Schilling's Green Monster Games

[stray]

Sorry for the rant, but I gotta play Mass Market Evangelist sometimes. Without them, you don't get the WoWs. And without the WoWs, you don't get the old guard like SOE to change their screw-the-consumer policies.

There are no "WoWs". There is only one WoW. And if that is mass market, then good luck on seeing it again. It's tremendously expensive for anybody to do, and tremendously expensive to have the influential, industry wide effect you think it will. In the end, it's no model to follow except for Blizzard themselves.

Uh, nevermind, Curt just said in a recent interview that their main title (there are others?) has a $60 million budget. Link.

[Nebu]

Seems like a scary precident to make a game with a budget like that.  Creation of expectations, direct comparisons, etc.  I'd think making a lower-budget niche product would be a nice way to generate a following and then up the ante from there.  Then again, what do I know... I'm not the one with the bags-o-cash. 

[Margalis]

VCs aren't interested in niche products.

[WindupAtheist]

I just caused Curt Schilling from the Red Sox to get into a fight over whether Drizzt sucks or not.

I'm awesome.

I do like the fact that CS will come out swinging at random internet nerds to defend his friend.  It's gallant, in a naive sort of way.

[Strazos]

Oh, this is a nice thread. I would like some more.

/spectate

And damnit, everyone already hit on most of the good points. Popularity CERTAINLY does not equal quality. A quick glance of the pop culture landscape of the US will tell you as much.

Also, while I do not believe that Salvatore is an exceptional writer as far as professional writing goes, I don't necessarily believe he is a bad writer. Then again, I've really only read his work in the last year or so, so I haven't had to go through the years and years of fanbois doing terrible, terrible things to me with his work as inspiration. But in his defense, at least with the Drizzt material, I think the reason behind the dip in quality of the writing and storytelling is WOTC: they put a lot of pressure on him to pump out more Drizzt books for the masses to eat up. If you look at the Canticle or Jarlaxle materials, you can really see a difference, especially when compared to some of the silly emo nonsense centered around Wulfgar. Fack that shit; the portions of the book that were not about Wulfgar were more entertaining than the parts that were. "Oh, another damn crybaby Wulfgar chapter?" /skim "Crying some more, whining some more...yawn."

Having said that, Salvatore might be just what the MMO industry needs, because frankly, writing in every MMO I have ever played has ranged very extremely mediocre to Utter Shit. The kind of shit I could have written in 7th grade study hall. WoW is a prime example of this.

It's nice that you're trying to do something which you feel so strongly about, and that you're willing to defend people who you think highly of...but in all honesty, we're here to talk about the games. Until you have something substantial to show or tell us...there's not really a whole lot to talk about (in this particular thread).

[Venkman]

There are no "WoWs". There is only one WoW. And if that is mass market, then good luck on seeing it again. It's tremendously expensive for anybody to do, and tremendously expensive to have the influential, industry wide effect you think it will. In the end, it's no model to follow except for Blizzard themselves.

Yes, as we've been talking about. WoW raised the bar to a level almost nobody else can reach, except other industries entirely. But here's the rub, you can move the emphasis of that statement: WoW raised the bar to a level almost nobody else can reach, except other industries entirely.

So who can? People or groups with a message promising enough to open wallets. Like licenses or other major IP, big known personalities regardless of their experience in the space. If Donald Trump decided to make an MMO, he'd easily get the cash needed. Same with Curt Shilling. Just him being known is enough, like why so many people followed SWG in the early days because of Raph, but at a much much bigger scale.

This is the future for AAA client-app based MMOs. You want a big success you needs to spend the big cash. And the ways to get that cash require much more than a tech team technically capable of delivering an experience. And of course this drives dikus.

But there's other ways to deliver MMOs, cheaper, faster, in more territories. I suspect the vast majority of new titles will go this route, either as indies, for niche groups, as browser-based, or whatever. However, the ones that bubble to the top of the media hype will be ala WoW.

