|
Definitely. I don't want new players to get a ton of abilities dumped on them during or right after the tutorial, either. Causing choice paralysis in your players this way is bad game design. With "early" I meant more like within the first 6 hours of normal gameplay. Which is 2 or 3 sessions for regular human beings or one for the average MMO playing goon  . More than enough time to get used to the gameplay, the individual skills and maybe even experiment with skill to find combos that work for you.
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 18:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 12:04 |
|
|
Last Transmission posted:Now about implementing story quests instead of those awful fetch quests that plague our MMOs. What do you think happens when you revisit the content with another character? You know the story already and generally just want it over with to get the mechanical rewards for finishing it. It is possible to provide alternate routes or mutually exclusive chains to keep things fresh when the player revisits that portion of the content again but then you run into problems of practicality. Do you want your developers to spend their time to make new content for everyone or to make alternate content for those that revisit a specific piece of your game world? There are also games of other genres that work relatively similarly. Look at Phantasy Star Online. The original Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast had four areas. A good player could probably finish all four areas on all three difficulty levels, as well as all the side-quests in about a month. Eleven years and four expansions later, and there's still a pretty active and devoted fanbase for the game. I've been playing the game since PSOv2, and I still enjoy it today. Why? Because the mechanics, the distinct character types, the variety of weapons and equipment to hunt, and the way playing with different people fundamentally changed the experience of the game made it never lose its charm. A combination of good content, enjoyable mechanics, and a variety of ways to play can go a long way.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 19:08
|
|
|
Balance is my biggest complaint with the current crop of MMOs. Why bother having so many options if only 1 is right at any given time? At this point in the MMO scene character development options are all superficial at best. End game content isn't tuned for the average player, its tuned for the power gamers. Nobody wants to have fun on raids or in PvP. Its all about overpowering the system and as much as I want to blame the playerbase for it, the game design is inherently flawed to allow this to happen. Also, today's hardware is build around multithreading. Why can't the MMO industry take notice and start developing for it. I think at this point we're more likely to see a good multithreaded MMO on consoles before we see one on PC.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 19:20
|
|
|
I like a lot of the crafting suggestions here. I think a mix of the crafting systems of EVE and vanilla SWG would be ideal for a lot of MMO's. EVE, at least pre-drone regions relied on base minerals and high end minerals. High end minerals were only mineable in hard to access systems (NPC "rat" protected) and were region specific. So, you could get economic variations due to whatever was going on in each region, this allowed for some variety in economy. SWG crafting placed resources in random rotations and you would randomly see some amazing resource pop up for a short time then vanish after a while. Using these resources of differing qualities allowed for stats bonuses to an item. The crafter would have to be on top of scanning for new and better resources, or trading for previously acquired ones. Both drove the economy and allowed for someone willing to put in effort to make a superior product. This allowed for some customization of a base recipe and economic variations that allowed for many other things. I can't see an inherent negative with this honestly.
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 19:28
|
|
|
Incoherence posted:The thing you'd need to make sure of is that your power level didn't depend (much) on your access to the later skills. For example, if you're leveling a healer, you'd put the primary healing spell pretty early in the progression, and maybe you leave the more complicated abilities for later. It would be interesting to see an MMO (or RPG in general) where each class only has a couple of active skills. Instead of gaining new ones, each skill has a massive upgrade tree that allows you to customize exactly how the spell behaves. At the start of your game, your healer has a spell which gives a few HP back to someone you click on. By the end of the game, you have a spell which heals HP to all heroes within an area of effect, cures status, and immobilizes all enemies caught within that area of effect. Another healer might have specced the spell totally differently, so it's an automatic full-heal to one character which also buffs their attack and defense and causes them to do lightning damage with physical attacks for a while. You'd gain actual new abilities over the course of the game, too, but they'd all be passive, like you choose on a skill tree whether you want to deal more damage per hit or absorb a little HP per hit.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 20:26
|
|
|
Leveling up harvesting skills (and harvesting itself), especially when you're not already in the immediate area for another purpose, is loving tedious. Imagine being in a major city and going to the docks. You right click on a nearby angler NPC or school of fish and a window pops up:  How do I get those tasty clownfish?!  Clear the seaweed, fish bones and used condoms. Those delicious clownfish fall into the net. For every 3 collected, you get 1 in the game. Or something. You gain occasional skill ups by catching fish in the net. Trash and fish keep filling the cleared spaces (coming down from the top) so you can continue skilling up/harvesting for as long as you want to play the minigame. Your skill level unlocks potentially harder minigames that award tastier fish. Free Realms has gathering like this, but you can't play that game without feeling like a pedophile. Also, no used condoms. 
