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Originally posted by Kenorv
Wizard/fighter, necro/figher=gimped. Gimp=boot. No gimps in my party. Sorry, bad Final Fantasy moment there. FF didn't allow much freedom when chosing job combos because the wrong combos meant you were gimped and since that game was all but impossible to solo past level 20(some say level 10 but I could solo to 20 just fine. It just took a long time) unless you were a beastmaster, you weren't getting into a party if you were gimped. I hope that HJ allows for more flexibility with the class combos without players being gimped.

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Player-provided services are a really tough balancing act. Anything that requires you to find another, active, at-the-keys player, is going to suck. Remember buffs from SWG? You could only get them from a live doctor (it couldn't really be 'botted'). You couldn't buy them from a vendor. So the only way to get one was to find an active, live doctor, and ask him to buff you. If there were too few (and there were), this led to half-hour-long "buff lines" where people had to stand and wait to get their buffs. This wasn't exactly fun.. especially if you only had an hour or so to play, and had to waste 15 minutes of it finding a buff-doctor, and 30 in line... that leaves you 15 to go do something fun.

If they can find a way to make the game fun as you do this, perhaps it will work. Otherwise, I think they're stepping into a nasty bear-trap here. Player-services need to be accessible 24/7 (e.g. through vendors that are always "up" when the servers are up), or they will either be ignored, or become choke points.

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Sure it can be tough to find a cleric or healer or locksmith at the "dead" hours in GS or DR but I don't think that HJ will have that problem. I don't know what the peak is for players in either of those games now, but when I was playing GS I think it was maybe 1500-2000, maybe not, I can't remember. And the low point was probably 200-300. I expect those numbers to be higher in HJ. I think that Final Fantasy averages 3000 people per server at any given time. Average, not peak. So if HJ can average half that then there should always be plenty of healers, clerics and locksmiths around.

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I'm another one who thinks that Amathe is justified in questioning the details of this design decision.

I see good things and bad about this proposed system of player services.

Overall I like the idea. Player services in SWG did a good job of promoting community; the reason they didn't do a better job was that all services were for combat players only -- there were no services offered just between non-combat professions.

This design for Hero's Journey addresses that in a couple of ways. First, and most painfully, there simply aren't any non-combat classes in HJ! Second, the services suggested can be used by more than one of the other classes, so there could be interaction with more than just one other class.

So it could work; the concept overall isn't fatally flawed. But then there are the details....

Amathe is right that some of the proposed services are weaker than others, which doesn't make sense -- why favor some classes over others when balance would be more interesting/useful? In fact, Mike Paddock said it himself: "Not all services are created equal, so while some may be needed somewhat commonly, like opening trapped treasure boxes, many are purely optional, such as getting a Soul Jar or having Sure Footing cast on you."

Wow, does that ever seem like a bad idea.

There's a good discussion about this going on in a thread on Simu's official Hero's Journey forum. One of the participants made a great suggestion: instead of just having one service, some of which are good in the field and some in town, let each class have two services -- one for the field and one for town.

That would make it a lot easier to balance the power of services across all classes. Even if one of your services is lame, if the other one is powerful enough you still come out even with the other classes.

It would also tend to level out the problem of some services being nice-to-have and some being must-have. As long as every class has one of each, you're good.

In summary, I think the basic idea of players services is good, and not broken. Giving a bit more thought to the details could make this work.

--Flatfingers

Flatfingers ,

The Systems already exist they are tried and tested and very very good, both DR and Gemstone have advanced gaming systems due to the fact that all SIMUs' efforts didnt go to waste on fancy graphics.

This game unlike most others has had most of the gaming systems that will be used tested for years and they are good (only my oppinion but i have 20 years gaming experience and am not easily impressed) promote community, are complex and very enjoyable. DOn't reward fools or death...

I remember playing DR for the first time having played AC1 for 5 years , I was slightly bored and looked for something no betas on the  horizon so i went looking at the muds and spotted DR/Gemstone strange i thought text based online games with subscription i'll try.

I can remember being beat to a pulp bruised intop submmission as someone dragged me out of a room back to town and gave me a lecture on being careful, then someone started to heal me and i could see they were in pain via the text. Interesting I thought as I was doing this a rogue of some sort failed to disarm a trapo on a box which exploded killing me outright.

