f13.net

As seen on Slashdot (http://games.slashdot.org/games/05/11/29/2328246.shtml?tid=209):

Brad McQuaid pontificates on instancing (http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?&threadid=29572&mode=linear&perpage=40&pagenumber=1#post626275)

Edit: fixed typo in title

I just really think he's running scared.

Not much more to say than that.

It was too long!  I was only able to read to "d" before my eyes gave out!  Did he say anything about me?

Nothing says "virtual world" quite like zoning into your favorite dungeon and spamming "CAMP CHECK!" for an hour.

MMOG's benefit from instancing in far too many ways to focus on the negative.

Is his game ever actually coming out? There seems to have been no visible progress made on it.

I think they're still balancing different tools for debuffing trees for harvest.

Alkiera

Ok here's what I came away with:


I disagree on everything except that Alt-oholism is fun to me. (but I'd like content and different content paths by race/class!)  But then I'm not his targeted demographic.

I refuse to take anything he says seriously.

I can't even read the shit he spews forth anymore.  It makes me nauseous and furious at the same time, the same way sb.exe throws Haemish into a rage.  I can't even comment beyond this because I just can't fathom why people beyond the catassers and poopsockers listen to him. 


I've wondered the same thing.  I'd thought it was supposed to be out in 2006, but without even a hint of a beta, who knows. So far the only information that's updated is the website and the faq, which is just more of, "How McQuaid Says to do things, and why 3 million customers are completly wrong!"  The FAQ still says 2006 (http://vanguardsaga.com/faq.php?eid=2&faqid=2&ptext=Beta+%26+Release) but no quarter.

> Brad McQuaid is the MMO Jesus!
He is the MMO P. T.  Barnum.

I liked the part where he called Raph anal retentive.

You know how in high school you have to write essays like "Was Naploean really a great leader or was he just in the right place at the right time?" Well, we're going to find out here. My guess is that EQ1 was very mugh right place right time and will not be even close to repeatable.

I tried reading it but it was way too long, because I knew exactly what he was going to say. Instancing is bad, grind is good, EQ was the bombiest until Vanguard.

Hey Brad, there's a catass guild over here wanting to induct you in as an honorary member. Why don't you go do that and shut the fuck up while the grownups talk?

yeah I tried reading most of that this morning.  My impressions is that for someone who's a Creative Director or Exec Producer / Visionary with an incomplete title he's got a hell of a lot of time on his hands to write that.  Focus focus....

I kept having visions of Jerry McGuire and his "Mission Statement".

Wow that was painful (much like WoW was painful to Brad /pun)

Couple of things that just leapt out at me;
1.  His writing style takes himself way too seriously, or he's trying to be funny and failing miserably..


/eyeroll


Well at least he recognizes he's alone in this; oh wait, he was being cute again.  He honestly thinks that sense of accomplishment is why most people play these games.  Fun?  Never heard of it...


There's that damn "hard games may not be fun, but people value that pain!" mentality again.

On WoW we get this.


Wait wait wait; so if blizzard makes more gross revenue by getting 2 million+ people to sub for an average of  say 1 year as opposed to EQ1 getting ~300,000 people to sub for 5 years...WoW is the loser?  As a business which would you rather have: more money sooner, or a smaller trickle over time?

Which is somewhat beside the point anyway; does he really think the mmorpg market is looking for 3+ years average retention anymore?


Um, who are these insane people.  Both options suck and scream "not enough interesting content".

This section sums up his point of view nicely...

Note the "us".


More advancement that 60 levels and a slower pace.  God help me if I ever even consider another one of this man's games...

At any rate, at least he's upfront with his beliefs.  Enough to help steer people to/from his games.

The major question that I would love to know, since he referred to it numerous times, is what budget he has for Vanguard and what target playerbase size he is is trying to get.

Xilren

He said he would be happy with 500k.  I'm going to give this game a shot.  I think it has potential.  Although, realistically, Conan has a better shot at being fun.

It certainly is true that you value things more if you have to work hard for them. That's why arcade machines on free play mode or games with infinite continues that let you pick up right where you left off are lame.

But, the difference is that an arcade game on free play mode is over to fast but it's fun while you play. Grinds in MMORPG are not fun while you play. It is cool to accomplish something major that you can value, but it's also cool if the journey there was actually fun. At some point you have to ask yourself "why have I been standing in the same spot for 5 hours in a row beating on the same enemies over and over?"

The thing is, hard and fun are *not* mutually exclusive! That is the sad thing here. You can make it very difficult to achieve certain milestones, and you can make it take a long time as well - that's fine as long as the journey is enjoyable.

The problem is not that MMORPGS are too slow or take too much time - the problem is that too much of that time is wasted and too much of what you do is repetitive. You kill a couple mobs, maybe they have some interesting tactics and abilities (although probably not) but when you've figured out how to fight them you've only killed 10% of what you need to move on to more content.

