Mythic-EA shuts down Warhammer beta, tells players to come back later

[sam, an eggplant]

Neither chain is superior, they give out different rewards in both items and notoriety. Adding scripted events and actual choices that have an impact on their own gameplay serves to immerse the player in the game. It would feel like they had an impact on the world.

The kill 5 dwarf quests I saw did not have anything like this, no. The newbie chain was kill 5 dwarfs, collect 5 axes, tip over 5 barrels, all in the same area, all boilerplate. Then once they finished that area, go to the mines and collect 5 stinky mushrooms, kill 5 caveslugs, etc. Very thinly veiled boilerplate MMO garbage.

Sorry if I misread your post Salamok. From what I've heard, the rest of the game is pretty much the same thing, but not being in the beta, I only had the 1-5 game to talk about.

[eldaec]

Your description didn't have anything that wasn't in EQ or DAoC quests back in the day, if you could be bothered to read that text that appears and not just click on the word in [brackets].


The only thing that stops quests in big budget single player RPGs being anything different is better writing, better animation, scripted triggers that change the environment, and more one off graphical effects.


I don't mean to sound dismissive of better writing and more shiny. Entertain me dammit.

[tazelbain]

Get 5 of X doesn't bother me. It's the pointlessness why you are doing it.  Multi-steping it and putting pages of dialog is not going change that.  On the other hand, if a town was like a pet plant.  In order to grow town/plant, you feed it by completing "get 5 of X" quests for stuff in the area.  I'd eat those quests up.  Same silly quests, but with an in-game purpose.

[sam, an eggplant]

Pages of dialog alone doesn't excuse boilerplate quests. Neither does wrapping a storyline around them. LOTRO showed us that-- the lore helps but the gameplay still matters. Scripted events, special powers, branching paths, well written lore, voice acting, high production values, special effects, all of these things serve to conceal the fact that yeah, you're still just killing 5 dwarfs. But as you keep adding layers to the boilerplate quest at some point it smells fresh and new. Maybe it's still everquest in its heart, but that very simple core mechanic is hidden by so many layers of, well, "cool stuff" that even seriously burned out MMO players like many of us don't mind.

[AcidCat]

after all you do spend at least .001% of your total time played going through that experience.

These days an MMO that neglects its newbie experience is completely sabotaging itself. You can't just offer up something completely generic with vague promises that the fun starts later. As we all know the bar for quality in an MMO has been raised, and there is an awful lot of choice out there for what to play now and in the next year. A newbie experience that does not have some kind of hook is going to sink your game, period. If your quests are a bit generic, you have to compensate with something else. For example if your combat is really fun right away, I don't think many players will mind the "go fetch/kill X" - but if you have generic quests in a generic world with generic combat ... well good luck. Only the hardcore will maintain enough interest to get past the newbie experience, everyone else thinks "I've played this before and this is boring" and finds another game.

[Venkman]

The only thing that stops quests in big budget single player RPGs being anything different is better writing, better animation, scripted triggers that change the environment, and more one off graphical effects.

And the combat and movement system.

I want a PvP game that throws me at PvP right away, not making me work through PvE first. And yes, we know why that's hard in a stats-based DIKU. But it's a dream :)

[CharlieMopps]

There were a couple of videos showing the first 5 levels greenskin play, and it looked and played exactly like WoW. Get a quest to kill 5 dwarfs, hand in. Get a quest to click on 5 barrels which spawned 5 dwarfs to kill, hand in. Get a quest to collect 5 stinky mushrooms, 5 smelly mushrooms, and 5 odoriferous mushrooms, hand in. Get a quest to collect axes off 5 dead orks, hand in. Etc. Same shit.

Maybe that's what they're retooling?

Dude, that's what EVERY quest based game is about. The way you make a better MMO is by making the "Kill 5 dwarves" part more fun. This idea that they are suddenly not have objective based game content is just silly.

You are so retarded it is obvious that they are shutting down beta to rewrite all the level 1 to 5 quests.

edit: after all you do spend at least .001% of your total time played going through that experience.

er... excuse me... but what the fucking hell are you talking about?

[bhodi]

er... excuse me... but what the fucking hell are you talking about?

Apparently, he's not familiar with the 'first 20 minutes' theory. He's trying to say levels 1-5 are unimportant.

[Murgos]

Although it's true that you will spend 100x as much time at level 20 as at level 1 you will NEVER get to level 20 if level 1 is not immediately fun.

Hence, level 1 should be as polished, entertaining and just all around amazing as you can make it.

[CharlieMopps]

er... excuse me... but what the fucking hell are you talking about?

Apparently, he's not familiar with the 'first 20 minutes' theory. He's trying to say levels 1-5 are unimportant.

