair.


And for the record, if they pull off most of what Darkfall was claiming they could be in for Eve-like success or maybe a little greater (with all the WoW burnouts).

The fact that RP PVP got more than 5% shows you just how reliable these results are.

This is interesting only from a sociological perspective.

I'd tell you, but they don't let us have threads like that anymore!   :oh_i_see:

It depends on the game. In a game that has raiding for loot, allowing people to take raided items off of bodies is full of fail. Raid for a month only to be zerged by guys in crap gear and have your loot instantly stolen? No thanks.

In a game where even high-end loot is fairly attainable it might not be so bad. Doesn't sound like AOC is that game though.

(http://cache.kotaku.com/gaming/01n.jpg)

  :rock_hard:

Weird, when I read looting defeated players I thought of looting there inventory, not their equipped items. Like in, you know, Shadowbane. That was one of the mechanics that never bothered me in that game.

If that is the case it means you never carry around anything in your inventory other than cheap meds and such. Which is fine I guess, but then it makes the whole looting thing sort of a cop-out.

What exactly do you need to carry around with you in most games that isn't equipped? Meds. Everything else you can throw in your safe. In some games carrying around alternate gear sets is popular so looting inventory would probably destroy that.

The devil is always in the details. Killing people and looting their healing potions I guess is perfectly fine, but that probably isn't what the hardcore have in mind.

I disagree.




Fine.

If you want looting with huge penalties for doing so where all the new players hang out, and where you fly around fully insured  such that you can replace everything each time you die then that is all cool.

The problem isn't the victor recieving the spoils, it is the loser losing the spoils.


And as others have said, looting healing potions is cool too.

What the hardcore have in mind kills games, so they can safely be ignored.

Item loot can only be allowed when the impact of said looting is a trivial setback (at worst), therefore item loot is essentially a non-issue. You either allow it but it's effectively meaningless; or worn items are significant and therefore cannot be allowed to be looted if you want your game to succeed.

Looting backpacks is perfectly fine in Shadowbane for example.

The big game is in looting cities and Tree of Life, not backpacks, but believe me that when you kill someone it feels right to be able to look at their backpacks and eventually taking:

a) the potions and the scrolls. it's like oh nice!
b) the money they farmed until oh noes they met you. That works well in conjunction with going to grief in known leveling-farming areas.
c) the items they looted until oh noes they met you. That works well in conjunction with going to grief in known boss/drops areas.

So it may be not what some of us old UO players dream about, but it's definitely better than nothing. Works well, it is feels rewarding and you always have that thrill while looting a fallen enemy that he/she just got something big. That still happens in SB.

(Note: it didn't work in EQ2 because you just looted a random backpack/nonequipped item from enemies and it had to be non-rare. It works in SB because you loot everything non-equipped they have including money and uber-ultra rares too).

Yeah. I dont see where the epic fail is when it comes to Shadowbane thieving. The kind of people that play hardcore pvp games (pardon the H word) love that shit. It was an intense thrill for me every time I did it...and it was fun as hell.  People dont just carry meds...they carry gold, weapons, and other items when they think they can get away with it. And because the land is so spread out...they think they can get away with it all the time. So you get to steal a lot of great stuff. If you do it right, you can sit besides someone as they pay for training and take little bits at a time and they run out of money before they know it ;)

Stealing other players items in game is fine... IF the items are worth less. I.E. Eve
If you have items that are ultra rare, ala EQ1 and you can steal them... it sucks.
Maybe if they made ultra rare items soulbound? Something like that.

Wtf is with all the loot crying. AOC will use Blood Money for PVP kill loot. Blood Money will be able to be used on merchants in PVP zones to buy PVP related shit. The player loses absolutely nothing so far as we know.

I honestly don't find the server choice results too astonishing. RP-PVP is basically a modern word for "I want to PVP the with mature crowd", so the guys who go to those servers and spam stuff about sucking dicks, etc won't be tolerated there. Either way over 60% of those polled are there for PVP action, not PVE loot whoring.

Shadowbane simply has the best seige warfare out there right now, but its poor game engine can't pull it off well. I posted some videos of AOC siege stuff here a few months back, and those keep sieges look sweet.  Imagine an SB type siege with with modern graphics, and a game engine that doesn't choke with 16 people on the screen.

Will AOC be a WAR killer? No, I don't think it will but I do think it has potential to be an EVE type success. PVP players are sick of games that treat PVP as an afterthought, and games with PVP at the core (WAR/AOC) are simply more appealing to us.

As far as the percentages, in the areas I listed some add to 100% and others I just listed the choices that got the majority votes. I linked the entire set of surveys for those who really want to examine the data.

As Schild said, AOC shouldn't alter any game design based on this poll but it is an interesting snapshot of the community that is most closely following the game.

And you'd still be wrong ;)

You can loot ultra-loltastic expensive items in EVE too, it depends on the victim really.
In general, getting killed in EVE hurts a lot, but I just cannot imagine playing this game with WOW like respawn-bunny mechanics. I mean, I would be bored to death after a single day and quit for good after a week.

In your opinion.  Yet that mechanic is pretty much the mechanic of FPS games, AND most of EvE's player-base hangs out in 'safe space' because they dislike that whole mechanic.  Hell, at times EvE mechanic seem like UO without all the bitching from the PvP++ crowd.

I love how Eve basically proves so many points so easily.

1. Yes, it is possible to have item loot in a game and have it be successful.
2. Yes, it is possible to have death hurt in a game and have it be successful.
3. Yes, it is possible to have a world where you can fight anywhere (with consequences depending on where).
4. Yes, it is possible for a company to self regulate RMT (to an extent with the Time cards...what a great scam idea)
5. Yes, conquerable territory / resource control works as an endgame.
6. Yes, sandbox games rule.

I hope Funcom reiterates at least 3 of these points. My hopes are pretty low at this point, though. I'm sure they will make the same fatal flaw as all the other MMOs out there by trying to add WoW to their game. A shame....hopefully devs realize the part to take from Wow is don't release unpolished shit. Hopefully devs see from Eve how successful a 'niche' game can turn out.

To me, the item loot isn't THAT important. It just so happens that the best PVP games I have played all had it as a part of the game (UO, Eve, Shadowbane, Neocron...and even Planetside you could grab the enemy's noob hammer - lol). They also had death penalties that ranged from "Oh well, big deal" to "Fuck me that sucks!" - I liked them all. Now call me a noob and tell me how 1-6 are all wrong.

1) Accepted, because it's in a lot of MMOs. Doesn't make it a popular feature though.
2) Pretty much all MMOs have a form of death hurt, but the higher the hurt, the less popular it is with casual players.
3) It's possible, sure, but it ain't popular with all those being azzrapzored.
4) More companies should RMT for their own game.
5) It works as an endgame up until the point that one group dominates and is in a position to maintain said domination. The other competitive guilds quit the server / game and then it's left with one group in control. Time will eventually fracture that control, but the evidence isn't really there that players are happy to wait around, paying their sub fees, until that happens.
6) Sandboxes are all well and good provided there is actually a direction provided by the game. And that you have the time to learn how to play in the sandbox. Casual players - who will make up the majority of your player base if you have more than 4 figures worth of subs - are unlikely to want to spend a lot of time groping about on their own dime trying to learn the rules.

Is that the model Funcom wants to follow?

5) Eve constantly balances itself, there will never be one winner. Shadowbane did not, as they had no place to recover and rebuild.

Some of the points were just general points, I'm not sure where FC is going with AoC.


All I'm saying is devs should pick a direction. If you cater to everyone, you get shit. If you cater too much to either hardcore or casual, you get shit. They should make the game they want, if it is fun...then they will come.

5)  Eve is huge. AoC will have how many of these border keeps to fight over?

I don't know the exact number, but they will also have Towers that smaller guilds can claim as well. Sort of like a DAOC RvR zone with keeps and towers people can capture and control.

I've got nothing much to add to what Slayerik has already said except that the figures in this post (http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?p=810142#post810142) are wrong for EVE. EVE didn't peak in 2006 with 125k subscriptions, it "peaked" in November this year with 205k subs. I.e. it hasn't peaked yet, four years after release.

Player looting isn't for everyone (duh) and you can't expect WoW like success for a pvp game with player looting, but there's plenty room for niche games that cater to players who enjoy the thrill that comes with the knowledge that you can lose everything in a single fight.

From where I'm sitting you proved his point, fps games have been moving away from respawn-bunny classic deathmatch since Quake2.  Or have you not heard of Counterstrike?  Killing the same fucking person within minutes in a game where you are supposed to take the "gameworld" seriously is such a fucking massive dose of epic fail that it single handedly forced me to quit WoW while I was still enjoying the game for the most part.  I will never play beyond the free month in another MMO that does that.  I only phrase that last sentence in that way because I'm going to play a month of WAR but I am 90% sure they will go that route because Mythic gets 0 credit for not being pussies in my book.

Also if Shadowbane had ever gotten a feature they mentioned several times during beta/early release working, namely cross server travel in some form, it would have worked much better on the nobody can win everything front.  But they didn't & many servers had one beta guild that dominated the early game hard, which only compounded all the other issues the game itself had.

**

@Slayer:  I'm afraid you can't have EVE's hardcore pvp+ features without a sandbox gameworld.  SB was clearly not sandbox/big enough to handle them and I have fucking no reason to think that AoC will have a bigger more sandboxy world.  I would hope therefore that AoC focuses on taking DAOC's keep system and making it less retarded (more meaningful) also having monsters attack player cities in a meaningful way would be win.  Because if they try to use EVE/SB pvp+ mechanics they are going to crash and fucking burn.  Remember though that AO had EVE style sec status zones before EVE did.  So hopefully they go with that again and the endgame takes place in open pvp warzones with lots of capturable points, resource nodes and whatever else.  Doubt it but that may be the best case scenario.

**

Final thought:  Is anyone else utterly depressed by the class descriptions they have released?  They completely lack any kind of soul and sound so fucking vanilla-boring that it hurts.  I've completely stopped reading their releases because the classes sounded so fucking shitty.  I mean Fixer, Bureaucrat, Adventurer, Martial Artist, Agent, those just sounded cool from the word go.  Scifi > fantasy but really it I've never been so un-intrigued by a new set of classes.  Could just be MMO fatigue but I got a hardon reading about Black Orcs awhile back.

See, the thing is eve doesn't cater to it.  It ALLOWS it, but that is different from catering to it.  If they catered to it, and full-on pvp they'd turn-off Concord.