That's not good or bad. It's just the sign of maturity in a genre.

[Moorgard]

Compelling plots get players through a game the first time. But the persistence of MMO requires a lot more content than any single compelling storyline can deliver. It's not writing a story. It's writing way many concurrent stories that can be compelling both in momentary chunks and in aggregate, both at launch and years later, both alone and in large groups.

Agreed. I'd also add that inspiring the players to create their own stories is even more important, because that is what ultimately creates a personal tie to the game world.

Back story isn't that big a deal. Every MMO has a back story. Few have a forward story, though.

[Falconeer]

Looks like some of the things from the Vanguard thread intertwined what's being said here.

I so much agree with what Moorgard just said that I push myself to say that I look forward to the day where I won't need Corpse Runs, Trains and PvP anymore to have myself surprised at a MMORPG.
It's good to have Salvatore to eventually build a nice and rich backstory, but that's not nearly enough for a good game in the post WoW era.
More power to the players, more interactivity with these supposed virtual worlds, please. (And go Moorgard, I am an old time fan )

[Ironwood]

Salvatore isn't a very good writer.

I can link you to some of my equally bad writings, should you desire.

 

[Cheddar]

GMG needs to get one or two of my favorite Dev rockstars so I can fanboi over them.  Or do something good; doubtful, though. 

Also, please note you may post outside your little thread.  Pull up a seat, have some tea, and lets get to know each other! 

[Soln]

"Our flagship product has a 55- to 60 million dollar budget. "


Ok.  I have some goodwill towards these guys just based on who they are (and Steve and Ryan for being on board).  But first title, 55-60M?   Why??  Maybe this is the total budget to also set up their studio?  Hope so.  Cause otherwise, isn't that insanely risky?  I though their first offering would be something maybe 1/4 or less than that.  I doubt Raph has 1/4 of that budget for his new thing, whatever it may be.  Are they also planning to be a publisher?  Are they hosting this title and doing CS? 

[Merusk]

Risky for your average game company, sure.  Insanely so.  Now think about how much name-recog just McFarlane, Schilling and Salvatore have for VC and toss in whatever amount of their personal fortunes they might want to risk.   They could probably toss more cash at it, should the want, but why?

It does mean they have to do far better than a smaller game on their first attempt, but how many companies have even HAD more than one attempt?  Now how many have actually improved on that second attempt?   Best to just blow the wad on the first go, IMO, because you're not getting a second chance to mark your territory.

[HRose]

Back story isn't that big a deal. Every MMO has a back story. Few have a forward story, though.

And there's a more than good reason. I had written something about this that I haven't put anywhere. I call it "time freeze".

Current mmorpgs are all stuck on a "time freeze", time never advances, nor rolls back. Mmorpgs worlds are "snapshots" of a situation. There's a story, a present and the future, but the time is frozen in a given moment. There's a reason: in order to maintain the game fresh for every player, always.

It's a necessity in order to preserve the game on its "best" state no matter when you join. It's a necessity to preserve the quality of the experience and so that all players receive equal treatment.

[Trippy]

Back story isn't that big a deal. Every MMO has a back story. Few have a forward story, though.

And there's a more than good reason. I had written something about this that I haven't put anywhere. I call it "time freeze".

Current mmorpgs are all stuck on a "time freeze", time never advances, nor rolls back. Mmorpgs worls are "snapshots" of a situation. There's a story, a present and the future, but the time is frozen in a given moment. There's a reason: in order to maintain the game fresh for every player, always.

It's a necessity in order to preserve the game on its "best" state no matter when you join. It's a necessity to preserve the quality of the experience and so that all players receive equal treatment.

No, in some MMORPGs time does move forward, albeit very haltingly. The canonical example is the Sleeper's Tomb in EQ though they also destroyed one of the starting cities as well (can't remember if it was the Troll or Ogre one, that was after my time). WoW has those gates that you have to open as a server-wide event, and AC1 has an ongoing storyline though I don't know how many "permanent" changes result from that.