It's like take any old game like say Final Fight, make each level 10 times as long by just repeating it 10 times in a row, now call it hard and rewarding. It's not hard or rewarding - it's just a silly, frustrating waste of time. In most game reviews a game getting repetitive is a negative thing - MMORPGs are all about mindless repetition.

I would be all for a game that was really hard and took a very long time to reach max level, as long as it was fun along the way. (I really don't care what level I'm at, if I'm having fun I'm having fun)

A good question to ask if, if players could skip over some stuff would they? If they could kill goblins for 1 hour instead of 10 hours to raise a level would they do that? If the answer is yes you have problems.

Here's a description of the beta combat mechanics (http://www.silkyvenom.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1791) from a beta tester.

Hmm..let me come up with a contrived, hypothetical example to see if I understand what that description was.

I am playing a game called "FFXI." I am a monk, with a special called "tackle." Tackle does low damage but can knock enemies out of attacks. If I am fighting a "Goblin", I see the Goblin pull out a "bomb" and my screen says "Goblin readies bomb" I can tackle and prevent the bomb from firing.

That sounds like an awesome, truly revolutionary system. It's amazing nobody thought of that before!

But it's the first time an MMO has done it! Because, as you know, all MMOs are designed in a vacuum!

It's like those NBC rerun commercials: "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!"

I must thatnk Xilren for his summary because there is no goddamn way I am reading that monster spewing of patting-oneself-on-the-back. Someone should do a word search for "fun" and see if it ever showed up in the piece.

In other news, it seems Lum stole Sanya's job (http://games.slashdot.org/games/05/12/01/1328249.shtml?tid=209) and is getting hit for it (http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169860&cid=14156939). A lot. Also he doesn't like pain. Wuss.

Damn. I didn't see that part. If I had, I'd have thrown a rod.

No, Stalin didn't do anything about changing human nature, he wasn't trying to, you useless fucknut. Stalin was about exerting control. Period. And he got damn good at that. Lenin, and for that matter, communism in general, isn't the "robot machine" most people have been taught to think it is. But I guess you'd have to read a fucking book to understand that, you nutmunching twat.

Stick with making Furor's dick feel bigger, Brad. You're better at it than this whole thinking thing.

Wow, that's like nothing I've ever seen!

Except, it's like everything I've ever seen before in MMOG's, thrown together in a mishmash of bleah.

Just in case anyone missed them, here are a couple of other views on this matter:

Raph (http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=176)
Jason Booth (http://jbooth.blogspot.com/2005/12/misconceptions-on-instancing.html)

I enjoyed reading all three, but then I had to go lie down until my brain finished digesting.  Once it had, I found I didn't have anything terribly novel to say on the topic.

Frankly, I think that we need to make a dozen of these, including some that fail not because they are insufficiently polished, but because the underlying design ideas are bad.  So far, I think every failure in the field includes a pretty large helping of broken.  Would SB's servers be less empty if the game was not profoundly buggy?  Once we have failures of something other than execution (and I can't call EQ a failure.  What is this, six years and still going?  Same for AC1.  Hell, UO still runs and if it wasn't making money, do you think EA would keep it running a week?), then maybe we can really make some statements about what works based upon something other than hand waving.

And if we make a dozen finished games, and none fail, then I think the world of entertainment will have seen a sea change.  And that is kind of where my money is, I suppose.

When I look back at my enjoyment of mmorpgs and the ones thast I have played, I find they all still come second to EQ.  And that is considering all the crap that I went through dealing with people.  Haemish has a good idea of the amount involved. 

I am looking forward to this game mainly because the team that made it, made the original EQ and that at least makes me think they have a better chance of getting it right again rather than all the others missing getting it right the first time.

Don't take this the wrong way, but EQ busted your MMORPG cherry didn't it?

That is to say, it was your first.  Mine too, and the combination of the newness of the expeirence coupled with the lack of competition enabled me to play EQ for far longer than I would have otherwise.  I look back on it fondly but I also recognized the huge problems with it's design now.  Some things were nice; like the zone designs really made each area different, but most of it's was just painful.  I was just too green to know what was wrong.  Either that or you are hardcore achiever type with too much time on your hands  :-D

Xilren

Belce,

You do realize, the very same crap you dealt with in Everquest will be the very same crap you deal with in Vanguard.

I.E the same people follow us everywhere.

I perfer not to prejudge any game, including Vanguard.  It would spoil the fun I'll have post-judging it.

Belce would probably be the first to admit that a lot of what we liked in EQ was the (what we thought at the time) great group of people around us playing it with us. We had fun in spite of the game's flaws, because we had fun people to be around.

Then we found the bitter, hollow pill at the center of the Shitsie Pop, these people turned into lewt-whoring assholes, and the game didn't give us much else to do but whore lewtz.

Vanguard will be different, in that we (or I) won't have the group of people together anymore.

Sig!