Eve shows you can have full-on pvp that coexsists with a pve game if you're not stupid about it.  Most devs have been pretty stupid about it, including Blizzard.

No, I've never played CS. I didn't own Half Life and CS seemed even less interesting. TF2 is the last competitive FPS I played.  It has respawn-bunny mechanics and folks seem to enjoy it plenty over CS. Prior to that, it was America's Army.  No respawn at all, but the matches rarely lasted more than 3 minutes, so yes, you were killing the same people again on the same map in less than 5 minutes.  Again, folks seemed to enjoy that plenty.

Your problem is trying to see it as a world, rather than a game. Virtual worlds suck, let's have more games.

Eve caters quite well to the PVP+ crowd. They allow us to make the most isk / hour (well, at least easily). They also nerf things like Low Sec motherships to find a good balance. Why would they get rid of Concord? A very large part of the game is being able to go back to empire and rebuild, exactly what SB did wrong. I don't think anyone, even wacky ole me, would like an absolute full, unrestriced PVP game. Hell, my all time favorite had insta kill guards in town.

Hoax: You are probably right. Some of my points are just general observations that a PVP+, item looting, resource/land based endgame can work. Sandbox or no. Is everything either Diku or sandbox then?

Why do people think AOC will fail?  Because of Funcom's past?  I think this game will out perform WAR.  I think WAR will defeat itself when the hype train crashes and derails.

I'm waiting for an EVE like game in a fantasy setting.

Two things, first to finish off the FPS tangent because I like having the last word  :grin: Quake 1 & 2 had Deathmatch, UT for me used to be all about Deathmatch, HL1 had Deathmatch, literally at times you would die as you spawned the action was so constant and death was everywhere.  It was mindless pure twitch killing.  To me, that is respawn-bunny fps.  A game like TF2 where I have to wait upwards of 10 seconds + run across the map to get to the action is quite a far cry from those days, hell TFC was hectic nade spam and utterly ridiculous to watch compared to TF2.  That is what I meant by they have been moving away.

Onto the more important comment though which is actually important to the topic at hand, frankly to any deep thoughts about MMO's in general.  Lets have more games you say, fine thats a valid way of looking at it.  But I say why fucking bother with MMO's if all you want is a game.  WoW is a game, everything that makes it such a shallow experience is because it is a game.  EVE is half virtual world (the sandbox elements, the players-as-content mechanics and the freedom given to the playerbase) but the world itself is still very much a gameworld (static meaningless foozle spawns of roids and npc rats) not a truly virtual gameworld as I imagine the medium moving towards.

Let me get back to the point, Haemish has envisioned the ultimate MMO-as-a-game experience.  A hub of a variety of game experiences where your avatar can move from a shoot-em-up western to a samurai sword duel to a platformer to a fps to a galactic conquest rts.  Whatever or however that would work.  Sounds cool.  Sounds like a 3d-web as a game type of thing.

I envision true virtual gameworlds, that exist purely as non-static backdrops to the stories players themselves create.  The world itself is not a gameplay experience, just a diorama for the gameplay experience the players create for eachother.  Virtual world shit.  Sandbox shit.  The type of daydreaming people seem to associate with Raph.  I imagine the next major step in MMO's will be removing the fields of static npc spawns that exist only to feed the players desire for loot and xp and replacing them with fields where the player might be ATTACKED by hostile npc's.  Dangerous npc's.  Where the world itself is attempting to kill the players.  Perhaps GM's guiding the attacks of monster/alien hordes against player built settlements whatever.  Obviously the tech might not be there yet.  Clearly the vision and competence on the part of game devs isn't there because these fucks can't seem to tie their own shoes without breaking shit half the time.

Both could be awesome, both take the whole concept in different directions.  Neither is wrong is it?  So far though instead of creating a massive hub of minigames that ties together somehow.  People keep making fantasy worlds, with lore and a variety of landscapes and npc's who are supposed to matter to the players.  But then they make them games.  Instead of worlds, games where the king of ironforge respawns if he dies, where nothing changes no matter how many people kill 10,000 scorge villians in the barrowlands.  Games where you never win, the bad guy never loses and you just sit around grinding your xp bar and your ep33n size via phat lewts.  Which always puzzles me.  For me its so clear that creating a game on rails where you can't do any of the cool things you see in a SP experience like GoW, the good FF's, <insert SP games on your top20 list here> because having so many people around breaks the single player experiences.  Instead we get the online equivalent of the worst kind of PnP campaigns.  Where every play session the DM sends the party into a series of fights with little or no explanation and after beating the "final" monster everyone gets X rolls on the loot generation table...

Fucking weaksauce.

I'm tired of it.  Call it Diku, just to give it a name, but it fucking sucks.  No matter what I feel that people who buy into the anti-sandbox logic are dooming us to more also-ran boring as paint drying shit MMO experiences.  Every one I start up gets old faster then the last one.  My tolerance for these shit fucking mechanics: going from quest npc to quest npc, from field of foozles to field of foozles is fucking running out.  That's where I'm coming from.  Not everyone comes from there, I do get that.  But I think as time passes more and more people will.  I have to believe that because if the sandbox people remain a niche of a niche we're never going to get anything shiney and cool.

Sorry, didn't mean to write a book so I'll stfu in a second.


No, its not that absolute, but right now game devs seem incapable of creating a game (versus a world aka sandbox) that isn't Diku.  Because they are retarded or too distracted by money falling from the sky to notice how fundamentally meh the gameplay experience they are emulating over and over is.

P.S.  Apologies in advance if I killed this thread, usually when I write something this long nobody wants to read it because probably my writing sucks & half the time its hard to get what I'm saying.  So yeah, my bad.

I think people are forgetting that general corpse looting actually made UO more casual-friendly.

Nobody carried equipment that couldn't be easily replaced, because it was just a matter of time until you lost it.

Therefore, PvP was more about skill (and luck) than about how much hundreds of hours you'd spent farming purple items. A two-week old character had a fighting chance against a two-year old character.

I don't know how we got this crazy idea that corpse looting has to be a super hard-core mechanic.

Agree.

I don't know whether designers are unable to think outside the WoW box or whether companies are too scared to take a risk on a different type of game when there are money hats to be had.

@Hoax: Well, due to your diatribe I have been sitting in my cube for the last 30 minutes brainstorming on how to make a fun PVP MMO. I'm pretty bad at writing them out though. Maybe, just maybe, a dev will be inspired the same way. Because FFS this genre needs some new ideas/gameplay.

And yes, these days I DON'T EVEN WANNA BETA SHIT. 7 years ago I'd give my left nut to try out a new MMO.

Maybe something where a guild/ alliance can hire Mercs to attack/defend certain cities.

Normal PCs sign up at a tavern or something, and when this guild leader has hired all the mercs he needs, you are prompted to teleport to his Castle. He then either defends or raids his enemy. Since said leader is making money from holding and taxing his land, making money from PCs mining (and in turn paying them), this would be a worthwhile investment. And fun to do.

I picture when the mercs are transported, they appear in an armory with a selection of weapons and armor. (this would not be available unless the guild built an armory or if it was already there). Almost like Gladiator as they are walking through and picking out what to use. Higher level armory, the better the weapons/armor.

This would be the first step for getting noobs into the GvG side of things. If you live you get to keep some nice weapons and armor. If you die, whoever holds the field gets the loot. Equipment similar to GM crafted stuff in UO would be fairly easy to come by. If you live you get a larger share for the kills and whatnot.

This could also be using in a type of faction sense. Maybe the Guildmaster wants respect from the Dilrod NPC tribe. So he gets a raiding party together to attack a small Mustafa town, Mustafa being a hated faction of the Dilrods. This creates player raids on NPC towns, on the other side players in the Mustafa faction gain rep by defending these attacks. If more people knew the strange Neocron system I would say it would resemble that kinda. Sure, there are holes in this type of setup but I could see myself having a lot of fun in a skill based (no levels). maybe just have a set of skills that can train offline (eve steal) and some you can gain through PVPing/town/keep/dungeon fights.

Just wanted to speak to this particular point. This is something I've envisoned for years (like a lot of people). It's either a function of technology (when should the computer attack a player-run city) or a function of money (getting hired GMs to play the npc's).

To slip into game design for a sec, I always thought it would be a 3 part system:

• GMs get an RTS-=style system where they can control multiple mobs from an omniscient point of view, directing spawns, attacks, and changing npc attributes & aggression level
• GMs can jump into any single NPC and play them as they would a character
• Each server has a storyline - so that use of the above systems fit into an arc or at the very least are responsive to what's going on on the server.

Of course to have even 20 people playing 24/7/52 would take a lot of money...but a game with WoW's level of success could fund something like this. Some people might even pay more for such an experience. /flashback to EQ Legends server...hmmm...well maybe.

Well, it's bitten a few of them in the ass. (SWG, AA, E&B, etc...) And it may continue to bite buttock on AOC, WAR and STO, if they're not careful.

I can't see this working. It's not the technology or the budget constrints but a simple community issue. If players build somethign up using player abilities and player systems and it then gets taken away by a GM controlled character, most players are going to be pretty pissed. Like quitting the game pissed.

Back in the day we used to run special events in DAoC. Scripted, one night only adventures that told a fairly basic story and took a bunch of players on a cool little adventure. Many players suggested that we should do RvR events where a GM controlled character led a raid on a relic or something. We had to keep explaining that it was a terrible idea because we'd never hear the end of the whining if we did that. To prevent complaints on an epic scale, all abilities of a GM controlled character would have to be transparent and predictable - at which point you may as well write a funky script and let the game AI run it.

Neither Eve, Shadowbane or UO have an end-game centered around raiding for loot. It sounds like AOC does. That is why looting dead bodies is such a poor idea, unless the only things you can loot are rather meaningless in which case it's acceptable but mostly doesn't matter.

As far as RP-PVP, realistically speaking only 5% of the playing population is going to play on RP-PVP servers. The fact that it is a popular option in the poll means the poll is not a reflection of reality.

Darksign, IainC:
Give the control to the players. Marginalize npc controlled npcs to some fauna and occasional world catacylsm events, but let the players have their own npcs, with highly scriptable behaviour and rich advancement scheme.