[Margalis]

The most fun I had in FFXI was when my friend wanted to get out of a dungeon fast and just ran by every enemy, causing a huge train. Of course my friend was level 55 or so and I was level 20...I ended up with 7 HP and poisoned yelling at my other friend in the next room to run over and heal me. Ended up making it out with both of us at under 10 hp IIRC.

Why I mention this? Because if you read the thread we had before about favorite moments, nearly all of them are like that - not story related at all.

[stray]

Why I mention this? Because if you read the thread we had before about favorite moments, nearly all of them are like that - not story related at all.

I came to the conclusion that I can only have fun in a dungeon if I have a shitty tank on my team. The chaos and unpredictability turns it into a real game.

[HRose]

No, in some MMORPGs time does move forward, albeit very haltingly. The canonical example is the Sleeper's Tomb in EQ though they also destroyed one of the starting cities as well (can't remember if it was the Troll or Ogre one, that was after my time). WoW has those gates that you have to open as a server-wide event, and AC1 has an ongoing storyline though I don't know how many "permanent" changes result from that.

Yes, but those are exceptions, not the rule.

In general there's a displacement between the story of the world and the story of the player. While the "world" is frozen, the player is not, and the personal story advances.

For example WoW uses levels to make time pass. There are quest chains where "time advances". So leveling is a way to make time advance and story develop. Even if the world is still frozen.

A perfect example of this is a quest in the Draenei starting zone. They ask you to go neutralize the effect that one broken part of the spaceship is having on the water. You go there, neutralize the effect and then they thank you, saying that they'll then pull off the broken piece entirely off the water the day after. Now, we all know that the huge spaceship piece in the lake will never be removed, because time is frozen. New players will join months and years later, the spaceship piece will be still there and the NPC will continue to offer the same quest. But for the player who completed that quest, the world "changed". He saved the lake and his people, the story had a development and soon he will be in another zone continuing his own story and continuing to accomplish things.

The point here is that this player isn't supposed to return and see that the spaceship piece is still in the lake. WoW is supposed to *keep you moving forward and never look back*. Levels reproduce the passing of time, so there's this displacement between the characters and the world.

The final point is that the world is RICH of stories. These stories are frozen on a snapshot, but even that snapshot has a present and a future. And the passing of time is then modeled through the leveling. So, from the perspective of your character, the story advances and you have an impact on the world. You stop plagues, save citizens, discover and defeat conspiracies and so on...

So WoW is RICH of stories. Also of stories that develop. What actually misses is a world that the players have an effect upon, that they can use to achieve their own goals, that they could conquer and proclaim their own.

Which is PvP.

[Margalis]

I came to the conclusion that I can only have fun in a dungeon if I have a shitty tank on my team. The chaos and unpredictability turns it into a real game.

Yep. Unpredictability is the spice of life. Once you get tanks that can keep aggro perfectly it comes down wash-rinse-repeat for every encounter. The most fun you have in combat in when the tank sucks or dies, the healer grabs aggro, you get an unexpected add, etc.

If I were making a MMORPG the #1 thing I would do is make MOBs less predictable.

The fun experiences players have are nearly always things outside the norm, but optimal MMORPG combat is predicated on getting into an easily repeatable pattern.

[Venkman]

I love unpredictability, but that can only work in games where you don't kill mobs to gain XP to gain levels to gain new abilities. I really think skills-based games (or player-skill-based games) are much better for that. I don't feel you need PvP for unpredictability either. You just need to program smarter AI (which seems to not be done on purpose) in games that don't use those as the only/primary gate to eventual advancement. For example, all advancement comes from quests/missions, the mobs only drop crafter-quality WYSIWYG loot, and otherwise offer no game mechanic advancement. THEN you could make them smart, because players aren't relying on their predictability to achieve the next foozle.

