I finally gave in to my desire for sandbox gameplay today, and bought the game on Steam (just missed out on that $5 deal... damnit) - so I was playing earlier, and set up a good 23 hours or so of skill training after finishing the initial tutorial and traveling to one of the career trainers...

I'm thinking of going as a miner/manufacturer who has some fighting ability, but I have no idea how that'll work out, but hell, that's what I want to be and I'm going to stick to it.

I'ma test this ol' sandbox out.

See you guys in, what, seven hours or so, haha.

Making an MMO soloable seems silly to me.

It's an MMO - make it use the massively multiplayer aspect.

That said, people are different. There are outcasts and such in real life, and there are people who only want to hang out with friends who get very depressed without anyone around at all times - the latter there usually lives with roommates, and is, at the least, in a bad relationship, simply for the companionship of another human being.

There should be forms of play that cater to both of these people, were you trying to make an MMO that works for the masses.

Otherwise, you should keep to your niche and not spoil it by trying to make your group game soloable...

Oh, and I like the idea of a SPCRG - sorta like that game, Demon's Souls or whatever it was.

Originally posted by tanek 

It is a fairly common belief that your account will be used immediately upon being "hacked" or keylogged.  From many examples I have heard, it is often more likely that nothing will happen immediately and the malicious hacker will wait for the account to be inactive for a time before trying to use it.

While this may increase the possibility that you will locate the keylogger and/or change your password in the meantime, it also increases the possibility that, when they start using your account, you will not notice until it is too late.  Which seems to be their goal here.

So, ignoring the determination of who is at fault here, one of the first things you will want to do is check, double check, and triple check your computer for a keylogger.  Just because your NCSoft/Aion account was affected does not necessarily mean that was the only target.  Depending on what you use from your computer they could have obtained account information from other games, or direct access to your banking information.  If it was just a phish (which still could have happened a month back when you were playing and they waited to use your account), you are a bit less likely to have had other info stolen, but I would not rely on that hope.

Good luck.

Fantastic post.

---

One time I clicked on a porn ad on a no-cd patch/crack site - there was porn. Oh, and a virus that corrupted any opened .exe file. Please note that Windows' entire UI is basically held in "Explorer.exe"

It did things slowly. I first realised when I went to a LAN, infected two other computers, and the third other computer defended itself against the virus.

I didn't wear virus protection. Please, learn from my story.

I suppose having no healing would make things a little interesting... the idea of micro-management, say, in Starcraft, comes to mind.

In Starcraft, say I have a pack of marines (ranged dps) fighting, of, a pack of zerglings (melee dps). A pack being about 12.

If a player is using the attack-move command, the AI has a way of choosing who it attacks - at first, it attacks whatever it sees. If it is attacked by something, it will go for whoever attacked it. If it is attacked by several things, it will go for the closest.

www.youtube.com/watch <- Terran Micro-management techniques, if you're interested.

Anyway, with that sort of AI, the closest player who is attacking an enemy with other players, would be attacked first by the enemy. After that player has taken a bit of damage, they could run away, and the AI would go "wait, he isn't attacking me. He is using the "move" command - but several enemies are attacking me now, so I will attack the closest of them!" and the encounter would continue...

This form of movement-tanking, I suppose you could call it, could be interesting for an MMO to try to achieve. They would have to explain it well, though - probably with little "tanking" tutorial missions/quests, or something along those lines.

In World of Warcraft - hunters can use "distracting shot" to effectively "grab aggro" from another hunter - with about three or four hunters (in a large enough room), you can kill a melee boss.

Adding in more interesting ways to encounter and kill monsters and enemies would be good, and I would love to see some of them.

(And no, god no, I would not just cut the healer out of the Holy Trinity and see what happens, if anyone's thinking that. Ack. Tanks and DPS is just... terrible.)

I believe what Modern Warfare was trying to show is how shit could totally get real if you don't stand up against it - and even if you do stand up against it, it won't stop terrorists, or an invading country, from killing people in their way - even a child is a possible distraction, and would likely get taken care of.

That was their angle, and they didn't want to cushion the impact of the seriousness of those situations by, say, having a cut-scene where someone talks about the attack instead of actually playing through it.

I would likely just walk on through and not kill people - because I have good morals. Grand Theft Auto had good sandbox play, though, and fighting against police, etc., was some really fun gameplay, especially with how ridiculous things could get with a full gang and such. Beating a woman that sells herself with an item of pleasure is not really that fun for me, though.

*shrugs*

To each their own?

Originally posted by Newhopes

If people are flocking to the game why are they shutting down two more US servers And another EU server?

to increase general server population further? *shrugs*

That's usually why? Perhaps the traffic on the closed servers was particularly low and they decided to put those servers out of their misery and offer transfers?

Just a guess.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by Blazz  My example above shows an 80% increase in the power of the melee strike skill at rank 5 - but if most people have, by default, 100 health points, two players will, if limited to those three abilities, always beat one player.

Kinda sounds like a zerg. Numbers always win.