I had this dream for looong time: Early medieval world with orcs and technology, where players design and do everything. They fight monsters, they can train soldiers (and have them learn whole tactical maneuvers via scripting), they build guild settlements (from a small palisade in middle of wilderness, to hidden cave hideout to ginormous medieval city 2km in diamater), and advance the technology. By build I mean organize materials, know-how, train workers (building entire city by yourself is always possible, but time consuming) and most importantly design the whole thing like they do in Second Life. World they can establish villages, defend or raid them, where entire kingdoms are player built, goverened and fought over. World where every player lead bandit group would attack with unique strategy and tactics, where every stronghold would have unique and unexpected trap system, where every part of "civilsation" would be either player governed, player built or be the player themselves.
Of course, there would be still place for EVE style NPC kingdoms and orc invasions to keep players busy.

Essentially - marry EVE with SL, but extending SL's customization from just building NPC tactics and technology advances.

Pretty much. The few times event team in EVE did something like attack player-controlled structures there was streams of tears all over the forum how it's "unfair" some folks with magically spawned stuff dared to inflict loses on players, and how they just all should fuck off and leave players alone.

That of course running back to back with complaints how the devs never take time to run events for the players....  :awesome_for_real:

Well fuck them. I've never been interested in GM run events like that. And the inherent unfairness of that kind of stuff. (GM events in EQ being about splattering characters...)

On RP in EVE:
I distinctly remember when developers tried to do RP in CA-controlled space. Event team was podded so fast that even GM commands wouldn't keep them alive (afaik command to restore hp was long and EVE always sucked in chat UI department). It ended with streams of tears on ISD side with them promising they would never ever do any RP events for us meanies.  :awesome_for_real: And they never did: npc empire got kicked out by player run alliance.

Real problem with GM controlled npcs is sheer level of corruption it causes in competitive game. It forced CCP to create Internal Affairs department and eventually close down volunteer teams.

Well they did hire RP Event staff from within the player base.  That's just asking for trouble; especially when you're giving away supercapitals and the like when very few currently existed in the game.

I didn't really mean that the devs would take over PC assets en masse, merely playing NPCs...but with better AI. I could see why you got that from my post though. And really if you think about it, as long as you didnt grief them by overusing your powers...and played them within the reasonable parameters that computer NPCs operated...there'd not be much difference...except a better combat experience.

I dunno. I don't play PvE to be challenged. (Narf, I said it.) Not specifically to be challenged. But to see what the mob AI is going to do. I'm more impressed with a neat scripted combat routine with lots of gee-whiz special effects than a mob with lots of hps and dps stomping me into the ground.
A GM running a mob will usually only be able to target and follow me more intelligently than an AI script. Meh.

In a WoW style game where players invest months/years of their lives in their characters or whatever they have built then I would agree with you. In a game where building a character or building up some personal slice of the virtual world is relatively fast then the loss is not so great.

Picture a game where your guild spends a week or two building up a virtual keep or city and then spends the next 3 months defending it from various PvE and PvP sieges. If eventually it gets destroyed I don't think many would be too upset as long as there is an opportunity to rebuild.

Or conversely they might just decide that they don't want to rebuild because whatever they do will get taken away from them by a super-powered GM character* eventually. If your game revolves around (or is at least heavily focussed towards) players building up their own little hegomonies then you might just have killed your game dead.

*It's not necessary for the GM characters to actually be super powered. They might in fact be weaker than an equivalent player character but as long as they have any link to the GMs then the assumption will always be that they are super powered uber characters.

Case in point: Wolfpack dressing up as Morloch, allying with all of our enemies, equipping them with badass mercs, and then completely burning my city to the ground.

Was fun actually, but I was finished after that.

I agree that when it is a GM then there will be a fine line to walk to make sure there is no question of fairness of even the appearance of impropriety. It may not work strictly for those reasons.

I would argue that people can handle losing. If it is a fair "game" then people will build back up and seek to get better for the next attempt.

How many want permadeath?  :oh_i_see:

How much do you want to bet?  :grin:

Look, if they can't make a single player action game that's fun, there's just no chance for them.

You might also ask who is willing to go through the 80 levels, even if they are fun. I know i stopped caring about this game once i saw the number.

The next step is actually getting players to give a crap about that level of immersion.

I would love something like this. I've long felt these worlds don't need NPCs at all, just go open PvP throughout, removing DIKU, levels, and classes as well. Go entirely skills-based where your control scheme is semi-twitch FPS and your "skills" augment damage output/absorption and other stat-able things, without going to far. TF2 with persistence, and unlockable abilities.

But the problems are two-fold:

• Design is hard. I mean true get-down conceptual rethink design here. It's because it can't be measured during the process, everyone blames you for stalling the beginning of development (which can be measured), and you don't really know if you're right until the very end of the process when the game is for sale. The budgets are bigger and bigger, and the sources for these budgets like their precedence.
  
• Players don't want this level of immersion. Us early-adopter SOE-slapping geeks are not the majority anymore. "Casual" is perceived as ding/gratz/loot, and it is a competitive advantage to do so prettier/faster/better. We're either headed down the path of the Koreans here, with monthly MMOs glutted and wasteland-d, or there's just going to be fewer games.

Eve is big, but only because WoW is ginormous. It's a percentages thing unfortunately. Being all by itself in what it is and does, Eve does not stand as good example for what "Devs should do". It's as much an anamoly as the 9mil+/$75mil WoW.

So what we need is another indie game to come outta nowhere, maybe have a gamer-centric IP or maybe not (sci-fi is still wide-open here) spend a year or two gaining steam, and be ripping players away from the DIKU-of-the-month club at a pace just enough to get some new thinking put into Starcraft MMO  :drill:

Sounds like you want to play FURY...which I hear is going down in a flame of glory. Start at the top level, semi-twitch, skills and powers to be chosen...full PvP only.


I think a lot of players would like NPCs were more active instead of being dumb-terminals. Go to any MMO forum board and you'll hear players balking for it. Even the 10 year olds.


I agree with that. Most players want a challenge...even if it's an FPS. The poster above that said they "don't play PvE to be challenged" may have people on his side, but I don't think (well at least I hope) he's in the majority.  I know that most of the guildies I've fought beside would love for PvE to be more intelligent and more challenging. If you had someone paid to play mobs and they could target a healer or use more advanced playing skills (more advanced than regular AI)...I believe most would enjoy that more than spawn, kill dumb mob, spawn, kill dumb mob ad nauseum.

Well, let's take WoW PvP for an example of players replacing AI. After the shiny of fighting in the battlegrounds wore off, I found it to be just as boring as the current PvE paradigm. And I generally like PvP.

I would not mind PvE encounters being more interesting, but I don't necessarily equate that to challenging.

DarkSign, Fury isn't an MMO in all but the loosest of senses. It's WoW battlegrounds without the PVE. It's not a world at all, and is completely lacking in persistence.

The history of PvE in MMOs is calling you a liar. If you look at the most popular activities in PvE, it generally involves finding the mob that gives the best reward for the easiest fight. We don't as a rule want to work hard, we want shinies to flow in with the minimum effort on our part.

There are individuals who like to be challenged and try to find new ways to do difficult encounters with the fewest possible number of players, but in the main we want to grind on xp_mob_01 while complaining that PvE blows cos it's boring.

I want the combat to be a part of a world. Think TF2 meets UO, where the combat is alongside an array of other things to do.

Fury was just an twitchy Battlegrounds game with character advancement. I have COD4 for that need :-)

If the grind didn't take so damn long, you'd find people willing to take plenty of challenges.   You're using the old 'bottmfeeder' anti-pvp argument as an anti-pve argument. New twist there, but it's still a lame argument.

See, this is what I see so many of you asking for and I want no part of.  It's a bigger time waste than the MMOs you currently bitch about. I'm here to have fun, and I'm goal-oriented. Virtual worlds require so much more time that it's a second life.  Fuck that, honestly, it's tiring enough to work things out in reality I don't need some second reality that consumes just as many hours to do meaningless shit.  Yeah, I play my MMO du-jour a lot (whatever game that may be.) but the difference is I don't feel like I'm missing anything if I'm not playing.   Virtual worlds to date?  "Oh shit, I have to login and check if resources have shifted.  I have to check my vendor, I have to check my house, I have to see if xyz is dealing with <drama point of the week>"

Really, fuck it, I don't need that or the 'stories players create.'  Doesn't interest me at all.  It did when I was younger and had a ton of time, but nowadays I realize why and don't need it.

Here's the other thing.  In a virtual world of the type you describe, enjoy being a refugee or peasant struggling to survive.  The game world is there 24/7, always moving just like the real one.  Take time away from it and you'll find yourself not just linearly, but exponentially behind the curve on info, shifting alliances, whatever.   Just like in full-on PvP games, he who logs-in longest wins.  You're handing your world back to the no-lifers you all bitch about once again.

What makes you think that? If it's nothing but the time spent on levelling that makes people go the fastest route, then if this time was made shorter, taking challenges would slow the progress back again. So why would they suddenly be willing to slow down their progress when they have zero interest in slow progress as it is?

I still reject the 2 arguments you people are making:

• people want boring PvE experiences
• PvP isnt more interesting than PvE

Go to any forum about MMOs - e.g. MMORPG.com, GuildCafe, clan boards - you'll see one of the biggest complaints is that NPCs are dumb terminals and camping static spawns is unchallenging. Players expect more from MMOs these days.


I dont disagree with that in some respects, but that behavior by many (of course there are some that were like that from the start) is the result of a boring, challenging game. They want to do the least possible to get to the powerful parts that are...wait for it...wait for it...FUN.  Make the lower levels more fun - more challenging, exciting etc. - and players would be happier. NO ONE wants to play whack-a-mole with only one button to push to kill all mobs on the server, do they? Of course not.

Go read the Tabula Rasa thread. Look at the comments about the PvE experience. Or almost any discussion on level grinding where people repeat the mantra "if the grind were more fun, I might be into it."  Sure there are those that want the path of least resistance, but there are a lot of people who'd take fun over easy in the gaming world.  And Im not even talking about insanely hard challenges...just less boring battles.


So you've listed a specific example of where PvP doesnt work to prove that all PvP, which you admit you generally like, doesnt work? That makes no sense. WoW battlegrounds wasnt what I was talking about. I still think that if less predictable, more sophisticated mob combat came about through human actors players would enjoy the more "lifelike" combat.

And so there is a line in the middle. The ones that want to get rid of the grind and the ones that want to make the grind "fun." The latter, of course, seem to think there's only one way to make MMOGs while the former seem to think there's a way to completely redefine the standard issue MMOG (while offering up no improvements, of course).

I wonder which one will meet their goal first.