On story:

The only game I can think of that was to truly show a progression of time was cancelled years ago. The core element of instantiated zones in Microsoft's Mythica (they gave that up for Vanguard?!) was that once you did a zone, that was it for you. You come back and it looks like you left it, but with something new. So you knock down some towers and bridges (they were using Havok physics for the zones, ala AA later) and they stay knocked down. True progression.

Of course, they hadn't figured out how to ensure that progress would work in various group configurations with people who did the first steps or only the fifth. And we've already discussed EQ2's thoughts on showing the same zone but with different content to two different people standing next to each other at the same time. WoW uses RaidIDs, but those reset anyway. And everyone else just resets until they hardcode a progress step. Persistent public spaces and time-forwardness don't work well together, but neither is instantiated zones easy to handled unless a) the player or players group never change; or, b) it's all solo content.

Progressive time is hard. The closest I think anyone's come is AC1, buf even that was Trippy's "haltingly" progressive.

Agreed. I'd also add that inspiring the players to create their own stories is even more important, because that is what ultimately creates a personal tie to the game world.

Hey Moorgard.

Yes, this is the thing that keeps MMOs interesting to me. Player stories. Everyone has them, whether it's Falconeer's accounts in VG or my energy business in SWG. The trouble seems to be that people want a story-based engine in a game as part of the game mechanic. Right now, stories are only the personal experiences players have while playing a much lighter (relatively) game mechanic.

[stray]

You don't need better AI. Challenging games and enemies have been made with or without good AI.

90 percent of the time, the key strategy in mmo combat is just to hold aggro and heal. Instead of that, you can could make different kinds of mob types that require jump attacks to the head (dealing with 10 or so at a time could be hard), or ones that need some kind of debuffing mechanism or power attack to take any damage at all. Or whatever. The sky's the limit. Every mob type should have a gimmick. If MMO combat can offer this, then that's already a big step.

Secondly, people need to realize that real fighting is more about blocking, dodging, parrying, and countering more than it is just attacking, and hoping your hits are harder than the other guy's. Put some damn manual defensive moves in these games (for the players, as well as the mobs).

In this respect, yeah, AI is needed a bit (but not a lot). Mobs should realize if you're repeating the same attacks over and over again, and start blocking you. You shouldn't be rewarded for being a spamming dumbass (but considering that these games are really just about the rewards, and not the experience, there's a fat chance of that happening, I guess).

Good boss fights in games generally come down to avoiding them until they open up a weak spot. The challenge is in recognizing when and where that happens. Doesn't matter if it's Castlevania, Gradius, God of War, Metal Gear, or Paper Mario. Every game with boss fighting has done it this way. Except MMO's. And it's usually not about AI, but concealed patterns (which the player has to figure out).

But anyways, if that's not going to happen, then the best I have is recruiting shitty tanks and healers. Because playing the right way isn't fun at all.

[Margalis]

I love unpredictability, but that can only work in games where you don't kill mobs to gain XP to gain levels to gain new abilities

How so? I'm saying unpredictability, not impossibility. If being unpredictable makes levelling slower you can always raise XP rates to compensate. (If groups are wiping more often say)

I do think a certain class of people who want to simply do as little as possible and keep levelling might complain, but my guess is that group is smaller than most folks think.

Edit: About smarter AI, how about just *different* AI for different mobs? Or just *slightly* smarter. Let's see...should I attack the guy who has high defense and low damage output, or the guy that has low defense and high damage output? TOUGH ONE.

If I'm a dog maybe I don't think about things like that, but an Orc probably should...

I agree with Stray in that different mobs should behave differently. This is how it works in pretty much every other genre. Bullet Bill travels straight and fast, Lakitu throws Spinys you can't jump on, and you can't fireball Buzzy Beetle. Welcome to 1985.

You don't need some super-fancy AI, just some different behaviors for different mobs with a bit of randomization. We aren't talking training some amazing neural net, I feel silly even calling it "AI."