I see... I know plenty of games I decided sucked before I was 20 minutes into them. lol

[waylander]

Get 5 of X doesn't bother me. It's the pointlessness why you are doing it.  Multi-steping it and putting pages of dialog is not going change that.  On the other hand, if a town was like a pet plant.  In order to grow town/plant, you feed it by completing "get 5 of X" quests for stuff in the area.  I'd eat those quests up.  Same silly quests, but with an in-game purpose.

AC2 forced players to do things and get resources to build their cities, called it player driven content, and it basically backfired on them.

I would rather have a city, and have player actions affect the productivity and/or quality of items sold or produced in that city. Then I'd feel like I was doing something if I got a quest like that.  But otherwise I agree that putting lipstick on a pig doesn't help, and in the end its still a pig.

[Salamok]

er... excuse me... but what the fucking hell are you talking about?

Apparently, he's not familiar with the 'first 20 minutes' theory. He's trying to say levels 1-5 are unimportant.

I see... I know plenty of games I decided sucked before I was 20 minutes into them. lol

Exactly and that judgement probably relied way more on how the UI looked, how captivating the game world felt as a whole and what you learned when figuring out how to make your little toon kill shit. 

My point wasn't that the 1st 20 minutes don't matter, my point was that QUESTS that occur in the 1st 20 minutes don't need to be some world shaking scripted event.  A prime example of this is in Everquest where your 1st retarded quest is taking a piece of paper to your class trainer.  This isn't a "omgz how awesome is this game type of quest" but it does point out to you that yes here is the class trainer and he is important to the game.  It also tries to prevent a bunch of level 5's running around with zero class skills saying this game is teh suck because they didn't even know class skills existed. 

[bhodi]

My point wasn't that the 1st 20 minutes don't matter, my point was that QUESTS that occur in the 1st 20 minutes don't need to be some world shaking scripted event.  A prime example of this is in Everquest where your 1st retarded quest is taking a piece of paper to your class trainer.  This isn't a "omgz how awesome is this game type of quest" but it does point out to you that yes here is the class trainer and he is important to the game.  It also tries to prevent a bunch of level 5's running around with zero class skills saying this game is teh suck because they didn't even know class skills existed. 

And I STILL don't agree. You've only got one chance to make a great first impression, and the amount of effort devs put into the first few quests is a good indicator of where the rest of the game is headed. If you pop in, get a welcome box, and are handed a sword and pointed at a "Monsters! -->" sign, that's a bit different than WoW's alliance dwarf/gnome begining that starts you in Dun Morough,  immediately embroiled in local wildlife incursion. Look at the entrance to WoW's Outlands, getting dumped right in the middle of a warzone.

It's a great way to introduce the local color of the game world and, while game mechanic introduction is necessary to new players, it should be heavily laced with interesting dialog and quests. If the devs don't put any more effort than "Welcome, fresh meat, go kill 10 wildlife_name and come back, and then take this note to your class trainer so we can teach you how to train", there is NO indication that the "fun" is ever going to be more than that.

[Venkman]

Imagine EQ1 launching today with updated graphics but otherwise how it existed in, say, Luclin era. Now compare it to your first experience in, say, CoX, LoTRO or Alliance-side WoW.

There is no comparison.

The "first 20 minutes" are not what the UI looks like, how well the graphics play on your PC, how easy and intuitive the UI is ("intuitive" being entirely measured by focusing either on off-the-street player or veteran-MMO-player), nor what first quest/line is. It's all of these things together. They don't just capture you into the game. They theoretically give you insights into what you can expect later.

Until the level cap.

But that's a story you don't want to tell anyone anyway :)

[sam, an eggplant]

Yep, it's the full experience. WoW raised the bar; its popularity means that many consumers trying out your new MMO are already experienced in the genre. If your newbie experience isn't significantly superior to WoW's, say goodbye to retention.

[Salamok]

My point wasn't that the 1st 20 minutes don't matter, my point was that QUESTS that occur in the 1st 20 minutes don't need to be some world shaking scripted event.  A prime example of this is in Everquest where your 1st retarded quest is taking a piece of paper to your class trainer.  This isn't a "omgz how awesome is this game type of quest" but it does point out to you that yes here is the class trainer and he is important to the game.  It also tries to prevent a bunch of level 5's running around with zero class skills saying this game is teh suck because they didn't even know class skills existed. 

And I STILL don't agree. You've only got one chance to make a great first impression, and the amount of effort devs put into the first few quests is a good indicator of where the rest of the game is headed. If you pop in, get a welcome box, and are handed a sword and pointed at a "Monsters! -->" sign, that's a bit different than WoW's alliance dwarf/gnome begining that starts you in Dun Morough,  immediately embroiled in local wildlife incursion. Look at the entrance to WoW's Outlands, getting dumped right in the middle of a warzone.