I think the problem here is that players don't really know what they want, or like.  They think they do, but for example witnesseth the NGE: SOE changed the game to what they thought the players were asking for, but it was a total disaster.


My bold prediction is that people will only like more "challenging" or "lifelike" encounters if they win over 50% of the time, and probably closer to 100%.  It's a pretty small percent of the population that enjoys being killed unpredictably at a random time and in a way that they don't feel they know how to handle.  The sophisticated mob content would have to either scale with the skill level of the player (and how do you calculate that?) or be of a low enough challenge level that the panicked keyboard turner types could handle it, which would of course leave more-skilled players wanting more.  Sounds a lot like the current situation!


I'll leave you with an example from real life (this weekend). I was working on soloing some quests* in a lowbie zone of WoW.  Each of them were close to the top of the content for this area, and entailed fighting my way into a heavily guarded area and using all my abilities, playing at the top of my game, to beat this encounter.  For the one, I had to take about 10 minutes to fight my way up and take on three mobs at the same time.  Consistently I heard from other people "those quests are just annoying", "are the rewards worth it?", "you don't have to do those, just drop them or find a group".  The interesting part was that everyone thought they were too much trouble, too challenging, even though there's no functional difference between them and say, a progression raid.  I wiped a few times until I learned the encounter, then had to execute flawlessly.  The only difference was that I was solo.



*for those familiar with them, it was the Pyrewood Village and Thule (Fenris Isle) areas of Silverpine.

If you did that for personal challenge or fun then you win. I've done those same quests a couple times and had fun myself. If you are trying to exp to max level as quickly as possible then everyone that told you "It's not worth it" is correct. The exp gain for the difficulty is not worth it.

For most people leveling up in WoW is a hurdle in getting to where they want to be, ie. arenas, raiding with guildies/friends. They will seek to get to where they want as fast as possible.

People will always take the path of least resistance to acheive the goals they set. That doesn't in any way mean that decreasing the resistance=increasing the fun.

But would dying more often make it "more fun" for these people? After all this is what more challenge leads to, more people finding more frequently they don't have skill it takes to cope with presented situation. At which point the crying starts to make it easier and then it's back to "no challenge, boring". Rinse, repeat.

Personally i don't buy the "if it was fun i might be into it" argument. Players chose to call it grind because it's monotonous routine, the same old one does to see progress bar crawl across the screen. If it can be fun and not monotonous, then it's simply not grind anymore. Hence no one 'might be into grind'... save maybe the few who'd consider it fun to have midget stab them in the cock on 15% of encounters with 5% odds to crit.

So we're stuck with boring but easily beatable as our win condition for fun? wow. I guess MMOs are doomed to suckage. Perhaps there's a smaller group that would enjoy/support an MMO that's not like that.

How about both? Can't we have both, please?  Challenging fights that you only have to do 10-12 times at most to "ding" (avoiding the whole why have hps/ levels/ etc discussion because ALL games have it, yes even the "skill-system" ones.)

I think this is a key aspect, and one that the "increase the challenge" argument doesn't take into account.  If this increased challenge stands between the player and where they want to be, for whatever reason (OCD, high level friends, no interest in PvE/leveling, etc) then it will be strikingly less fun given their objective, even if the activity itself is more fun. 

edit: for the record, I don't think that "most people" in WoW hate leveling, or consider it just a hurdle to the "real" game.  I know several people personally who never stay 70 for long before they start leveling another alt.  I may be one myself  :ye_gods:


I don't think MMOGs are doomed to suckage, they're just doomed to be MMOGs.  Someone will innovate, but probably not in the direction we're thinking about here.  They won't get harder, but they might get more interesting along some other axis.  One can hope.

Oh, I completely hope so.

I want a game with all fun. Thats right, all fun!

Jeez, its not too much to ask is it? Make me a game thats all fun and no suck!!! This isn't rocket science people! I mean, why do MMOs even have suck in them? Do they add it? I guess they do. Rep grinds, mob grinds for xp, PVP grinds for rewards....

So whats the answer? Play singleplayer game (EDIT) or online FPS if you want fun. If you want suck with fun mixed in, play MMOs.

Whats the real answer? After 10+ years of MMOs I look back and think...jesus we're going backwards. The best MMOs were games from the infancy of the genre. Subspace. "Meet People From Around The World, Then Kill Them" was their slogan. Can we get back to that kinda attitude? UO was alive, fun, competitve, basically had things for all types of players (from great housing system to great PVP). Fucking Tradewars kicks the shit out of most the stuff out today.

Please just go back and look at what made games fun. Look at shit like star control 2. Combine it with Tradewars and subspace...talk about a fun fuckin MMO. STEAL SHIT THAT IS PROVEN FUN SYSTEMS!

The company that figures it out will be able to shit cash at near Blizzard levels.

RPG combat is too deteministic.  If you jack up the difficulty, all you have done is increase the number of times the players die.  Every battle shouldn't be a tooth and nail struggle.

One of the reasons I think people like raids is because of puzzle aspect of it.  The single player and group game lacks that puzzle angle. So if I was going to fix the grind  I am going to look at ways to bring puzzles to all levels of the game.  Also you need a good way to explain the puzzle to the players so that they can take advantage of it.

I'd probably like it personally, but how making the fight "challenging" prevents the whole experience from becoming just as repetitive as the current "grind" 50 fights in the game? To further complicate the issue, at this number of fights you're looking for encounters lasting 5-15 mins each if the games were to retain their progress speed... this is, ironically enough, almost exact opposite of the "token fun game" that's supposedly FPS where the fights are furious and outcomes decided in matter of few seconds* 90% of time.

*) at which point you either move on to next fight or hit quick load/respawn button and are back in action almost immediately. Again noticeably different from the "you'll take the durability hit, do corpse run and like it, maggot" MMO take on it.

I've said this many times. My wife play the HELL out of some adventure games. If you brought the interactivity of an Adventure Company (tm) game, with dials, dialog trees, puzzles and such...that would be a great way to make quests better. Of course time (and therefore) money goes into the development of these deeper quests...but there you go...a new direction for MMOs.

I call bullshit on that. Your comment seems to assume two things a) that difficulty cant = fun  b) some arbitrary definition of difficulty that sounds more like it means "too hard for players to figure out and is really just an auto-machine gun turret that insta-kills players" At least that's how it sounds to me.  If you've ever played a PvP game with a guild and felt the difference between an opposing guild that you pwnd vs. an opposing guild that really gave you a run for your money...you'd know that there's a lot of satisfaction in a well-fought battle. Just the same with PvE - if you hit ~ and type /godmode=on, there's a difference in that and beating say, Crysis, with no walkthrough, cheats, and get satisfaction out of scraping yourself to a win. Perhaps that's the problem. Not enough people remember or appreciate the satisfaction of throwing yourself into a game and winning.

The response to that argument of course is.."I play games for fun, not to have another job." Or in other words, hard can be too hard to be fun. I get that. So the solution lays somewhere in the middle for those of us who dont just want to hit one button 4 teh win.

DS, the problem is that half the time, you throw yourself against a good guild who gives you a run for your money and DON'T come out on top. Which means that while you have more fun when you win, you die more often.

An easy fix to current MMOs to make players tackle more challenging content would be to increase the Xp from doing higher con content, so that the "fastest" path to max level isn't the path of least resistance, at least not for a skilled player.

I see what you're saying...the harder the mob is for you the more xp you get...instead of a set amt of xp regardless of con.  I'd like that...and I think the min-maxers would too. But let's not lose focus on why I even brought up difficulty in the first place - I was arguing that GM controlled mobs would be better than the ai mobs that don't fight as intelligently. Perhaps you'd get more experience for fighting such mobs...although in the way I envision it you wouldnt be sure that's who you were fighting...and figure it out from the xp perhaps.

The problem with GM controlled mobs is a question of scale. How many GMs can control how many mobs for how many players? Don't get me wrong, it would be great in a niche game, but something going for mass appeal it's just not doable. If you want to derail further into GM event viability, we can.

Most of you are still stuck in polishing what is, when the problem (if you see it as a problem) is much deeper.

First, RPGs. Yes, deterministic. But more than that, it's all about you. There's stuff an single or squad-based RPG can do to the world for you that no persistent environment ever could, because all those changes would either be entirely instantiated (the defunct Mythica) or the realm of the 24/7/365 players who got their first. And because the entire world and narrative is about making you a hero, they can afford to compromise on some things, like, ya know, fun combat.

Second, the system of progressive XP. Your abilities are locked behind time behind levels behind XP in games where the only thing you can change is your character. The entire world is designed as gates to your character's customization. It's like slot machines in a casino. You hope to try and find the good pay-out ones, but the act of getting the money is the same exact action over and over. And because the "fun" from winning is so deep-rooted, you dare not muck with the mechanism of delivery too much. Slot machines and mobs, it's the same stuff.

The only way to really change this is to toss out the D&D roots altogether. You can have progression, because that adds long term goals, bragging rights, content blocks, all the stuff that retains. You just can't have it on back of XP gates like PvE, because eventually you'll devolve to the same casino again, and call it a competitive advantage (and be right, for the current crowd).

Right. If you are developing a game you should start at square one and state what you want to create. "A persistant online role playing game centered around player versus player combat" in Conan's case. Once you abbreviate that as MMORPG everyone thinks "Oh, it's like WoW but..."

It's alot easier to think in those terms I guess but there is nothing that says you need levels, classes, stats or XP to have an RPG and in a PvP focused game I think you'd be much better off eliminating levels all together. Hearing Conan has 80 levels, and what sounds like a pretty standard advancement system along with end-game raiding put me in the I'll wait till a month or two after release to hear if it's fun or not category.

DS, your critisism places my quote in a far boader context than the sentance "RPG combat is too deteministic."  Most of the time RPG combat could be closely approximated with the role of a 20-sided die.  4 or more you win, 3 or less you lose.  My point is that current state of RPG combat is that "making it more difficult" basicly amounts to shifting the die rolled to needing 12+ to win instead of a 4+.  This is neither more fun, nor more difficult from the players presective, just more random and fustrating.

No, actually it doesn't. It's more than a higher DC rating...it's like getting a better DM. The NPC reacts differently entirely...and therefore can be more satisfying. I've played PnP games with good, great, and terrible DMs. And the story can come alive or it can fall on its face if every mob in every campaign plays the same way, or every story unfolds with the same plot devices. 

Put another way, we're not talking about changing the rate of fire for mob guns from 30ms to 12ms. I'm talking about changing entire combat methods so it's more challenging and therefore more fun. It's about changing entire skillsets.