Drecksky fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Aug 11, 2011 |
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 20:28
|
|
|
Drecksky posted:Clear the seaweed, fish bones and used condoms. Those delicious clownfish fall into the net. For every 3 collected, you get 1 in the game. Or something. You gain occasional skill ups by catching fish in the net. Trash and fish keep filling the cleared spaces (coming down from the top) so you can continue skilling up/harvesting for as long as you want to play the minigame. Your skill level unlocks potentially harder minigames that award tastier fish. This was similar to an idea I had for that MMORPG I described on the last page. Certain dungeons would require you to decrypt clues to progress, and you would do this by solving...like...a Picross puzzle or something. The twist is that enemies might spawn during this, so your allies would need to protect you while you work out the puzzle.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 20:39
|
|
|
It took me 4 years, but I  just to get in on this thread.Last Transmission posted:Definitely. I don't want new players to get a ton of abilities dumped on them during or right after the tutorial, either. Causing choice paralysis in your players this way is bad game design. They call this synthesis of education. Because when you play an MMO, all they're doing is teaching you how to play at the highest level of ability to prepare you for the hardest orc peon in the game. Things I'd like to see: Leveling + Skill-based character development. Levels give you points to put into skills to customize your character a la Anarchy Online. Actually, I think Anarchy Online had one of the best, although primitive, character progression mechanics. Instanced dungeons with a linear progression (WoW), huge non-instanced dungeons with a non-linear progression (EQ). More aesthetic character customization. If I can't fully like what my character looks like off the bat, I wont enjoy playing him. WoW/EQ/DAoC/AO all failed at this. CoH/V, AoC, APB did a good job at this. Open World with Fast-Travel. WoW did it pretty well in the beginning. AoC did it horribly. A a strong cessation to skinnerian based metaplay. A bunch of people have written about it, but when you have someone killing Baron Rivendare 350 times to get the magical skeletal mount, something is wrong. When you learn that the developers created the game with that sort of behavior in mind, then things start to look totally hosed.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 20:40
|
|
|
Tsurupettan posted:You know what, I wonder if the Graal files are public... Even if they aren't, I used to talk to the guy who ran the free version of Graal after it went p2p (the elven lands server I think it was?) so I could try hitting him up and asking about it. Speaking of servers, that's another thing I'd like to see an MMO do. Different servers with different content. I understand that when you're making a giant world, that you're gonna wanna get the most out of that world by making every server take you to it, but why not make a smaller, more focused and developed world, and then make more smaller, more focused, more developed worlds and have each server be a different one? This wouldn't work out for every kind of MMO but in Graal it was pretty fun since each world was a different place to explore and journey through. It provided replay value by giving you more places you could explore. Even something as simple as having a hub town like Dungeon Fighter Online does but having it differ per server would be decent enough, something to at least provide character and immersion maybe.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 20:52
|
|
|
Incoherence posted:I'm cherry-picking a bit, but this in particular is more "good game design" than "intentionally trying to gimp new players". Introducing abilities a couple at a time gives the player a bit more of a chance to understand them and what they're good for. Other game types do the same thing: FPS games will introduce one new weapon or enemy type at a time, puzzle games will introduce one new puzzle element at a time, Zelda games give you one new item at a time and gate the rest of the dungeon by requiring you to learn how to apply that weapon, and so forth. It also allows the game to build up towards the cool stuff, giving the player something to look forward to, rather than the game shooting its load too early on. The same reason you start off killing foxes at level one rather than dragons.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 21:09
|
|
|
Rocketlex posted:It would be interesting to see an MMO (or RPG in general) where each class only has a couple of active skills. Instead of gaining new ones, each skill has a massive upgrade tree that allows you to customize exactly how the spell behaves. At the start of your game, your healer has a spell which gives a few HP back to someone you click on. By the end of the game, you have a spell which heals HP to all heroes within an area of effect, cures status, and immobilizes all enemies caught within that area of effect. Another healer might have specced the spell totally differently, so it's an automatic full-heal to one character which also buffs their attack and defense and causes them to do lightning damage with physical attacks for a while. The particular problem with having only a couple of active skills is that it's really boring: it ends up like Diablo 2 where you just use the same skill in combat over and over until everything dies. If you have 3 or 4 active skills, you can build an interesting interplay between them, which lessens the tedium.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 22:03
|
|
|
I have a lot to say on this subject, and I'll bold the specific things. The idea in my head is for all of these things to work together. I'll start here-Rocketlex posted:I say screw that. MMORPGs should be designed as multiplayer experiences and require player cooperation as a core of their mechanics. I am with you as far as saying players should be able to offer each other something, but I also very much disagree that it should be through non-combat classes. Having a class that doesn't do poo poo in combat means you are a wasted slot in many, many situations, and it means people will only make that character because it has to be made. Not contributing to a fight is not fun, and it's what makes being a healer boring for a very large percentage of the MMO market. Putting in a merchant class that is expected to go on combat-oriented adventures is saying you want a class to be even more boring than healers. I have a different suggestion, and it's about keeping up with the spirit of adventure and teamwork. Give players multiple ways of accessing the same area and completing the same tasks. Dungeons and Dragons Online did this, and it did a lot of other things right too. In DDO, you will come across areas that require a strength check, lockpicking, or one of many other things in order to gain access. If you did not have the requirement in your party, you would have to take the long way, through tons and tons of enemies. You could use a trap to your own benefit by springing it on enemies, and there are some places that can be skipped if your jump skill is high enough. I do not suggest going to that length, having players put skill points into utility like that. All that does, really, is get people irritated when they put one point more than they needed into a utility skill. Minmaxing is just the way people play, and that's going to be that. Having 69 points in climbing when you need 70 makes you objectively worse than if you had only 60 (adequate for the previous level of climbing challenges) and put the other 9 points in combat stuff. Instead, give players the choice, from a wide list of possibilities, what they would like their character to be capable of doing. Each character has a selection of special abilities, such as engineering, brute strength, trap sense, sprinting, or lock picking. You can limit specific things to specific classes, so class selection automatically has a distributive effect on utility skills. Have some overlap in these, such as both brute strength and lock picking being able to break the lock on a chest, but lock picking could be used on some doors that brute strength is worthless for, and brute strength means you're capable of moving a boulder out of the way, Chris Redfield style. Another option you could lay on top of this is to offer a selection of adventuring gear that you can swap out in town. These would be available to anyone, and would have a significant cooldown that could be reset prematurely by