How about this: enemy mobs should try to actually win the fight! That would be a start.

I can sketch out a bunch of behavior models that would be different, fun, and easy to implement.

[Venkman]

You don't need better AI. Challenging games and enemies have been made with or without good AI.

...

In this respect, yeah, AI is needed a bit (but not a lot).

My work here is done :) Seriously though, I'm not asking for anything that hasn't already been done. I'm just asking that the AI learnings from other genres start making their way here, in games that support them.

And definitely agree different mobs should behave and react differently. I can kill 95% of the soloable mobs in WoW with exactly the same sequence of abilities, with or without crits. And the rest are the same for groups. Every mob can be backwards engineered for their underlying pattern.

How so? I'm saying unpredictability, not impossibility. If being unpredictable makes levelling slower you can always raise XP rates to compensate. (If groups are wiping more often say)

Great for 1-{one level before cap}. I totally agree with you and Stray (and probably most here). But I'm thinking about endgame Raiding. Raiding is group-grinding for drops. Everything else happens as a result of this core. And grinding requires predictability because the first reason everyone is there is for their shot at a drop.

Nowhere near everyone Raids. But if that's the only thing to do at the endgame, then the people who are doing it need to not hate it. You can't have people hate the endgame and expect the rest of the players to bother trying to achieve it :)

[stray]

then the people who are doing it need to not hate it

I would do it if raid bosses behaved like a real video game boss. Instead, they generally behave like the same stupid mob you've been fighting since level 1, except with 50,000 more hitpoints.

And grinding requires predictability because the first reason everyone is there is for their shot at a drop.

I say there needs to be a paradigm shift then. It's a novel idea actually:

Make video games for actual gamers. Instead of loot whores and achievers.

Make the experience count just as much as the result of the experience.

[schild]

I would do it if raid bosses behaved like a real video game boss. Instead of the same stupid monster you've been fighting since level 1, except with 50,000 more hitpoints.

Sup Reason the Genre is Largely Fucked.

[Samwise]

From what I hear, WoW bosses actually have a fair amount in common with platformy bosses; they have different "stages" they progress through as you hurt them, with different attacks for each stage, and hence different strategies to avoid them.  Like this thing.

Of course, I'd never get within a mile of a WoW raid because the requirement of getting 60 people together so you can camp the keymaster foozle or whatever is an insurmountable cockblock IMO.   

[Margalis]

Preach it Stray!!

Question to ask yourself: is this fun if I'm not going up levels?

I don't play Super Mario because by stomping on a turtle 10000 times I can gain the ability to shoot 3 fireballs in a row instead of 2...I play because stomping on turtles is fun in itself.

I have no problem with XP, level based systems, etc. But don't make that the point.

If you stripped out the XP gain from a MMORPG, the core mechanics would only be fun for about 15 minutes. Literally the exact same encounter repeated tens of thousands of times throughout the entire game.

I would love to see someone develop a MMORPG with that in mind: every thing you do should be fun in itself. Fighting a mob should be fun! Riding a horse should be fun! Not just a means to an end.

I've never heard anyone complain that the turtles in Mario are a content cockblock.

[Samwise]

Sigged.

[stray]

Personally, I'd like to see a raid dungeon not have any big mobs at all. Make it more like a group platformer, or something out of the Goonies. Have all kinds of cliffs, gaps, puzzles, obstacles, and traps to get through. Make it feel like a team hiking/mountain climbing experience or something. And then make the last room at the end an unguarded treasure room.

[Raging Turtle]

Lemmings: The MMORPG?

[stray]

That would be a HUGE step up  :-D

[EDIT]

Better yet, make that dungeon the actual monster itself (it's a titan or something). The path you're traveling on would be various pieces of his body, and every obstacle is a deterrent from getting your group to it's vulnerable point. Once you get there, there'd be one face off, and one pattern the entire group has to coordinate on to figure out in killing it.