A new direction, such as Myst: Uru Live? :P

I keep meaning to try it out but keep getting distracted by other games.  Everytime I see an ad for it when loading up gametap I always think "ooh that looks cool" but I then start playing the game I loaded up gametap to play and forget.

WoW is easily mastered. No amount of GM intervention, PvP or AI/player driven whatnot is going to cover the fact that after 2 weeks of playing WoW, you are as good a player as you are ever going to be.

And I think the "99% of player content is crap" saying applies to PvP participation. For every player or GM that provides an interesting combat experience, there will be 99 of them acting like idiots.

I also think we're onto a good point here about combat. If you play combat all the time, it gets boring. That's the nature of doing something over and over again. Now, if combats were spaced out, if there were less "trash mobs" and more puzzles and shit like Solid Snake or Zelda, there would be things for players to do instead of slowly burning out on whacking foozles all the live-long-day.

Also, there should be many more ways for players to "fail" in a MMORPG, that don't involve your character dying.

Personal opinion: I think I would avoid GM run mobs if they were in one of thses games. It doesn't sound like a very fun mechanic. YMMV.

It still remains to be established that more challenging actually results in more fun. To take example from PvP side rather than PvE this time, there's seemingly huge appeal in "pwning noobs" i.e. one-shotting players who have no real chance to even hit you let alone fight back. Plenty people enjoy this kind of activity even though it yields them no in-game rewards and when participation in more challenging and equal fights could actually net them some virtual trinkets. If the challenge is supposedly more fun, why so many people go out of their way to avoid it and why absolute lack of challenge is apparently enjoyable to them?

edit: also to note, following the threads on boards like FoH etc, you can notice people recall fondly as "most fun" the absolutely overpowered and broken character builds/classes... stuff that'd allow them to mow the NPCs en masse with zero chance of dying. I don't recall single time someone would say "man so and so class was the best in diku_01, it was absolute bitch to kill anything and you never could be sure you'd live through the fight until you put 100% effort into play"

First you say that we are taking about the same context.  And then you say we taking about something different. So, umm, ya...
In the scope of RPG Combat Mechanics, Difficulty != fun.
In the scope of RPG Combat Mechanics, Difficulty == odds being stack against the players.
That is what I am saying.
If there no RPG Combat, I am sorry I thought we were talking about MMORPGs.

Ok. Guess all we need are mobs that spawn and stand there and put up a tiny fight back. Enough to where you whack them once get your xp and move on. Fuck making AI any better...ever. Let's just keep having the same crappy PvE experience we've been getting. Of course some of you are happy with the shit on a plate. (Odd since I said I had a higher tolerance for bullshit in another thread...but we're talking different categories here)

I find it amazing that someone would even argue that more challenging wouldn't mean more fun. You realize that there are difficulty ratings on games (Halo, ChessMaster, etc.) for a reason?

I guess it doesnt matter if your girlfriend doesnt have an orgasm if you get yours and it's too hard to give her hers? I mean who wants to work to achieve something if it's hard, right?


Uhm. No, I dont.  You cant seem to grasp the difference in merely changing orders of magnitude and changing entire methods of play style. It's not just changing a die roll. It's about playing against something that's more fun because...aww fuck it. I've already explained this 90 times. Time 91 wont be any different. Here's your ticket to the Shitbox360. Just try not to post any critiques of games where analysis is necessary.

EDIT: Amazing that in the thread below us (on RMT) people realize that achievement is of some sort of value, but difficulty (necessitating achievement) falls on deaf ears by some here.

I'd suggest revolutionary notion the difficulty settings are there because for some people fun = easy while for others fun = hard. I.e. they are labelled as "easy/normal/hard gameplay" rather than "shitty/mediocre/fun gameplay" precisely because there's no fixed correlation between challenge and fun that's universal for all. Consequently there's no guarantee that making game more challenging will make it more fun for all involved, or even the majority for that effect.

edit: the reverse is of course equally true. Making things trivial is given to piss off and bore part of your potential player base just the same.

Sadly I've got to agree with DreckSign on this one.

In most MMORPGs achievment itself is the fun part, so yes people try to maximize achievement. If *combat* were fun then people might actually go for fun encounters.

But furthermore that is irrelevant because you can increase difficulty across the board. There will always be more efficient ways to get XP but the most efficient ways could be much more "difficult" than they are today. I put difficult in quotes because I that isn't the best term, I think unpredictable and challenging are both better.

If you look at the threads we've done here about people's favorite experiences in these games, nearly every single one of them is when things happen out of the ordinary. If you were take the typical game today and just change the hate rules to make it a bit more random that would improve those games in a variety of ways. The problem now is that players try to achieve maximum predictability and control and rather than push back developers cater to them.

> It's about playing against something that's more fun because...aww fuck it.
The funniest part is you assume I disagree with you, when you don't have a position to agree with beyond "I want more challenge."  Great, I want more challenge too.  I was just point that I thought making Mob mathimatically tougher wasn't the way to do it.   What the fuck is more challenge mean in game terms?  Come on, no more hand-waving about "changing entire methods of play style" and "changing entire combat methods"  Those phrases mean nothing.  Then you call us out as sheep when we don't carte-blanche agree with your nebulous position.

Fine, have fun with that.

Out of ordinary fun doesn't necessarily equal extra random factor, if anything random is probably detrimental to fun precisely because it's unpredictable. Easy examples: imagine random skew to your bullets in FPS each time you press the trigger (random to degree you have no control over) or random deviation to direction/velocity when you go through portals in well, Portal. Would either make the game more fun? I'd argue the answer is "no" if just because there seems to be common complaint how "cone of fire" which introduces such random bullet skew in certain FPS-like games.... ruin the fun, not enhance it.

I've already given a few notes on what more challenge means. Generally I said that human operators would be better than AI. I'm assuming you're intelligent enough to know the differences between playing against a real person and a computer and can connect the dots. But I gave an example...targeting a healer (oddly that's kind of an outdated example since games have been doing that for awhile now).

I think Margalis hit the nail on the head when he said unpredictable. When you know what you're up against and exactly what the computers going to do, your response becomes repetitious...which leads to boring. When you've got something that you have to overcome, adapt, achieve against it's more thrilling when you win.

So perhaps just as there are those that like RMT and dont like RMT...there are those that would rather have boring yet predictable...and those that embrace challenge and achievement.

Yep. And if I have hit my wall of mastery, and some GM run monster smacks me down, there's no challenge to it. For whatever reason, I can't ever beat him, so I give up and go play WoW or Hellgate or whatever the fuck.

Easy play can be fun, and challenging play can be not-fun, depending on the mastery level of the player.

But to say that just because it's GM-run that it's crap is the problem Im having with several posters here.


That's absolutely true...and Im not denying that. But some of the people in this thread dont want to admit that challenging play can be fun too.
If it's not easy then it's not fun.

You've got to look at the GM-run characters like a player would...as in they wouldnt know they are GM run. That's seeming to be a bit hard, but we're all generally intelligent here. I guess the devil's in the details. Such characters would have a set level of weapon or skills and not necessarily overpowered. You'd think..hey those mobs look 34th level and the con yellow...I can probably take them. But the difference would be in the way they play.

Now this would arguably (and hopefully) make them harder than their level...but who's to say that the GM players would always win? Two ways they might not win include a) they are bested and b) they lose on purpose - part of a larger scheme and method they are administered to maintain. Make sense? It's never been done so I'm sure the method could be refined into fun. 

Again, It's not a question of power, its a method of delivering unpredictability. Perhaps the GM sends a character up a back flight of stairs and has him idle in the dark...to surprise the player? Or perhaps the GM ups the mobs hps so he can swim through lava...but the mob comes out with only enough hp to scare the player.

double post

Ok a few things.
Let's ignore the GM run monsters as impractical on any scale larger than a NWN module for your friends. So we want to make PvE more challenging? You suggest that this can be attained through randomness but I'd argue that just makes it more frustrating for the majority of players. More complex scripts? Sure but they'll be cracked before you know it and it won't be too long before the counter to all the AI triggers is known and players are sleepwalking through it. Take the Golestandt encounter in DAoC as an example, it had a pretty complex AI behaviour that would switch aggro, punish you for bunching up, punish you for spreading out and disrupt the interdependencies in the group. It didn't take long for people to map out how it worked and as soon as that was done the encounter got reduced to a long drawn out set of pavlovian responses.

Randomising stuff doesn't add challenge it adds frustration. Most games split PvE into two parts. Firstly there's the bread and butter stuff, the fields of random XP stuff that may or may not have some schtick to hit players with. Then there are the achievement encounters. Stuff that's hard to do, raid content for various definitions of raid. These are the ones with the challenging fights, the difficult skin of your teeth encounters. Some games provide this kind of experience at all character levels so you don't even need to wait till max level to hit the 'fun' PvE.

Guess what?

Players still go for the grind.

IainC's first law of MMO psychology is thus:

If there are two options in front of a player, one of which maximises fun and the second of which maximises reward then players will unerringly choose the latter. Are badly designed games at least partially to blame for this? Sure. But designers don't work blind. They have metrics from previous games that show how players in that game chose to spend their time, they look at what the guys in beta were doing. And you know, mostly players just want the reliable XP/gold/magic foozles not the 'OMG how did we make it through that?' experience. It's why players powerlevel rather than experience all the 'fun' content that devs implement, it's why random groups rarely hold together after a wipe.

People like you and I, who think more carefully about what we want out of games and like to see the horizons expanded, might seek out those more challenging encounters but we are nowhere near the middle of the bell curve.

If you want random, then thrown in some random scripts that will entertain the players. I've always thought it would be entertaining to catch some Orcs playing cards while waiting at their guard post. (Spawn point) It always frustrated me that the interesting boss encounters were locked away in WoW, behind the raid gate. Why not spread some of that fun out into the non-instanced world?

Granted, players will figure out ever permutation of system that gets thrown into a game, but that doesn't mean you have to throw your hands up in the air and fail to entertain them at all.

So, any PvP will do  Battlegrounds to OpenPvP?
If AI actually had the I, that would acceptable?

From time to time, you'll hear me gush about Fort Aspenwood in Guild Wars for exactly the same reasons you describe.   There were many players on both sides using so many different builds and strategies, it stayed fresh for an extremely long time.