The rogue was given a dressing down and moved to an adjacent room a cleric then dragged me to the temple got me back to life and returned me to the town squarre where the empath appologised for the idiot who blew us all up and gave me a few gherbs and explained i could use them to heal minor ailments.

Can't remember enjoying myself so much in a long time, but no fancy graphics a complexity to injury and death this started to interest me a lot, if SIMU manage to transfer the majority of their current game systems they will have a massive hit on their hands. I got my charachter to level 55 ish over about 6 months playing on and off I still have an account I play every now and again to remind myself of what well developed game systems are like.

Just to reiterate if you havent played SIMU games online they really are different, take some skill mastering but the rewards you get from mastering them are well try one of them and see before HJ comes out...

SIMU may listen to your comments but as far as games systems go they don't need your opinion...  

Just a quick heads up. If you want to get the attention of us with questions, comments, or suggestions it's better to pose them over in the HJ forums on this site. I'm just now catching this thread, and it seems to be getting out of hand.

That being said. Other then world lore, monster lore, names, places, etc nothing is completely set in stone. Everything will get fleshed out more with testing, and even after that things may change. While I'm not involved on the programming end of these services, and as a result don't know the full details, I can safely say that they're not going to be done in any way that will be like how they've been handled in the past. "More fun, less tedium." Is our motto because we're trying very hard to break away from what traditionally constitutes what a MMO is.

An unfortunate side effect of not telling you everything is that there's a lot of speculation and concern. We're tight lipped about a lot of things because we don't want to make it look like we're commited to something and it won't change. We also don't want to ruin the discovery of the new things we're bringing to the playing field. A lot of thought and care goes into anything we come up with for HJ. Simu didn't spend 3 years creating their development engine just to bullrush into the game design.

Before I finish I'll address a couple things.

As far as the soling concerns I saw. We're building the game with soloing as the basis of gameplay. All quest instances are built with the ability to scale to the number participating in it as well as the level. (Some quests ofcourse will have a minimum level.) The common hunting areas will have set levels though, but a solo person will still be able to find stuff to hunt by themselves. The services will be perks not must haves.

To whoever it was who said a Necromancer/Fighter will be a gimp. You're in for a big surprise.

GM Illuminatis
World Builder
Hero's Journey

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Originally posted by Kenorv

Sure it can be tough to find a cleric or healer or locksmith at the "dead" hours in GS or DR but I don't think that HJ will have that problem. I don't know what the peak is for players in either of those games now, but when I was playing GS I think it was maybe 1500-2000, maybe not, I can't remember. And the low point was probably 200-300. I expect those numbers to be higher in HJ. I think that Final Fantasy averages 3000 people per server at any given time. Average, not peak. So if HJ can average half that then there should always be plenty of healers, clerics and locksmiths around.

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I don't agree with this at all:

1. Dead hours - Even during peek it's the same deal depending on where you are.  When character was way off on the Islands, and I came back after a year to play some more, the majority of the players had moved to other areas.  I spent 3 or more days on the island that used to be popular, during peek hours, waiting for healers, clerics, locksmiths, etc.  During that time period, I saw only 3 other characters. 

2. HJ having the numbers - Even with 5k characters logged in at a time, forcing interdependence is problematic. Look at EverQuest, StarWars Galaxies, and other games (the other responses to this I agree with and they go into some detail).

• EverQuest- playing a 34th level cleric and I couldn't find groups even with 2 to 3 thousand people online
• All games - lying dead in some dark dungeon waiting for help; sending tells to strangers in the hopes that they would be willing to help

The number of characters online has rarely made a difference in services being available in my experience.  I had better luck on test servers with small communities than I ever did on live servers with huge numbers of players.

This can sometimes be mitigated by having decent guilds, but I'm too old to play the politics involved with these kinds of guilds.

Don't get me wrong - there were great moments I had with DragonRealms; there were times of absolute enjoyment. Most of these times were because I had a network of friends that I would play with and I had locksmith, cleric, and empath friends that were always on hand. When those went away, so did the enjoyment. Each time I return which is about once a year for 2 months, I run into the same problems - nobody to play with, or if I play my old characters I can't find the locksmiths, clerics, or empaths when I need them (and it's during peek hours).

It's the same with EverQuest or any games that require interdependence. With a good guild with characters my level, it was fun. When everybody in the game is level 60 and your character is level 30, it's not so fun.