returning to town. What this would allow you to do is achieve goals faster simply by having a party. With a properly-equipped party, you could effectively bypass lots of potentially dangerous content that might gently caress you up. THIS SHOULD NOT PREVENT A PLAYER FROM BEING ABLE TO SOLO. Sure, some content might be a little too hard for a single player. On the other hand, some content should not be rewarding enough for a full party to care about it, but would be rewarding enough for a single adventurous player to care. To sum up, a player should never be restricted from playing the loving game because they can't find people to play with. Everything I've just written comes with some additional features for it to create a proper sense of adventure. First, implement meaningful scarcity. Scarcity creates pressure. Many roguelikes use scarcity for that purpose. In order to create a proper sense of suspense, you need that pressure. The adventuring gear limitation, having a certain number of uses before restocking, is one way to implement some scarcity. If you have a limited number of explosives, you might want to save them for something more meaningful than disabling a trap. They might be more useful for triggering a landslide, clearing out part of an otherwise difficult encounter that could prove to be a much more significant setback. Scarcity effectively sets a time limit on your excursion. Everquest 1 did this by forcing the player to have food and water on them at all times. If you didn't have food and water, you wouldn't regain stamina and were basically hosed. I loving hate this. Having to carry something in your backpack that you can't actively use is retarded and just feels like wasting bag slots. As a side note here, I am against ever forcing the player to carry something in their backpack that is expected to be held permanently or is necessary for a quest. It's loving annoying. DDO implemented scarcity by having a limited amount of skill uses, hit points, and spell points. They put rest spots in dungeons that refill your spell points and skill uses, and fill a percentage of your hit points. You could only use these once, so efficient use of them was key to finishing difficult dungeons. I don't want to use that because it depends on instances for all the content, but it's a good idea. For open world, essentially what you need is a way to make it more dangerous the longer you're away from safety. There are a lot of ways to do this, but I've talked enough about that and the method you use depends on the game you're making. Second, end the quest hub town progression. Yes, there should be quests that are readily available for all characters that are openly advertised, but the process of going back and forth between a town and the surrounding environment is tired as hell. Quests are a great way to give players experience and items, but the quest progression from hub to hub is handholding to a ridiculous degree. It also greatly diminishes the scarcity aspect. Third, reward the player for completing objectives rather than by killing mobs. The objective might be to kill mobs, and that's ok, but that should be because it's part of a greater goal, like eliminating a nest of some monster. You should be able to complete that objective any way you can figure out, and be rewarded just the same as the guy who did it the killy way because killing is more suited to that character's style. Ultimately what this does is give importance to characters and players that are better suited to clever problem solving, which I personally would like to see more of. Rewards don't necessarily have to be experience points either, it could just be a very very useful item. Fourth, and this is a personal point, kill the endgame. A lot of people will disagree with me on this, but I personally had a lot more fun with games in which you could fall from grace. I hit max level in WoW, Rift, and a bunch of other games, and that's when the game got boring. As far as I'm concerned, permadeath with an account-wide bank could be the way to go. I would be happy with a game that does not have experience levels, and is purely about the ability for the player to explore and accumulate a hoard of ridiculous poo poo UO style. The game I'm describing would be a niche game. This is understood. However, in a post-WoW mmo economy, that's ok. Trying to compete with the big guys can be much more risky and less lucrative than working on a limited budget. The kind of game these standards would create could be a post-apocalyptic urban zombie survival MMO, where death is permanent and respect goes to those bands of players who manage to build some kind of a super fortress that keeps the goddamn zombies out. It could amount to what is essentially elven Indiana Jones, with a dwarven Sallah and a gnomish Short Round travelling a vast world and searching for treasure in faraway, trap-ridden places. It could be just a regular MMO that happens to be based around an infinite, randomized dungeon that players try to venture deeper and deeper into before getting eaten by a grue. See where it goes. And here I'll stop because if I don't, I'll go on for loving pages. signalnoise fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Aug 12, 2011 |
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 22:06
|
|
|
signalnoise posted:I am with you as far as saying players should be able to offer each other something, but I also very much disagree that it should be through non-combat classes. Having a class that doesn't do poo poo in combat means you are a wasted slot in many, many situations, and it means people will only make that character because it has to be made. Not contributing to a fight is not fun, and it's what makes being a healer boring for a very large percentage of the MMO market. Putting in a merchant class that is expected to go on combat-oriented adventures is saying you want a class to be even more boring than healers. You're missing the point. Expanding the role of non-combat classes means expanding the breadth of non-combat gameplay. As a knowledge-type character you have a very deep and flexible crafting system to work with, and you get experience not from killing things but rather "researching" them, and there are as many rules and systems tied to the way research works as there are to how killing things works. As a wealth-type you have an economic trading game to play (more or less depending on your class) as well enhanced traversal and stealth abilities. As a wealth-type, you can't necessarily kill enemies very well, but you can incapacitate them in various ways to get them out of your way as you stalk their catacombs for treasure. I feel like you're thinking in the very narrow mindset that RPGs center entirely around the fights. My point is to get away from this. In the MMORPG I'm suggesting, "monsters" are just one of many types of obstacles which can be thrown at players.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 22:17
|
|
|
I think MMO's could learn alot by looking at some of the more developed and supported MUDs that are around. I imagine what a game could be like with player run cities and countries, where roleplaying is a large part of the game. NPC vendors may sell basic equipment and materials, but the stores that sell anything worthwhile are owned and operated by players (or owned by, and run by hired NPCs...or even hired players). This biggest hurtle here is finding a way to remove trolls, and players who will do everything in their power to play such a a game like it was WoW. It's hard for a king to rule a country when his subjects don't give a poo poo what he says.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 22:27
|
|
|