Another way of saying "your response becomes repetitious...which leads to boring" is the puzzle of killing was easily solved.  Putting players on both sides makes the puzzle more difficult, hence less boring.  Unfortunately PvP has other baggage (that we have also discussed here at length) and the market has been slow to embrace.  When I mentioned puzzles earlier you responded with a reference to adventures games which is not what I meant.  Combat itself should be treated like a puzzle along the lines of PotBS.  A good combat puzzle would go a ways to prevent you responses from becoming repetitious, while we wait for PvP to intergate into the market.  Of course coming up with a good puzzle is a talent on itself.

Just a short note before I read IainC's crit wall o' text:

I didnt say RANDOMNESS. (Margalis might have and I agreed with him but I never did)

I said unpredictability and backed it up with some human ideas (the idling in the dark for example) that weren't random, yet arguably unpredictable.

That is all. I'll read the rest now.

Thanks for the compliment btw.

EDIT: Wow. You really make a lot of sense there. Players do go for reward over fun. Im wondering if a game could still be made for those of us in the category of challenge-enjoyers...and if it would survive :D

I agree with that immensely. The puzzle of which you speak is essential to the real game being played. I loved figuring out what template would kill the "cookie-cutter of the week" in Shadowbane.  Put in your words, I think the human puzzle is more fulfilling than the computer AI one ;)

The challenge in most MMOs isn't the gameplay itself but the metagames that surround it - the raid strats, the gear templates, the PvP group builds and the social networking. Any monkey can learn to press a button in response to trigger_event_01, gameplay by itself is not a challenge. Just as the MMO part of MMORPGs substitutes for content as compared to single player RPGs, it also takes up some of the 'challenge' slack too. I wrote a short piece on sort of that topic here (http://antipwn.wordpress.com/2007/08/30/vom-kriege/).

Psuedo-nitpick (but actually an important distinction imho):  "challenge-enjoyer" is not the right term for the category you are putting yourself in.  A huge subset, probably the majority, of those players who enjoy challenging encounters/puzzles/what-have-you will STILL go for the easy reward, bypassing the challenge.  This is the critical, not-obvious-at-first-glance problem.  It's not that people ENJOY the easier path to the reward, necessarily.  They may indeed enjoy the challenging path much more, and find the easier route to the rewards boring.  But they will go the easier route regardless, for whatever reason.

I'm definitely in this camp, myself, though I'd love to pretend not to be... experience has proved otherwise.

Not to repeat myself, but some of you are still missing the point. You don't take any current DIKU and make monsters unpredictable. That's a fail. Again, the entire game is designed to advance your character. Anything that slows it down becames the way the next game steals your players.

The slot machine analogy is not about the swingarm/payout. It's that PLUS the entire environment from the carpet to the drinks that get you there, support you trying, and keep you coming back. You don't try and get a non-gambler into slots by changing the probability of payouts. You try to find what they are into and create something NEW for them to repeatedly spend money on. Like, say, CCGs :-)

With MMOs you need to change the goals of the game to change the paths to get there. You can even keep dumb AI if your game is about narrative and diplomacy with the occasional fight. Here thouh your character advancement can't be tied to mob XP. Makes you lazy, relying on kill collect "quests" on countless mobs that never change behavior (ooo this one poison).

Instead, if your serious about removing grinding ( and btw farming) to allow for real immovation, remove mob XP altogether going ALL narrative based. And remove levels from pvp calculations so there's no dumb barriers to entry that alienate your players before they get to what your game is about.

Otherwise, you're squarely against WoW.

Regarding puzzles: earlier I said that MMOGs aren't cursed to suckiness - they're cursed to being MMOGs.  Puzzles aren't something that MMOGs do well.  AC1 had a puzzle of sorts (composing spells), and it was fun for the first month of beta, then the algorithm was cracked and it became trivial.  All that design work amounted to a month of frantic work by a fraction of the playerbase.

What MMOGs do well is provide ways to measure achievement.  Whether it's a PvP title, geographic space, epic equipment, or a house stocked with ingots or the bones of your enemies, that's what they do well.  The real question is, how do you get the players to work hard at something to achieve those things without making it just boil down to spending more time in-game than anyone else?  Or being a better twitch player?

I agree with you, but that's the problem with derivation. We're in stasis until advancement-for-the-sake-of-advancement is expanded to include more than just this single motivation.

All hail the new year, and maybe something that's actually different. Unfortunately, what's on the docket of will-actually-launch is more of the same with tweaks.

Combat isn't something that MMORPGs do well, either. But it's pretty prevalent in the genere.

This is one of the reasons I am (cautiously) looking forward to Guild Wars 2.  Knock on full instancing as much as you like but if taken advantage of it can really put a great emphasis on story and real adventuring. 

Give me an MMO with combat that would be fun even if there weren't a ding attached.  Period.  Jesus, is this hard to comprehend?

Agreed. Given how many players solo anyway, the game needs to be fun as a single player game that multiplayer only enhances. MMOs risk splitting off into their own rabid fanbase who will only play a MMO that has <insert list of unchanging crtical systems here> and that are a niche market in and of themselves if every MMO just copies the EQ model because that's what worked 5 years ago (or so). New players don't like having to come in and learn a new game that is already speaking in double dutch to them (i.e. DoTs, SoWs, FAs, etc) from 'team mate' players who get impatient with every n00b who is learning how to play in their MMO backyard.

*NB: The grammar in the above post sucks, but I'm too tired to make it right. Good luck in deciphering it.

And let me guess, not only it "should be fun" but also "done right". And "optimized properly".  :oh_i_see:

I think you forgot something there. Like, say, what you're looking for? Even if it's SWG-theming of PS, at least you're defining "fun" for yourself.

Nothing wrong with full-instancing, if you're not tied to forcing it into the same mold as WoW.

oh no. players dont want fun. they want maximum reward. haven't you been reading this thread?   :drill:

It just has to pass a simple test.

If you removed xp and loot from defeating mobs in combat, would players still (even if at a reduced rate) fight them?

Eve removed xp from mobs, so it's not an impossible concept.

Yea, 'cept three things:

1) Is Eve combat fun? I mean fun in a COD4/CoX/Crysis sorta way, not the fun-to-win that is DIKU/casinos.
2) You still defeat mobs for loot.
3) Eve is more of a grind than EQ1 was at times.

I do agree with your Simple Test idea. I just think Eve's the wrong reference. If you want to just stick with MMOs for comparisons, I'd go with something like the JTL (space) portion of SWG, or Planetside (maybe TR), or heck, even just roaming around the city and killing baddies in CoX.

Currently, I'm PvEing in Eve to afford bigger ships (Just got into a Battlecruiser last night) and gear for them. It's my money-making activity, so I'm fully aware that Eve still has the loot grind.

Out of your list there, I"ve only played Planetside and Tabula Rasa. Both get boring after a short time, so I'd say the current answer for me is "no".

Thinking about giving players a reason to kill mobs and complete quests and missions usually brings my thoughts back to faction grinding. And that's by definition just another grind. Replace xp with faction points. :P

 :|

FPS players find games like Crysis, FEAR (I refuse to put in periods), and UT3 (among others) "fun" - so why have mmofps's sucked royally?

The history of basically all video games on earth disagree with you. Most games have some randomness built in, especially RPGs. And in fact MMORPGs have plenty of randomness already. (Random damage for example) What you wrote is complete nonsense that doesn't pass a basic smell test. Randomness adds to the frustration? Then how come every RPG on earth is based on dice-rolling mechanics?



Again this is irrelevant, because fun/challenge can be raised across the board and furthermore the encounters that maxmize reward can be the same as the encounters that maximize fun.


That's because the OMG experience doesn't pay out enough. Insert blurb about game theory here. If players aren't choosing those encounters then you're doing it wrong and need to take some basic math courses. Hint: try raising the reward.

Ideally the harder encounters are worth doing, but if you suck at them you can do the easier trivial stuff for a lower reward. If you make the easier trivial stuff more efficient for all skill levels you have only yourself to blame.

You get no xp or loot from killing other players in WoW, yet people do it.  Often.  You don't even get honor from ganking grays, but check out how many marauding 70s hang out in STV.

Maybe the satisfaction of ganking a human (even if they are easier than the easiest mob due to level difference) evens things up?

I wouldn't say they've sucked royally. They do recognize (hopefully) that in order to score a monthly subscription, they've got to offer more than UT3 or Quake Wars. The things they've chosen to offer have been suspect, and the subject of debate.

Planetside was so close it's almost maddening.   :drill:

It's the kind of fun you get from pissing in the other team's Gatorade. Not something most game designers want to encourage in their games.

Pick any reasonably successful single-player game and MMOify that combat.  I don't care.  It can be fucking Double Dragon for all I care.  But if you released... say... WoW combat as a stand-alone game, it would be laughed off the market because it sucks.

It's a quite good question, what does hitting one mob for 10, 14, 12 points and another for 12, 10, 14 pointa... add to the experience, really? Short of occasional bitching on the forums when someone rolls miss, miss, miss 5 times in a row.

Tabletop games would use the dice to determine outcomes of players actions, but as the time went on you could read many opinions that good GM should just stick them into orifice of choice and fake the whole thing for good story experience. The computer implementations don't have the luxury of GM to tailor customized experience for every player, so they are still stuck with the dice rolls for these "your skills give you 60% chance to hit a rat" situations. Especially since they throw rats at the player during their play session in so high numbers it'd promptly send any GM attempting to put any meaningful variation into experience... straight to the looney bin.

Seems to be the new trend in FPSs these days to import the advancement of MMOs into them. Battlefield, Call of Duty, etc. They're all hopping on the bandwagon. I do wish we could get things the other way around, rich world along with fun combat.

Yes. I don’t need an MMOFPS in the form of PS if they continue adding some persistence to real FPS games.

I agree, not lasting in either for any more than a month or two. But I was going entirely by the context of whether players would “still fight them?” if we “removed xp and loot from defeating mobs in combat”. At least those two MMOs attempt something a bit different.

Now imagine Eve without Loot. Would you even log in? :-)

The trick is to not think about it that way. Real quests are ongoing story arcs with real decisions and real results, sometimes involving killing. You need to have some ability for the world to change by your actions, which is where the sub-topic of instancing comes in.

But otherwise you’re looking to draw heroes and their friends into a world of adventure, not just mob genocide.

Now, a Double Dragon fighting system in an MMO would be killer. I had so many hopes for that martial arts game that came out, err, what, a year ago? Who cares, doesn’t matter, just another typical grindfest. Because it was WoW with different animations and about 1/10 the speed.

And yes. WoW minus the MMO sucks.