It's a great way to introduce the local color of the game world and, while game mechanic introduction is necessary to new players, it should be heavily laced with interesting dialog and quests. If the devs don't put any more effort than "Welcome, fresh meat, go kill 10 wildlife_name and come back, and then take this note to your class trainer so we can teach you how to train", there is NO indication that the "fun" is ever going to be more than that.

Comparing the starting experience in TBC where you have to at least be level 58 to even go through it isn't really a valid comparison to a new game dealing with level 1 players who don't know up from down.  

Another WoW example, there can be no doubt that alliance has far more of the early level polish that you deem as so necessary than horde does, yet horde has no problems attracting players and many people (myself included) prefer the horde side.  

The things I remember from my 1st time leveling 1-5 in WoW are:


#1 - Man this world is bright and colorful, It makes EQ look downright gloomy and depressing.

#2 - Combat rocks compared to EQ!  More buttons to smash +  mobs going down faster + no time spent medding/healing = more fun than EQ.

#3 - Digging the big yellow marks telling me what NPCs to talk to but damn this slow ass scrolling text, give me the quest already!

#4- Sweet I can scroll the camera out and not see the inside of my skull or back of my eyeballs.  Oh nm I didn't fully appreciate that until I left WoW and started playing VG beta which brought on a few EQ flashbacks.

[Abelian75]

...horde has no problems attracting players...

Um.

[Salamok]

...horde has no problems attracting players...

Um.

The numbers I have used to arrive at my conclusions have been adjusted to account for the mob of retarded (but loyal) fans of the paladin class.  These are the players that will choose the paladin class prior to reading a single lick of game related material, I'm not sure they were even aware that there was an alliance/horde choice at the beginning of the game until TBC came out.

[eldaec]

My point wasn't that the 1st 20 minutes don't matter, my point was that QUESTS that occur in the 1st 20 minutes don't need to be some world shaking scripted event.  A prime example of this is in Everquest where your 1st retarded quest is taking a piece of paper to your class trainer.  This isn't a "omgz how awesome is this game type of quest" but it does point out to you that yes here is the class trainer and he is important to the game.  It also tries to prevent a bunch of level 5's running around with zero class skills saying this game is teh suck because they didn't even know class skills existed. 

Computer games, MMOGs or otherwise, need to be more like Bond films.

By which, I mean one of the key, set piece OMFGWTFWASTHAT moments, should occur in the first 3 minutes.


Games should have teasers.

[Salamok]

My point wasn't that the 1st 20 minutes don't matter, my point was that QUESTS that occur in the 1st 20 minutes don't need to be some world shaking scripted event.  A prime example of this is in Everquest where your 1st retarded quest is taking a piece of paper to your class trainer.  This isn't a "omgz how awesome is this game type of quest" but it does point out to you that yes here is the class trainer and he is important to the game.  It also tries to prevent a bunch of level 5's running around with zero class skills saying this game is teh suck because they didn't even know class skills existed. 

Computer games, MMOGs or otherwise, need to be more like Bond films.

By which, I mean one of the key, set piece OMFGWTFWASTHAT moments, should occur in the first 3 minutes.


Games should have teasers.

I agree totally, I just think that the "OMFGWTFWASTHAT moment" shouldn't be couched in a level 5 quest that never gets repeated.   

[tazelbain]

CoH's travel powers were like that, although not in the first 20mins.

[sam, an eggplant]

The entire game should consist of OMFGWTFWASTHAT moments interspersed with tons of exploration, meaningful decisions, and lore.

[Salamok]

The entire game should consist of OMFGWTFWASTHAT moments interspersed with tons of exploration, meaningful decisions, and lore.

If you make combat an OMFGWTFWASTHAT experience then this job just became a lot less daunting.

[Musashi]

CoH's travel powers were like that, although not in the first 20mins.

The hook there was character creation.  I probably spent my first two hours in that game deciding what kind of hero I wanted by fucking around with it.  By that time, it didn't really matter what the game play was.  I was already over the 20 minute rule.  I know why other games don't do this robust a character creation process.  But I also think they're dumb.

[eldaec]

I know why other games don't do this robust a character creation process.

Is it because clicking on 'elf' is just as exciting?

[UnSub]

CoH's travel powers were like that, although not in the first 20mins.

The hook there was character creation.  I probably spent my first two hours in that game deciding what kind of hero I wanted by fucking around with it.  By that time, it didn't really matter what the game play was.  I was already over the 20 minute rule.  I know why other games don't do this robust a character creation process.  But I also think they're dumb.