Things I'd love to see: 1) An End to Fetch-Quests: For the love of God, why am I running around and collecting magic beans at the same level in which I'm killing ancient, immortal evils? These sorts of quests are exceedingly tedious, though are acceptable if they have a purpose other than "go here, collect X number of items." A fetch quest would be acceptable if one: the items you were fetching had an actual use for you as a player, like an item that gave you some kind of temporary bonus for collecting it; and two: it took place at lower levels only. Once you hit mid-game, you should feel like your character is strong enough to be above finding pieces of an old lady's fence that some wolves stole or some such nonsense. 2) Multiple Paths, Same Reward: If I wanted to feel like I was walking down a hallway towards a treasure chest, I could play any number of single-player games. I'd rather have the option to find different ways to the chest, different paths or choices, but all lead to the same reward. Encourage players by adding achievements for doing an instance in multiple ways. Think Assassin's Creed for this: sure, you could charge in and just kill the guy, but can you do it without being detected? Conversely, can you kill everyone to leave no witness to your deeds? 3) Randomized Instances: Instances are great, but they get real boring, real fast. Once you and your party figure out what to do, in what order and when to do it, it only takes a few "picture-perfect" runs to really kill your interest. The solution? Randomly generate the layout and pull mobs from a list, rather than having the exact same mobs running around every time. Does this make it harder to do public groups? Yes, but this encourages social interaction (albeit online social interaction) and promotes players to think on their feet, to make tactical decisions, and to become better players. 4) All Your Abilities Should Be Useful: How many of us had leveled up, all excited for the next ability or skill tier, only to find that the ability is limited in use, or that the next tier of skills are all lovely prerequisite things that you have to dump ranks into to get the skill you actually want? Make every ability, skill, spell or what-have-you worthwhile. That first level healing spell you got? At high levels, it may not heal a lot of damage, but it got an awesome buff added onto it when you hit level 10, and it increases in strength every 3 levels thereafter! 5) Break the Party Role Mold: I don't know about you guys, but when you and your friends log on all ready to party for an instance or just a casual XP grind, and you spend an hour or more "LF Healer/Tank/DPS," that poo poo sucks. Every player should have the ability to fulfill the roles the game has set forth, be it the typical Healer/Tank/DPS trinity or something entirely different. 6) Base Abilities on Level, Not Skill: Remember the first time you changed specs/jobs/classes, and you found that your skill in casting spells or swinging a sword was so low that you hit as hard as a 1st level character? Remember the massive loving grind that came with getting your skill up to par? Or worse, your main spec had so many skills that you had to spend time outside of normal grinding to grind some more to get your skills up to par? I say enough of that. If you're at the level cap in the game, and that game doesn't have an independent job-based leveling system (like FFXI and the like), you shouldn't have to run around killing trash mobs when you want to try something different. 7) Tactical Combat: Ever get a plan set up on a boss, fail a few times then just say "gently caress it, let's get more guys and zerg it?" Quality should always be more valuable than quantity. Mobs, from the trash to the boss, should be engaging and enjoyable without being tediously dragged-out. Timely use of abilities, constantly changing positions for optimal attacks on the player end; shifting combat patterns and dangerous abilities on the side of the mobs. FFXI's newer content introduced mobs that change attack patterns when you broke their weapons or shields, and WoW has some of the more engaging boss fights in any MMO; in both cases, tactics were needed to be successful, and made the encounter far more fun as a result. 8) The Gear Grind: So you got all the epic gear you could ever want (until the next big update at least), and now doing instances or dungeons are more a pain in the rear end than anything, and often times you'd rather be doing something more "productive" than spending hours getting gear for someone else? Or on the other hand, for that exact reason, no one wants to help you get gear so you find yourself undergeared until someone decides to be charitable? Solution: instead of getting gear from the dungeon, have an option that allows you to forgo getting gear at all to get substantial bonus experience, points you can collect like currency to purchase fluff items (like furniture for your house or a fancy pink dress for your character), or even better, points you can collect to spend on making your skills and your current epic gear even better. Now, suddenly, even the douchebag tank that never helps with anything because it doesn't benefit him will tank for you because it now does benefit him in one way, shape or form. 9) Crafting: crafting can be boring, but people who like to craft generally don't craft for the thrill of it, they craft for the rewards of making items themselves, to make money, or to kill time between events or dungeon-diving. Having said that, crafting should still have depth: making iron swords ad infinitum until you get your level higher is boring as hell--in addition, use crafting to create custom parts for your gear (sharper sword blades, adding sockets to gear, so on) to give you an immediate, tangible benefit in addition to crafting experience. 10) New Content: When adding new content, ensure that previous content is not made inferior by the new content. Example: were you one of those guys that spent a lot of time running Sunwell, and immediately pissed off when the first green you find is better than some of your blues and purples when WotLC came about? Did you level a two-hander DPS in FFXI, and immediately get pissed off when new content made dual-weapon critical hits became the only DPS people care about? To any developer reading this: for the love of all that is holy, stop doing this. If you have to have new, better gear because you raised the level cap, add a feature that allows you to turn in old gear found only in instances and dungeons for new items that can only be gained by turning in old gear found in old instances and dungeons. People might actually run the old instances in this case, instead of grinding it out to get some skeleton mount and throwing away everything else. TL;DR sorry for the wall of text.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 22:29
|
|
|
Rocketlex posted:You're missing the point. Expanding the role of non-combat classes means expanding the breadth of non-combat gameplay. As a knowledge-type character you have a very deep and flexible crafting system to work with, and you get experience not from killing things but rather "researching" them, and there are as many rules and systems tied to the way research works as there are to how killing things works. I see 2 options here 1- Fight-dude determines that he can go on out and fight and level up without being held back by a dead weight researcher, and then depend on the guys who actually managed to level up their researcher guys when he hits max. 2- Fight-dude is actually incapable of doing poo poo without the symbiotic relationship he has with non-fight-dudes, which ends up being aggravating as gently caress for 99% of all fight-dudes. I get your point, I think it is doomed from the jump because as a matter of fact MMORPGs currently do center entirely around the fights except for a very very small subset of MMORPGs that are actively made fun of. What you're suggesting is ridiculously restrictive and creates competing incentives among your players. You will cause nothing but headaches as warriors charge headlong into the only method of gaining exp they have while the rogues do not give a single gently caress about fights and want to get to the treasure as fast as possible, and both of them get irritated with the extra time the wizard requires to analyze some bullshit because they do not give a gently caress about what the other two want. poo poo, I already get irritated when I have to wait for some rear end in a top hat to skin every animal from point A to point B because they require gathered materials for their crafting timesink. I agree that there should be more obstacles and many more ways to get yours. I don't know if you read the rest of my post but I talked specifically about that. I just prefer it so instead of locking players even deeper into specifically what their class can or cannot do, I'd rather have every class capable of achieving everything (and maybe not have classes at all), but in different ways. Give the party a singular goal and they will work together. Give the party separate goals and they will work against each other.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 22:39
|
|
|
signalnoise posted:I see 2 options here A couple things: - Fight-dudes get extra EXP for kills made while partied with non-fight-dudes. - Fight dudes can do some things alone, but not everything. A fight dude in a dungeon alone might be able to get to the boss and get the EXP, but he won't get the nice loot hidden behind locked doors (pickable by wealth-types) or secret walls (openable by knowledge-types). If waiting ten drat seconds for a thief to pick a lock so that you can get better equipment for your character makes you want to ragequit the game, I don't know what to tell you.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 22:47