I have it on great industry authority (from a top-tier MMO hosting company) that the latency and bandwidth necessary to do a proper hand-to-hand fighting system does exist.
I envisioned it as a key-combo system myself.

1. press mouse button right (kick) or left (punch) and hold - mouse look is on so you can aim in a direction
2. key a 3 button combo from 4 possible keys quickly
3. release mouse button to execute.

2 x 4 x 4 x 4 = 128 moves.

Just a thought on your tangent.

Of course it's already random but that's not what we are talking about. MMOs are random within very tightly defined limits. You might miss a few times vs a grey mob or your damage is going to vary a little but predictability is built in. If you attack a grey mob you don't expect it to have a 0.00001% chance of murdering your kitted up max level character. It's not a coinflip level of randomness. What we were discussing was making encounters very random, having mobs behave in totally unpredictable ways or pull something far out of left-field to hit you with. Not damage variance or combat algorithms.

But these are flexible values and not absolute. If there's a 'challenging' encounter that gives a lot of reward and we'll say that it's 'fun' too for whatever value of fun you care to assign, then there's an encounter that can be done reliably which gives averagely good reward, then players will tend to pick the easier one all other things being equal. Suddenly your baseline has changed. The easily farmable encounter is giving more reliable reward over time than the challenging one and so is 'better'.


Most games do that. It's usually called raid content, top drawer items or whatever that only drop from the hardest and most challenging encounters. Players still prefer to farm easy stuff for reliable and efficient rewards. Is it fun? Mostly no. Do players choose to do it anyway for the reasons already stated? Mostly yes. Do they simultaneously bitch about how dull the PvE is and how hard it is to get the good items? You betcha.

Um...what?

Players at high levels mostly raid because that's all there is to do. Players at low levels don't raid because there are no raids at low levels. (Or raid loot is outlevelled within hours) I honestly have no idea what you are talking about.

Take your typical MMO and change the hate rules as follows: whenever you take an action the hate you gain, instead of being fixed, is multiplied by some factor. This factor can be as little as 1/10 and as much as 10, although the probability of the endpoints is low. (Some sort of bell-curve distribution)

I just made MMORPGs much better. Wow that was hard.

Your players take a look at this proposed fix and develop counter-strategy to minimize the risk of group wipe: no one as much as fucking looks at the mob until the tank gets it down to 60-50% health. Then they go on your forum and start bitching how you made the combat 3x as long and how this grind sucks.

Nonsense. Players would find an efficient way to maximize XP, not minimize risk. The strategy you propose is not efficient at all, half the group isn't even doing anything half the time. That's worse than the occasional wipe. This is probably what would really happen:

1. The value of versatile character classes would go up and the value of very specific character classes would go down.
2. Group composition would adjust accordingly.
3. Classes like healers and wizards might actually carry around offensive and defensive gear so they can melee or take a few hits if needed.
4. Tank classes might carry around offensive instead of defensive gear so they can pitch in more damage if damage dealers go down.

Again, the important thing to remember is that groups will maximize XP. Minimizing risk is meaningless unless the risk is the risk of not making XP quickly. Having some party members die sometimes can be quite worthwhile in the right circumstances.

With this system you can of course tweak it. If 1/10 to 10x is too much make it 1/2 to 2x.

That's because that top-tier valuable content is locked behind a huge barrier most people can't overcome. I don't care if it's 5-man, 15-man, or 75-man. If content requires players to consistently schedule repeated visits to the exact some place for the chance for just one of them to get a top-tier item, it's not going to happen nearly as often as a single player solo farming and grinding to get an upgrade.

All people don't want to go from WoW quest blues to Tier 6 BT drops. They just want to continue upgrading at all. And there's a variety of ways to do that which don't require the insane requirements of a Raid.

Whoa. No. Raids are about gear. These are not fun interactive events with uncertain outcome for 40 people. These are about getting through the various boss fights to upgrade your group for further raids down the road. Think about the cumulative time investment. 20 to 80 hours of investment for one single 2-hour play session. Then add in:

• Non-guaranteed loot
• The chance of someone messing up their role anyway
• Someone not being geared right
• A raid bug
• The fact that more people are reaching that elder game than in any other game prior (both numerically and as a percentage)
  
• That this may be your only path to continued character upgrades at all.

Now you want to add an element of additional failure?

That doesn't make the game more fun at all. That becomes a competitive advantage... for someone else. :wink:

Just a note, when I'm talking about 'raid content' I'm not specifically meaning WoW raid content. I'm defining 'raid content' as any encounter that is a harder than average scripted encounter with a better than average reward built in. WoW instances are an example of that but so are DAoC artifact encounters or EvE complexes. Raid content can be soloable and still count as a raid encounter for the purposes of my points above.

WoW and EQ before it have defined Raid encounters. You don't get to.  :oh_i_see:

Safety and predictability first. If it costs them time to the point efficiency start to suffer, they simply bitch about design of your game or move elsewhere.


Very fun for people who rolled these character classes and find themselves not needed.


Very fun both for these classes when they now need to acquire twice as much gear, and for everyone else who suddenly has to compete with more people rolling for such loot.

There is no experience to gain at the end game. There's only risk of wipe and time wasted to get back where you were and the cost of gear repairs.

And really, what fun does your magic fix add to the whole thing? THat occasionally the mob will hit the damage dealing guy or the healer, and they have to back off, stop use their aggro reducing abilities if they have any and wait for the tank to get mob attention again? It something that already happens in these games, you are only increasing rate of it and possibly throw in couple of "oh fuck" moments when the tank guy gets few bad rolls on their hate gain.

That describes PvE instances pretty much, even the post 2.3 WoW stuff which dropped the elite tags. CoX instances are soloable (they scale). EQ2 adventure packs were too. Eve has Deep Space for that.

But the widely-held definition of "raid" is a bunch of people getting together to learn or repeat the same content over and over for a specific drop. This is how we got the extra-game systems like DKP, calendars, rotations, etc.

The different encounters you described (and to which SB Banes, PS caps, PotBS port battles, and even pre-made WoW BGs could be added) are all titled differently because the requirements and motivations are different. PvP itself is fluid. You might be there to grind for predictable XP/Honor/APs, but how you do it changes. Raiding is using the same tactic against predictable targets until the devs change stuff :-)

I've got a long rambling tl;dr type post I'm working on but here's a "quicker" thought, good thread btw folks.

I'm looking forward to more MMO's that are working from any framework that isn't RPG.  I'm sick of mmoRPG's in fact I don't think RPG's are great games all too often in the first place.  They bore me for the same reasons that MMO's do.

-I HATE the random world attacks in RPG's, because combat isn't that fun & that is compounded when I'm trying to get to the next story part of the game but I can't take five steps without being forced into stupid time consuming combat.
-I HATE HATE HATE leveling up so I can beat the next storyline part, or worse yet, getting all the way to a boss and finding out I'm too weak to take them down.  I've stopped playing several good titles for months because that happens.
-I HATE when you get attacked by trivial shit and your just auto attacking and waiting through the animations.  Not surprisingly, those fights remind me of 98% of all the Diku PVE I've ever encountered.
-I am not a big fan of optimizing my character, I hate having to read 3rd party shit to figure out how I can pwn the way I want to.  Or finding out that no, using that weapon is gimped because the best weapon is a sword/axe/whatever so don't use what you thought would be cool.

Basically, I don't really like RPG's too much.  What I do like about them is the story, the world, getting to read/watch something unfold that you are directly influence.  RPG's are like those old books where you pick a choice and turn to the page, but a little bit more cool, sometimes.

Guess what is missing from MMO's?  The only part of the RPG experience that really impresses me.  This is why RPG bastard child MMO's are fucking failuresuck in my eyes.  Can't wait until people start taking FPS, RTS, Adventure, Puzzle, CCG, whateverthefuck else and turning them into persistent worlds/games where you can play with lots of people.

P.S.  I also agree mostly with what Slayer said 2 pages back.

I agree with you Hoax.

• Realm vs. Realm gameplay w/ city building & sieging
• RTS gameplay with resource battles and tech-trees for city/guild/player advancement
• No leveling - but skill per use, so that a starting player is viable from the time he logs in and advancement takes someone from average to expert, not noob to average
• A server-wide storyline that individuals and guilds influence by different levels of objectives and meta-objectives
• NPCs that react to those state changes
• stuff to do on the sidelines like in-game distractions that aren't mini-games like jewels but actual side games
• Interaction of the sort you see in puzzle / adventure games / platformers - to flesh out quests and interaction with the physical world (not physics that cant be done over networks, but interactive objects like the kinds that work in the HeroEngine MMO engine)
  

bah...I'll just stop there...I could go on for pages with what I want.

PvP,  by and large,  is just as predictable.

Tactics are min/maxed to hell and back until everyone has an acceptable role in what they should be doing,  especially in formats with heavy rewards (see WoW Premade groups, GW ladder system, DAoC gank groups/8 man guilds, etc.)

Plus,  PvP usually has a fairly extensive "social grind",  where you have to grind up acquaintances and reputation until you get invited to the right guild/clan/groups.

What changes more often? The actions of a boss mob or tactics in PvP? Dunno how it is today, but every BG match I was different. Usually because the one tactic the "leader" wanted to follow wasn't being followed :wink:

This is very different from zone in, pull each elite, move to boss and five cronies, and follow the wiki guide on the proper pull and defeat strategy.

EQ2 (with adventure packs) meets a functioning SB. Sign me up!

This is true in high end WoW-style raids, and it's true because lethality is high.  Any environment with a high penalty for failure (see permadeath) will increase safe play.  Generally safe play isn't very fun or at least it takes a lot longer than unsafe play.  In WoW raids, failure is a wipe and an incredibly time consuming raid reorganization at best, and at worst you call it for the night for no joy. 


Consider this, different, model: all raids will probably be successful (in the sense that the bosses will be killed).  Likelihood of a complete wipe is very low.  The payout for an 'unsuccessful' raid (bosses die, but slowly and after a few player deaths) is low.  The payout for a 'very successful' raid (bosses are killed quickly with few or no player deaths) is very high.  Just scale the gear and xp drops to how well the raid did.  Now your penalty for failure is small.  In fact, it's not even a boolean pass/fail anymore.  It's a spectrum of success, like a leaderboard.  People love leaderboards because you don't have to be first to feel like you're doing well, or improving, or at least better than the schmucks below you. 