It's Shadow of the Colossus + Lemmings + applied to 10-20 member groups 

[Rasix]

I've never heard anyone complain that the turtles in Mario are a content cockblock.

Yah, but that triple jump sure is. 

I've been trying to come up with something to put here for like 30 minutes to no avail.  I just hate analogies.

I would do it if raid bosses behaved like a real video game boss. Instead, they generally behave like the same stupid mob you've been fighting since level 1, except with 50,000 more hitpoints.

I'd actual rebut with the reverse.  The mobs that you've been fighting for forever act nothing like the bosses.  WoW bosses and especially raid bosses have behaviors similar your typical video game boss. Problem is, that's not a majority of the experience.  This seems to be improving some with BC, but not enough.

You just don't see enough of that though unless you've got 39 other (now 24) friends to "enjoy" it with.

[stray]

I admit (at least from what I've heard) that raid mobs (like C'thun??) are a step in the right direction. Lots of crap to get to that point though (too little, too late imo).

Also, one of the things I was interested in hearing about BC was whether they had improved all instance bosses (not just the biggies). I thought that maybe if they recruited some good content designers for their latest raids, then there'd be some trickling down of those techniques for most of the content in the expansion. Doesn't seem to be the case though, unfortunately.

[pxib]

I would love to see someone develop a MMORPG with that in mind: every thing you do should be fun in itself. Fighting a mob should be fun! Riding a horse should be fun! Not just a means to an end.

Puzzle Pirates does it for one audience, Planetside for another. Everybody has different ideas about what's "fun"... but we all undestand achievement. When you want to attract a broad base of subscribers, it's safer and easier to lean on the latter than the former.

[Soln]

I don't know about story.  It's one of those things I always wished was better, but the whole necessity of repetition for other players means that there's never any personalization, and the best chance for "emergent" character development we can all hope for is exactly the world events HRose was talking about.  And that's pretty thin.  I think all MMO players are pretty jaded when it comes to lore and story.  Anyone who can move the needle even a little on this will probably capture a lot of attention.  If GMG can distinguish themselves alone on story, they'll probably start off well.


To me, the challenges for MMO's are really technical.  Really creative people who can come up with novel methods of capturing my attention, while still sticking to current technical methods will always probably be successful.  BUT they're going to be forever in WoW's shadows and thus niche to most analysts and gamers.  They can't innovate really because they're held back by what their architectures can provide.  Those companies which can first get their db architectures right, for a highly scabale, highly reliable environments will have an advantage.  The game designers that want to have personalization (of some kind) could do it, if everything is not dumbed down to common event and wandering monster tables.  Similarly on the graphics side.  Two examples of this come to mind -- first, Blizzard by going away from the trend for photorealism and thus not having to have bulky, slow rendering clients (and most players think graphics lag is actually caused by the provider's network); and Areanet/NCSoft by going away from the open world and fat protocols model to a hub&spoke design and an on demand (push) service for content updates.   

I don't think a lot of game design innovation we want is going to be possible until more providers think first about the performance of what they can deliver versus worrying only about the title's content or unique DIKU spin.  Just my bias.

[Samwise]

Personally, I'd like to see a raid dungeon not have any big mobs at all. Make it more like a group platformer, or something out of the Goonies. Have all kinds of cliffs, gaps, puzzles, obstacles, and traps to get through. Make it feel like a team hiking/mountain climbing experience or something. And then make the last room at the end an unguarded treasure room.

DDO had a couple of really cool dungeons that were like that, with traps requiring some mix of character skill and player skill (e.g. platformy timing and jumping puzzles) to get through unharmed, and enemies that could for the most part be stealthed around if you were stealthy.  I had a lot of fun playing as a rogue during beta, both solo (trying to make it through the entire dungeon without having one kobold spot me) and in groups (sneaking ahead of the rest of the group, disarming traps, picking locks, and getting myself in position to take out the spellcasters right as the big melees started).  Then they nerfed rogues all to shit and I stopped playing.