|
|
|
One big improvement would be that quests should be meaningful and have an impact on the player and if possible his/her surroundings that is seen and felt. If that means I'd have fewer quests rather then the massive amount of quests seen in WoW, EQ2, etc then so be it. In am pretty sure most players literally don't want or need 5,000 mostly meaningless quests that they will probably never get through at all. Focusing on providing rewards and surprises for people who like to explore and creating interactive dungeons which provide differing encounters depending on the strategies used to get through them would be a better use of resources IMHO. Edit: Nowadays in wow there is practically no real reason (outside of meaningless achievement titles or the rep grind benefits) if you are a hybrid, tank or healer class to do any quest that doesn't reward useful items (gear and mounts). You'd be better served leveling up via the dungeon queue system and only occasionally venturing out to harvest resources to level up your crafting then spending time running through quest hubs that you'd quickly out level before even completing half the quests in the zone. Sweaty Palms fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Aug 11, 2011 |
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 22:49
|
|
|
Oh man, I've been blue balled in this department for half my life. I grew up playing MU*'s, building and designing. I got hooked up with an amazingly talented coder a few years ago who had really ambitious visions for a custom client text MU/online RPG on a massive-ish scale. We wrote design docs for a solid year, got to work on the alpha, had a running "playground" displaying all of our system ideas in a "proof of concept" way. We got a meeting with the IronRealms CEO and their chief creative director. They were really interested in financing the project, so we took them on a tour, showed them the documents, and they basically shot the whole project full of "holes" due to their spectacular lack of vision. Without funding my coder friend had to get a real job, and decided to instead code bots that farm gold in WoW for an outfit called GamePal (I poo poo YOU NOT, this is the way good ideas die; not with a bang but with a whimper). Anyway, the basic gist of the game was a freeform world that can be heavily influenced by players (in set ways, not chaos based), including a totally freestyle classless/levelless system of skills/spells/crafts. There were 2 majorly awesome game systems that I still long to see realized some day; The first was the "world variable" system. Basically area designers would have free reign to create "world variables", which are nothing more than numbers that are ticked up or ticked down depending on player actions. With these long term, stored numbers, we could then use game resets and "if" within them to have area complexion subtly or severely change depending on what the player is doing at the time. These could be nested to nearly infinite degrees. I'll give you an example: Lets say we have the Kingdom of Examplia, a very fledgling minor kingdom. Their "kingdom_economy" world variable is say, 5 when you show up. Because it's say, < 500, people in the streets are giving quests to help boost the kingdom economy. Quests to fetch wood, ore, and other materials. To cook pies and breads, and sell them with cheeses and wine at trade markets, to collect taxes for the kings coffers. All of these quests could increase kingdom_economy by a finite amount. When the economy is over 500 lets say, these quests taper down, and it goes into a sustain mode rather than growth. Now there's another reset using this variable; soldier spawns. Kingdom soldiers normally spawn with "rusty swords" and "cheap armor", but poo poo, the kingdom if FLUSH now, so they're walking around in "silvery platemail" and "gleaming steel swords", based on player actions. You have access to better gear for doing what you've done (if you choose to be a prick and kill a soldier). Here's where it gets really fun; there's another world variable, kingdom_hostility_neighbor lets say. It's at 0 right now. You visited the neighboring kingdom which has it out for Examplia. They give you quests to burn Examplia trade wagons, kill Examplia guards (holding their banner lets say, to taunt), terrorize and plunder the hamlet outside the kingdom. All of these actions increase the hostility variable until armies start spawning on a field of battle. The battlefield participants will take into account the economy variable of each kingdom to determine what level of troops they spawn and with what kind of gear. There will be nested war variables, and they offer quests to mercenary the field of battle for either side. Eventually one kingdom defeats the other, mostly player driven, partially determined by the stronger side. The economy zeroes out for that side. kingdom_examplia_conquered variable goes from "0" to "1", which causes neighboring flags to spawn on their parapets, neighboring guards to patrol their streets, and an installed governor to sit on their throne. This opens up resistance quests to overthrow the conquerors. Etc etc etc etc etc. This one narrative that plays out isn't anything that you haven't seen done in an MMO with cinematics, cut scenes, and quest lines, the DIFFERENCE is that the outcome, the flow of events, and the resolutions are ALL player driven. As long as you work it so that there is a big enough space for the pendulum to constantly swing back and forth in a logical manner, you could have a scenario with dozens of different outcomes. Players could play through these areas several times and see a different thing each time. It was a simple, elegant, and brilliant idea, and I wanted to work with it so bad, but yeah, just died on the bench, and the guy who came up with it now farms WoW gold to make a living. 
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 22:59
|
|
|
FirstAidKite posted:Even if they aren't, I used to talk to the guy who ran the free version of Graal after it went p2p (the elven lands server I think it was?) so I could try hitting him up and asking about it. I wonder what kind of money and other resources would be required in doing something like this.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 23:12
|
|
|
The player needs to feel like the world they are in is real. MMO's are based on the idea that you are one person among many in an ever changing world. Therefore the atmosphere of said world needs to be very potent. Two important ways to accomplish this are excellent level design and music that is written to convey the feel of an area.
|
|
#
?
Aug 11, 2011 23:32
|
|
|
Drecksky posted:Leveling up harvesting skills (and harvesting itself), especially when you're not already in the immediate area for another purpose, is loving tedious. To further expand on this amazing idea. Create account-bound mobile and tablet apps. Pick a server, character and skill/mini-game and harvest poo poo on the go. Apply skills to the character and mail loot to it in-game.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 00:11
|
|
|
Rocketlex posted:A couple things: quote:- Fight dudes can do some things alone, but not everything. A fight dude in a dungeon alone might be able to get to the boss and get the EXP, but he won't get the nice loot hidden behind locked doors (pickable by wealth-types) or secret walls (openable by knowledge-types). Waiting 10 seconds to pick a lock isn't bad. Waiting 10 minutes to find a thief to level with, then waiting for them to get to the dungeon entrance (assuming it's even that easy in this hypothetical game), and hopefully the rear end in a top hat won't have to go eat dinner? All because if I don't have this fuckup I don't care about in my group, I will get less XP and less loot. Well, let's weigh my options. Do I go in and just loving kill everything, or do I wait for some dipshit to play with me? Is the loot something I really care about? Is the XP bonus proportional to the amount of time I have to waste getting this rear end in a top hat in my party? Maybe if the XP bonus is really huge, I might even get more frustrated when I actually can't get someone to group with me, because I am seeing this XP bonus staring me in the face that I can't get. Let's be honest here. These are limitations you are placing on players. Limitations are boring and frustrating. If I want to play with my friends and we all want to be warriors, we shouldn't be punished for that. We should maybe have to bend a little bit and make some decisions that allow us to cover our bases, but saying I and 2 buddies MUST be separate TYPES of classes in order to get anything done is ridiculous. So no, I don't want to wait 10 seconds for a thief, because I know there's going to be a fuckload of buildup for that. Either I will have to find a specific person from my guild, or I will force my friend to be a thief and be on at the same time in the same level range, or I'm playing with some rear end in a top hat who will likely waste a whole lot more than 10 of my seconds. And if playing solo after not being able to find someone appropriate is too much of a grind, and for not enough payoff, yes, I will ragequit your game. Stop limiting players. Provide choices and challenges, not hard limitations. Drecksky posted:Leveling up harvesting skills (and harvesting itself), especially when you're not already in the immediate area for another purpose, is loving tedious. I've been a huge supporter of skill-based crafting ever since I played Puzzle Pirates. Having to be personally good at something matters in combat, why doesn't it matter in crafting? signalnoise fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Aug 12, 2011 |