Probably the biggest reason is that CoH took a risk in breaking the connection of abilities = appearance. Your character can start out looking like they've got the best armour and weapons (tll I11, anyway) but your appearance doesn't change what you can do. Most MMOs rely on players equipping loot to change the appearance of their character models so don't bother with much in the way in customisation - an orc is an orc is an orc.

However, CoH proved their system works and is a huge draw. I'm hopeful that MMOs moving forward will think about what this means to their character creation system and perhaps hybridise it to some extent - that you can select your appearance / weapons from the start, but then attach items to / level up your weapons and armour that still sees loot as being important.

[Trippy]

However, CoH proved their system works

Yes.

and is a huge draw.

No.

[UnSub]

However, CoH proved their system works

Yes.

and is a huge draw.

No.

I think the people who keep making alt after alt after alt would disagree.

Ok, maybe 'draw' was the wrong world. Substitute 'hugely beneficial for retention' and 'a major talking point' and 'an innovation that all MMORPGs should consider best practise' instead.

[Venkman]

Stickiness is the word you're looking for :)

[tazelbain]

Of course, YMMV.  The character creation was neat, but travel powers was jaw-dropping to me.

[Kirth]

Neither chain is superior, they give out different rewards in both items and notoriety. Adding scripted events and actual choices that have an impact on their own gameplay serves to immerse the player in the game. It would feel like they had an impact on the world.

The kill 5 dwarf quests I saw did not have anything like this, no. The newbie chain was kill 5 dwarfs, collect 5 axes, tip over 5 barrels, all in the same area, all boilerplate. Then once they finished that area, go to the mines and collect 5 stinky mushrooms, kill 5 caveslugs, etc. Very thinly veiled boilerplate MMO garbage.

Sorry if I misread your post Salamok. From what I've heard, the rest of the game is pretty much the same thing, but not being in the beta, I only had the 1-5 game to talk about.

I terms of where you are in the game at level one , i.e. a foot solider starting out. I think I'd rather have the kill x , collect x type stuff rather then the scripted encounters. I don't want to engage a quest only to see 5-50 people at various stages in the script. The Public Quest system sound interesting, Like WoW dailies but with a shared goal.

[Nebu]

I definately prefer to play in a game world where I can tell who is who by looking at the toon itself and not the name above its head.  Some games have it, some don't.  This is one of the shortcomings of WoW for me.  Too little customization and too many people looking identical at the endgame.

[shiznitz]

The problem is I don't even know if I would like to be able to customize the look of my character in a fantasy MMORPG right off the bat. What is loot had ZERO appearance impact in EQ1/2 unless you chose to show the look of your equipped gear? Is it ok to allow a level 1 warrior to start the game in cool spiked plate? I don't see why not, but that doesn't mean everyone else agrees. Would you allow mages to appear armored even if they are wearing robes? EQ2 now has two equipment slots: one for stats and one for looks. People love this since the gear one finds tends to not match at all.

I just don't know how to handle it. Superheroes are one things since the powers are usually independent of the outfit. The best way to probably approach it in a fantasy game is have a few archetypes limit the initial costume options, i.e. no metal armor for mages and no robes for fighters, but offer a lot of flexibility in between.  What about a skill-based system where there are no classes? In the end, the more customization allowed early, the more value players will place on small appearance changes later in the game.

[Venkman]

EQ2 is getting this right, where what you wear for use is different from what you were for look. I'm quite honestly surprised it took so long for a game to come around to this. But it also feels like a hack.

Designers spend a LOT of time making this stuff look good. And nobody sets out to make an ugly character. But the games require it sometimes because it's all about the stats. So rather than having stat decisions drive the ugly, change how armor is designed.

You can broaden the style consideration so that more pieces work together. You can make it so that each piece of an entire set doesn't require the same level of investment. You could make the Robe and Helmet hard to get but the Shoulders, Gloves and Boots BOE world drops and crafted stuff. Why can't "the best" be a combination of multiple paths rather than the same forsaken raid over and over and over. Why should only the 4-hour-a-nighter look good.

And integrate the EQ2 "what you look like" system, as a separate element, with clothing that can only be crafted.

Someone is going to ask if this is worth the effort. I say most people accept that they can't always be pretty but definitely would want to look better if given the choice. CoX proves this in spades. Imagine where that game would be without the customization.

[Salamok]

And integrate the EQ2 "what you look like" system, as a separate element, with clothing that can only be crafted.

Um if I was raiding endlessly I think I would like my shinies to show, if you want to wear your home spun vest with the intricate embrodery go for it but don't shit in my cheerios.

Personally I think a better approach is user customizable colors (armor die) combined with a greater variety of armor models and maybe some user customization available to the model itself.  In PvP I don't want to engage something that looks like a tank and turns out to be a squishy either. 

Also, part of the reward of the shinies is also so your character doesn't look like you just rolled him yesterday.