WoW raids are simply succeed/fail.  No leaderboard.  Keeping them tough requires keeping the succeed rate somewhat low, which necessarily means keeping the fail rate high, and fails suck.  Lower penalty for failure and variable degrees of success will increase risk-taking behavior in groups looking to dominate the leaderboard (or get the epic gear), rather than decrease it.  Risk taking behavior will be lower in groups that just want to get the minimum gear (or attunement, or whatever).  Which, I think, is how people want it.

I should add that this is why I hate survival horror.  Increased lethality means increased play safety.  I have to peek around every corner fifteen times and carefully aim for headshots to conserve ammo.  Guess what?  Not fun.

This is apparently a very difficult concept since nobody is getting it, but if people are choosing not to do these "raids" it means the "better than average reward" is not better enough.

Why would I do a mid-level instance in WOW to get an item I'll outlevel in less time than it took me to get the item in the first place?

Ziggackly! So when faced with a choice between a 'challenging' (or 'fun' if you prefer) encounter with a better reward or a dull encounter with a worse reward, players tend to choose the second one. Hmm... sounds eerily similar to what I said a few pages back.

Increasing the reward brings a whole new set of issues to the table. Limited spawns for 'must have' items? Hard to get for solo/socially challenged players? Payday for RMT farming organisations? Complaints about the level of required PvE for PvP viability? The list goes on.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding here, but it sounds like you're thinking people aren't raiding because the rewards aren't good enough.

If that's the case, then I disagree. The best items in games are usually locked behind Raids mostly. They don't get distributed gamewide because it's the act of Raiding at all that is the barrier (# of people, schedule, limited ROI, etc).

This is why I like the Badge drops system implemented in BC. Even if you failed do down the later Bosses, the earlier bosses gave everyone Badges they can accrue to turn in for loot (at that G'eras guy in Shattrah). This reminds me of the Darkness Falls badges from early DAoC, though these here drop a lot less and accrue for items that cost a lot less.

It's not perfect, but it's better than the old style binary condition.

Amazingly you still aren't getting it. They choose the second one because the payoff is better, when you take into account the reward vs. the time and effort.


It really is amazing how people will fight to the death to defend the status quo, as if the tiniest change will sink the ship. I guess you think quests with meaningful rewards is a bad idea too right, since before WOW and EQ2 the norm was for quests to be worthless. In older games people didn't do quests. Then WOW and EQ2 upped the rewards to make them worthwhile. Now people do quests - THE HORROR! OH NOES THE MMORPG GENRE IS COLLAPSING!

Lol. God forbid we up the reward for "raids" nobody does or change the hate rules slightly, clearly that would ruin everything and our only choice is to exactly copy existing products made by smarter people. If WOW proved anything it proved that deviating from the formula equals death...right?

This is not rocket science. If people are not doing the challenging things it's because the payouts suck and need to be adjusted upwards. This is like the first 15 minutes of an introductory game theory class, not some radical concept you should be scared to death of.

I have a great idea for game: let's create a bunch of "raid" encounters that have crap rewards and that nobody will be interested in doing. Great design! Time well spent!


I'm not talking about raiding, I'm talking about "raiding" as cleverly redefined by the red name. In other words, doing anything other than grinding for XP on the easiest mobs.

I just remembered, people (specifically Bards/ Enchanters) used to do that kind of "raiding" in EQ all the time.  Charm a red-con mob and solo it's buddies?  Round-up a pack of red-cons and spend 45 minutes burning them down?  You bet they did it.. why? Because the XP/ AAXP was incredible if they didn't get squished.

 It wasn't grinding away on easy blue/ green mobs for hours on end, it was an actual challenge and it was rewarded.. untill players who COULDN'T do it bitched and got the xp gain nerfed.  When the gravy-train stopped, so did the behavior.   If, instead, the other classes had been given a similar way of doing intensely difficult challenges for similar xp, it also would have silenced the outcry.  Of course, the first reaction is always "nerf it, it's simpler."

Again exactly what I said. People want reliable and easy XP/stuff. If they can have one hard fight or two easy ones for the same level of reward which do they choose?


I'm not defending anything. I'm just saying that making upping rewards to encourage players to do the harder encounters isn't a panacea. There are tradeoffs to that and it may or may not be desirable depending on other factors in your game of choice.

I don't really care what EQ or WoW players think raiding is. I'm using 'raid' as a catch all term to avoid writing out 'scripted encounter for a variable number of people that tends to be more challenging than the average world mobs'. As in fact I pointed out the first time I used it in this context.

Edit - fixxored missing /quote tag.

This sounds good... the rating aspect and better rewards attached to better performance might be good incentive for people to try and repeat the encounters, and beating your older "scores" is fun in itself for many. Then you have also the "challenge" versions where you do the same thing but with extra limitations or changed conditions, vide Portal bonus maps.

I think there's encounter like that in WoW actually, where people who beat certain boss in some 'good enough' time, get a special mount to show off? Don't know the details, just sounded like that from posted mentions of it.

edit: thinking about it some more, maybe part of fixed loot drops could be changed to some sort of "fame points" or whatever, that people would gain in amount depending on how thier encounter went. Then it's up to player to convert their accumulated points into specific gear as they see fit, rather than be at total mercy of the random number generator.

That's why I mentioned the Badges. Even raids that don't clear an instance, even people who don't win a roll, walk away with something. They probably realized the benefits of positive reinforcement from the pre-BC BG days where even the losers advanced in some way.

Minor quibble, but didn't the pre-EQ2 game quests only become worthless when they didn't get tuned with the mudflation that evolved? I'm specifically thinking of how I was able to gear up on DAoC quests alone. Later that woulda been foolish, but it was fine at launch. And that's actually the case now in WoW and EQ2, for the same reason.

Well, we all know that for a long time, EQ punished success. Which is a bizarro way of tweaking a game, and got bizzaro results.  :uhrr:

Thanks Hoax, nothing like having what you think is a solid rant get totally ignored :) I owe ya one!

Heh, it was a fine rant and all, but the market doesn't support that sorta thing. The noise of WoW is too loud. I do long for a real UO-as-envisioned within a 3D world. But unless we get to the point where the average indie can drum up $30mil or so, I expect such an attempt would either be ugly as sin, browser-based for the kiddies, or broken in all sorts of non-interesting ways.

Darkfall  :grin:

Suspect the problem with UO-like experience nowadays would be kinda the same why you can't anymore pull off shit like stab-you-in-the-cock grind from early MMOs and expect people to put up with it: they already tried easier/better and don't find their appendages repeatedly stabbed anywhere near as funny as it once seemed to be. With the open "meet people and kill them" game you'd have fun come from two things: screwing other people and seeing other people getting screwed. These two haven't changed and probably never will, but people have much less (if any) patience for being put on receiving end of said screwing.

Of course there's always EVE. But even with it in the picture, talking of WoW like numbers seems to be madness. Unless --apparently-- the game is put in China.

Darkfall will never surface. Sorry to disappoint you.

The odd thing about survival horror games is that they so rarely echo the source material.  A good look at any of the "X of the Living Dead" films shows that the real source of conflict is intra-personal squabbles within a group.  The Zombies wouldn't be  particularly dangerous only that dick you're holding out at the farm with is arguing with you about where to hide..

I think you are right. I pretty much remember the same thing from my pre-catacombs days.

You fell in to his Sarchasm!

Ahhh. That's what the smilie was for. Gotcha.

Existing MMOs have that material covered already, called PUGs.   :evil:

 :rimshot:

Wouldnt your inter-personal dynamics in your personal group accomplish that if the scary stuff around you were crafted right? You'd say go west...your buddy would say go east...and your other buddy would get snatched because he was running behind? :)

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=178652

Interesting write up.  The author previously bashed the game and and changed his tune about the game.

From his description of the siege mechanics it sounds extremely familiar to AOs tower system.  Those mechanics in AO went through some growing pains but in the end it was pretty robust and allowed for some interesting social dynamics (you wanted your buffs up to raid so people had agreements not to nuke your base kind of thing).  Makes sense for them since they have basically 5+ years of feedback on this game mechanic.

I'll probably pick this game up just to experience their combat system.  If they actually make mounted combat work well I will say that will be "revolutionary".  It seems to still be standard diku but who knows they might mask it well enough :)

That article talks about Shadowbane and a (somewhat gimmicky-sounding) mounted combat system. I chalk that up to the usual inexperience and/or lack of research thing.

Otherwise, there's some, err, "telling" stuff in there, but :NDA:

Bastid.

Just mentioning NDA is breaking the NDA since you're not allowed to say you're in BETA!  :awesome_for_real:

aside:
It wasn't supposed to say that word, but for some reason the smiley didn't activate.  That's my guess at least.


More proof that at least Funcom comes up with new interesting ideas, unlike damn near anyone else.  Will any of it work?  Doubtful.  There is a fuckton of hugely ambitious never before accomplished well shit in here.  I think that the AO tower system comparison is a good one but depressing.  SB > AO when it comes to siege mechanics obviously.  But still if they have half the promised gameplay diversity at launch actually working: bar brawl minigame, mounted, pvp, siege, npc city attacks, ctf, combos done well {suck dick DAOC}, bloody bits, titties, etc.  I'm going to be quite pleased with AoC.

I'll be buying the box and subbing no matter what because I really want Funcom to make that other MMO, here's hoping they have greatly improved their execution and ability to deliver on promises since AO while retaining their creativity and having the balls to commit to new gameplay ideas.  The only established company I get more excited about is CCP.

*edited for clarification, msg unchanged*

Its interesting that both AoC and WAR both stepping on the shoulders of their older siblings for PvP.  PvP is a hard social engineering problem. I guess neither wants to restart the social engineering from 0. It re-enforces my opinion in the we are the "need to learn to walk before we can run" stage PvP MMOG design.

If you know that, then you're in the beta, and commiting the worse sin of talking about the NDA! :ye_gods:

It is a Klein bottle argument!  RUN!

PS  I would SO buy Klein bottle wine glasses.  (http://web.ncf.ca/ek867/klein.bottle.jpg)

How would you drink out of them? Wouldn't everything spill?

 :uhrr:  So I run my horse - at full speed - to a wall.. then do it again.. and again... and again until I break the wall, THEN I get to fight?  I like the idea of a specific role for mounted combat, but the execution here sounds terrible.   Was it so hard to look at what light calvary was ACTUALLY used for and do that?

The mouth of the hole goes turns the rest of the glass into a reservoir, doesn't it?

(http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y217/Spetsnaz13/Misc/liquorstore.jpg)

Divided by 0! Oh shi-