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 00:15
|
|
|
Miijhal posted:A few things I'd like to see: I only progressed up to about level 8 in Star Wars Galaxies because that's when I figured out how amazing their crafting system was. Everything was made from minerals which had quality varying from 1 to 100. There was some randomness, but for the most part, you needed to find the highest quality materials to build the best items. You could set up whole mining operations with automated diggers and things once you've found the sweet spot for a given resource. And the resource layouts were evolving so that you had to frequently check back at your mining operation to make sure they weren't just harvesting poo poo. certain resources were more common on one planet than another, so you'd travel around the galaxy to find the best place to sell your goods. I found the combat system in galaxies (and in every MMO I've played except Asheron's Call) to be boring as all hell. I don't think I would have lasted more than a few days playing Galaxies without the fantastic crafting system.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 00:18
|
|
|
Crafting should be a very fluid process with lots of chance for variation and fun. If you're a powerful wizard hammering out a bracelet, heating it, hammering it, cooling it, heating it, hammering it, etc. why wouldn't you have the chance every now and then to infuse magic into the process? Pick your element or flavor of magic, infuse, hammer, cool, heat, getting too hot, crap, do something infuse cold magic? Dunk it in water? poo poo it got brittle and broke, ho well, try again! not as god damned boring as "buy mats from AH, highlight recipe, hit "Create""
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 00:22
|
|
|
signalnoise posted:Waiting 10 seconds to pick a lock isn't bad. Waiting 10 minutes to find a thief to level with, then waiting for them to get to the dungeon entrance (assuming it's even that easy in this hypothetical game), and hopefully the rear end in a top hat won't have to go eat dinner? All because if I don't have this fuckup I don't care about in my group, I will get less XP and less loot. It sound to me like you want to play a co-op single-player RPG. Why are you throwing yourself into a world of players if you presuppose 99% of them are jerks? EDIT: Loving Life Partner posted:Is it fine to have a locked door, but a warrior can bash it down, a rogue can pick the lock, the wizard can spell it open, etc.? At that point, the door fails to be "locked" so much as "temporary." Rocketlex fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Aug 12, 2011 |
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 00:29
|
|
|
Is it preferable to have "samey" classes that don't specialize too hard beyond their style of fighting? Is it fine to have a locked door, but a warrior can bash it down, a rogue can pick the lock, the wizard can spell it open, etc.?
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 00:32
|
|
|
Tsurupettan posted:I wonder what kind of money and other resources would be required in doing something like this. I got in contact with him. He gave me this link. http://st0rage.org/oldweb/tutorials/tut_14.html He said he ran it on his home connecting and 600mhz machine and that "it's very low cpu/bandwidth, 40 people on 384kbps upload." He also said that the server ran on C/C++ and that he thinks the game and game editors ran on Delphi and that you should be able to get the source code pretty easily if you wish to update it or edit it for patches and stuff. I don't see much coming out of this unless a dedicated group of goons could make enough content for a new server but who knows? We could literally build a better MMO, I dunno. Edit: If people feel we're hijacking the thread with Graal talk then I'll stop.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 00:40
|
|
|
What I'd like to see in a MMO would be something like EVE, where there is player driven story and action, where groups of players are determining the economy and the story and so forth, and then add an actual game to it. Instead of flying spreadsheet ships, have an actual starfighter simulation like the X-Wing series. No skills or character stats and tedious grinding; what's important is the skill of the player, and the ship he's customized. Let players command everything from one man ships to large capital ships, complete with gunners and so forth (computer operated if necessary). On top of this, throw in a FPS game to the mix. In order to capture planets or stations, or even enemy capital ships, you have actual ground troops fighting it out. Then, throw in another level; a strategy game. Certain players are given various ranks, and subordinates. The faction leaders decide on the war strategy. An Admiral might be commanding a fleet battle, issuing missions to group leaders, the leaders issue orders to the captains of the capitals, and the captains issue orders for their gunners. You'd have commanders in charge of the fighters, and generals in charge of the group forces. Basically, make a chain of command, and make the game operate like a real military action. You'd see tactics playing a role, and people rising through the ranks due to their performance in battles and war games. If people didn't like the large battles, they can always be in smaller ones; maybe the highest officer is a squadron leader, or it's just a small raid with a couple of friends. On top of this, make it so that it is always possible to get into the action. I shouldn't have to go around in "looking for group" channels, or waiting for a fleet action. I picture three solutions to this: Simulated war games, which would be something you can join in at any time; computers fill the roles that you can't find players for and you start the game, like many non MMOs have. You might choose between any available game, or just between your faction. Nothing is lost in these matches, but they count towards your score to represent your general skill level. Opposite this would be large fleet actions. The general war council plans these attacks. They choose the system(s) to hit and the faction resources to invest on the attack (ships, troops, money, etc.). They leave a slot for an admiral to command the force in each system being hit, and the admiral submits a forces plan (i.e, Group A: 3 Star Destroyers, two carriers, seven picket ships, two fighter squadrons enters the system here in this formation, Group B XXX, Group C XXX, etc.) He sets the command structure, and a slot is generated for a person or computer to operate. After submitting his plan, the war council reviews it, and as soon as it is approved, computer controlled faction resources start moving into position, and a timer is given for when they will be available for the attack. Once the ships are ready (which might take hours to move a ship from far away, though obviously the strategists will take fleet positioning into account, and instead use local resources) they can execute the plan, and a 5? minute timer starts counting down, indicating that the ships have entered hyperspace on the way to the mission. At this point, both factions (attacker and defender) send out messages along the lines of "Volunteers needed for fleet action!" or "Enemy ships detected in hyperspace; defenders needed!" After a minute, the admirals fill the slots (defender slots predetermined by what resources were allocated as guarding the system) for group leaders among the applicants, and then both start filling in captains into slots, and the captains can then start picking their subordinates. Then, before the timer runs out, everyone left is auto-assigned to the remaining slots based on their preferences and scores and computer control given to the rest, people are sent to their channels in the chain of command and familiarized with the plan, and the action starts. In action, when a ship or ground unit is destroyed, the player can be given a computer controlled unit of equal or lesser rank. If no equal position is available, the player is booted from the fight. With command positions, this means that the ship they're on must be protected in order for them to function. Someone down the chain of command may accept the position on loss of their superior for the duration of the battle. In fleet actions, players have nothing to risk personally, as they're using faction-issued equipment. They may be issued a cash reward based on performance, rank, score, and the gains from the mission if it's successful, however. Money would be used for personal ships, which would be lost if destroyed. Players can do whatever they want with their own ships, or even commit them to fleet actions (where they would be awarded a greater reward, or reimbursement from faction coffers on loss). Players would buy and maintain their personal ships and use them for whatever purposes they wanted, and could even show up as reinforcements if they wanted. They might form bands of friends that go around pirating, or whatever. They could also go an economic route and use their money to form corporations, which would control computer assets that would make money for them. For instance, a player might buy mining rights to a moon or asteroid somewhere. They would then buy computerized mining vehicles and haulers (why should humans have to do mindless, repetitive tasks?) to work the area, as well as defense forces. In an attack, they could pay players to defend their area as well. From this point, they could then sell their ore to manufacturing plants, which would make various things to sell to factions and individual players. You've got things to tax in this route as a faction, and the manufacturing plants could be dependent on population and other factors and would pay their simulated workers, which would stimulate an economy. On a lovely world they could offer higher pay to attract workers, and you essentially generate a whole economy. Basically, this game would be EVE Online + X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter + FPS + a tactical and strategy game that I can't even think of an equivalent. It would be a bitch with servers, but if you set systems/ground battles up as instances it could potentially work. There's basically something for everyone, and if you don't like the MMO aspect, it's still got no risk "simulated" battles like other online games, which means you can be having fun at any time.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 01:15
|
|
|
FirstAidKite posted:I got in contact with him. He gave me this link. Yes, they ran on Delphi. I remember this because I was like 9 years old and learning to code for the first time and felt super awesome.  With those specs provided, I could probably host at least a hundred people on my home machine, though having a dedicated box would be better. For some reason I was expecting to have to spring for like a thousand dollar a year service to host it or some poo poo. I'd just need a server box and another UPS. My existing connection gets 15 mbps upload, too.e: I think this is the time we ask a mod if a Graal thread is cool, come up with a big informative OP and poll interest. Rather than continue to stink up this thread. 
Tsurupettan fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Aug 12, 2011 |
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 01:26
|
|
|
Rocketlex posted:It sound to me like you want to play a co-op single-player RPG. Why are you throwing yourself into a world of players if you presuppose 99% of them are jerks? quote:At that point, the door fails to be "locked" so much as "temporary." And in your fantasy world, they still are, so long as you go make sure you have one of each class Loving Life Partner posted:Crafting should be a very fluid process with lots of chance for variation and fun. signalnoise fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Aug 12, 2011 |
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 01:35
|
|
|
I'd like to see an MMO set in the world of Arcanum Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura with jet packs, steam powered jet packs.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 01:42
|
|
|
signalnoise posted:To kill them and take their poo poo Oh ho ho, I think you'd find something to enjoy in my game, then. Forget the dungeons, you would want to be a bounty hunter. Basically, certain unscrupulous actions (griefing) get a bounty put on your head. As long as you have a bounty, you can be PvP'ed by anyone, and anyone who kills you gets Bounty Points (relative to the size of your bounty) to spend on cool stuff. The imposition of bounties would also be the way mods would be encouraged to settle disputes, as opposed to probations. quote:And in your fantasy world, they still are, so long as you go make sure you have one of each class Right, but then you're in a group, working together. The doors are a means to get you to that point.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 01:42
|
|
|
For those of you who haven't seen this, it's an old classic of MUD player psychology which might be interesting here. http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm Really, seeing all of these disparate ideas and disagreements is just strengthening the value of having multiple games running at once, instead of a succession of One True MMOGs that do everything. You're just not going to get everyone to agree on a particular game.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 01:51
|
|
|
The bounty-hunting thing kinda gets at one of the main points of my game concept. I really wanted to get away from the idea of everyone taking the same path through the game. There are many ways to play, such that playing each class is like playing a very different game, but the metagames of each overlap and rely on each other. As a warrior, you could reach the level cap by staying in a single town and taking bounties, player-created quests (that's another thing) and local bodyguarding jobs, or you could travel the overworld beating up yetis and dragons. Both options have their advantages and disadvantages. Basically, if you don't want to work in a group, there are other ways to play the game which don't require you to have anything to do with that locked door. EDIT: Incoherence posted:Really, seeing all of these disparate ideas and disagreements is just strengthening the value of having multiple games running at once, instead of a succession of One True MMOGs that do everything. You're just not going to get everyone to agree on a particular game. Right. The really ambitious goal of my game is to find all the different ways people like to play MMOs and give you options for each, combining them all in the metagame to form a complete system. One person is playing a game of economics and resource management, but in the process is delivering armor and weapons to warriors at a price lower than the standard shops, and the resources they're taking in were created by other, crafting based classes who themselves got the raw materials from intrepid dungeon crawlers. Rocketlex fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Aug 12, 2011 |
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 01:52
|
|
|
Rocketlex posted:Right. The really ambitious goal of my game is to find all the different ways people like to play MMOs and give you options for each, combining them all in the metagame to form a complete system. One person is playing a game of economics and resource management, but in the process is delivering armor and weapons to warriors at a price lower than the standard shops, and the resources they're taking in were created by other, crafting based classes who themselves got the raw materials from intrepid dungeon crawlers.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 02:01
|
|
|
Incoherence posted:The issue is that this multiplies your balance problems, since you're now balancing the different aspects off each other. If you make them entirely separate, then your problems become significantly simpler. This is a significant issue but I don't think it's insurmountable. A big goal would be to keep the core mechanics of each metagame simple, keeping the basic idea of each one pure and rigorously keeping feature bloat at bay. It may seem like an odd comparison, but an RPG I've always admired was Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. In that game, all the features of the battle system are surfaced to the player and kept relatively simple. As such, you can always easily figure out how many more rounds you can survive, how many rounds it will take to defeat the enemy with each potential strategy, and how each strategy will leave you. There's next to no guesswork and this allows you to be incredibly strategic in battle, moreso than most RPGs. The game is not easy, it just might seem easy because there's no dice roll bullshit loving you over like in other RPGs. From the standpoint of an MMO, it would also make game balance a matter of adjusting simple and surfaced numbers, and allow players/devs to very easily and accurately identify areas of imbalance which need to be corrected. The goal would be to design each metagame with a similarly "simple but deep" design philosophy. Admittedly this starts to reach the limits of my understanding of game design theory, but I certainly have ideas. I'm only one man, over here.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 02:19
|
|
|
Rocketlex posted:Oh ho ho, I think you'd find something to enjoy in my game, then. Forget the dungeons, you would want to be a bounty hunter. Basically, certain unscrupulous actions (griefing) get a bounty put on your head. As long as you have a bounty, you can be PvP'ed by anyone, and anyone who kills you gets Bounty Points (relative to the size of your bounty) to spend on cool stuff. Ok, so let me get this straight. You don't want your game to be fun until I jump through hoops. That's what I'm getting from you. I disagree with you on a fundamental level. If your game isn't fun regardless of the way I want to play it, your game is not good enough. You should never force players to do things they don't want to do. You should never penalize players for not playing in groups. You should offer rewards for everything. You should offer rewards for grouping, and you should offer rewards for soloing. You should offer rewards for playing in duos and trios as well as full parties. You should be able to roam the countryside looking for adventure, and you should be able to take up pointed quests that are for obvious but challenging goals. I would take this fundamental goal farther than just whether or not you need a party. If you don't want to take quests from NPCs, there should still be quests for you. There should be more than enough quests for you out in the field. By "more than enough" I don't mean a loving huge amount, I mean enough for you to level up or get to whatever other arbitrary standard of advancement the game has. There should be long, arduous quests that start from you finding an odd-looking mark on a suspicious-looking tree and end with you assembling a team to rescue a princess in a far-flung castle. Your partners don't have the quest? That's fine, because there's a system in place to give them credit for helping, so they get rewarded in a meaningful way regardless. Don't even like reading quest text? That's fine. Be a treasure hunter. Go off into a castle/cave/gnoll den/whatever and just because you cross the threshold and you don't have an active quest, the game alerts you to some crazy poo poo to do. If you don't want to do quests, and just want to kill poo poo, that's fine too, because the game will keep track of all the poo poo you've killed and reward you for that with titles and cosmetic poo poo to adorn your character with, on top of just giving you character-advancing rewards just for meeting kill number requirements. No matter how you want to play, the game should cater to you. That is my standard for how an MMO should work these days. Yes, you should be rewarded in the way you are talking about, by getting more poo poo for bringing more people. You should still be able to get meaningful rewards, just different rewards, playing by yourself. There's safety in numbers, and you'll be able to tackle bigger game, but you should never, ever implement systems that penalize a player for wanting to have fun. And no, I wouldn't want to be a bounty hunter. I would be the guy who goes to help someone out and knifes them in the back and takes their purse. Obviously if the game uses mainstream-style non-disposable loot, I should not be able to take that. Just a portion of the gold they are dumb enough to carry with them. In Vanguard, I once went through a dungeon with a friend of mine and 3 random idiots who made the dungeon take forever. When we cleared it, my friend and I dropped group, regrouped immediately into our duo, and PBAoE'd them into the dirt and took some of their money. If someone did the same to me, I would fight back and expect to win. If I lost, that's on me for not keeping my guard up and not being the best fighter on the team. Call me a tryhard. I realize it might look like there's some irony in that last paragraph, because I said the game shouldn't penalize you for wanting to have fun. The game didn't penalize them- I did. They should not have rolled their characters on the PvP server. If the game isn't 100% about PvP, like Shadowbane or something like that, you should always have the option to be on a non-PvP server. Of course, you don't have to like my game, but I at least strive for everyone to be able to have fun. signalnoise fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Aug 12, 2011 |
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 02:22
|
|
|
signalnoise posted:You don't want your game to be fun until I jump through hoops. That's what I'm getting from you. I disagree with you on a fundamental level. If your game isn't fun regardless of the way I want to play it, your game is not good enough. You should never force players to do things they don't want to do. You should never penalize players for not playing in groups. You should offer rewards for everything. You should offer rewards for grouping, and you should offer rewards for soloing. You should offer rewards for playing in duos and trios as well as full parties. You should be able to roam the countryside looking for adventure, and you should be able to take up pointed quests that are for obvious but challenging goals. But you're not forced to play in a group. You're not penalized for it either. You would be playing the game differently from other people, but that seems to be your point, anyway. At some point, you'll have to interact with other players to get the full experience of my game, but this can be at arms-length if you so wish. Merchant-class characters can sell goods from their inventories to players without any sort of person-to-person interaction. (If a merchant has opened themselves for business, you just right-click them to see their wares and buy them at the price they're offering.) And you talked about "pointed quests," well that's another thing. Wisdom-types are generally the crafting characters, and they need raw materials which power-types can pummel out of enemies (wolf pelts and the like). What they can do is put up a posting for a "quest" created by them. You accept the quest from a board, and deliver the pelts to the board when you're done. The pelts go to the crafter and whatever he put up as a reward (probably something he made) goes to you automatically. No direct interaction at all. I don't understand how it is you want to play the game which my game is not allowing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 02:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 12:04 |
|
|
Rocketlex posted:I don't understand how it is you want to play the game which my game is not allowing. Not having goals that compete with the goals of my teammates The really stupid thing here honestly is that you've tied XP gain to class mechanics. The power/wealth/knowledge thing in itself isn't a bad idea, you have just made it the only thing. I should be able to be a knowledge-based barbarian and get bonuses from that, or be a power-based wizard whose only goal in life is to kill the living poo poo out of everything he sees. If you want to take an XP hit in return for getting supplemental XP from crafting, that is fine. In fact, it is an excellent idea. You just sabotaged the idea by making the goals compete from the jump by tying it to classes! What I don't get is how you aren't seeing this fundamental problem! signalnoise fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Aug 12, 2011 |
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2011 02:43
|
|