Well, that would be if limited to those three abilities... but I suppose the idea here is that, well, numbers should generally win? More players fighting against a giant monster is generally going to have a better outcome than sending in only 10 level-capped players at a time due to a lack of players.

That said, though, that example was in a pvp situation with two players fighting one player, and limited to those skills. In the same regard, two of those rank 5 players would be hitting for 36 combined total, while three rank 1 players would only be hitting for 30.

I didn't even go into those other abilities... what about something like:

Beserker - +2 damage given/taken - +4 dmg g/t - +6 dmg g/t - +8 dmg g/t - +10 dmg g/t

I mean, if you add just that one skill into the equation, you have the non-beserkers and the beserkers - if you let a beserker live, they will slaughter everything so easily... hell, I haven't even put healing in yet!

If you get the numbers of players, and tactics of different skills sorted, then we can start talking about zergability.

Also, in response to removing grind - skill based systems are pretty great. You could even choose your "archetype" and gain three skills or so at the start...

I mean, the following is a bit sketchy, but hopefully you'll see what I mean. I really enjoy EvE's skill system, and would totally play a fantasy-based (or even sci-fi, were it more personal, and not space ship based) game with it.

[SkillName] - [Rank 1] - [Rank 2] - [Rank 3] - [Rank 4] - [Rank 5]

Melee Strike - 10dmg - 12dmg - 14dmg - 16dmg - 18dmg

Ranged Shot - 8dmg - 9dmg - 10dmg - 11dmg - 13dmg

Spell Bolt - 10dmg - 11dmg - 12dmg - 13dmg - 15dmg

You could create a warrior, archer, or mage, I suppose, at the start, which would give you access to one of these skills. I mean, I'm just putting random numbers out here with regards to ranged vs. melee combat, and mana requirements vs. arrows, and interruptions from spell casting vs. bow fire, etc. etc.

Anyway, I'll stop right here, since I don't really fancy the idea of creating my own spreadsheets with orcs, but you can see how even someone with a full 5 ranks in any one skill shouldn't be able to outright beat everyone else. The idea here is that having higher ranks in something should take more time/effort to acquire - in EvE you can train while offline, several skills at a time now, in fact. And some of these skills take days to learn - it makes for an interesting system, where really the only currencies in the game are time and money - if you've invested enough time into your character, you could have rank 5 everything, I suppose... although that would take a good year or so of never wasting a second of training time.

But hey, even a guy with full rank 5 everything - hopefully the developers have looked into the balancing here - shouldn't be able to kill everything by themself. My example above shows an 80% increase in the power of the melee strike skill at rank 5 - but if most people have, by default, 100 health points, two players will, if limited to those three abilities, always beat one player.

I have no idea where loot comes into this equation - perhaps different loot should do nothing but change look and utility?

Either way, in a raid situation, or any situation with many players, even a brand new player will be useful, if not the most useful they could be.

And so you end up with no "end-game", because the end-game is accessable to any player - if harder for for the more skilled-up players to kill whatever they're killing.

Bah, ponder on that for a while.

Originally posted by Cerion

World War II Online has no grind to speak of.   Unless of course you believe that improving your own personal skill at the game 'a grind.'

An MMO doesn't need 'grind' to stay in business either. It just needs to be fun.  WWII Online is fun, and that's all that matters (I left the game for reasons unrelated to gameplay).

It would never happen, but I'd like to see a fantasy MMO do away with levels and skill points all together.  You'd have a dozen or so 'archetypes' to chose from.  Each archetype would have a set of skills that were easy to learn but take real personal skill to master.  It would almost be a FPS type of game, only with fantasy elements.  You might fight for magic items, and band together with others to take over realms.  But there would be no 'grind'.

If Fury wasn't so terribly retarded on its programming/server side, it could have been the game you're talking about. It's basically, say, like WoW's battlegrounds - but that's all you can do.

Guild Wars does something similar - but only levels up to 20, but you can keep getting skills and attribute points through quests... I stopped playing way back when simply because my laptop overheated when I played the game. I stay away now because I have to download like, 5MB in between each zone because their updating system is retarded (for long-time-left players)

League of Legends is good for people who want a friendlier community.

Heroes of Newerth is for those who want to hear the "WTF? STOP FEEDING!"

That said, I sorta prefer Heroes of Newerth - their UI is very similar to Warcraft 3's DotA, and such, not only that, but they made Savage, which was quite innovative and scary for any publisher to do - and then continued to make a Savage 2.

They currently mess around with free2play schemes with full purchase - a bit like Guild Wars, if they offered a permanent "free2play" thing.

Originally posted by Sovrath

I'm sure that every person on this forum has purchased and will purchase something that is considered ridiculous or unnecessary to someone. Yet you buy these things because you have worked and you find them of value.

I purchased Fury.

=(

I just wanted to support Australian developers...

I bought game time cards for WoW a while back, and have recently plugged back into that one so I can kill Arthas soon enough (I have said it before, but I'm a lore-whore)

So now I'm playing WoW again. I've been interested in EvE and Aion, but haven't really had the money or time to get into them... and I didn't make the most of my EvE trial and now I can't get another "trial" for it on the same Email (or Steam account, which is linked to that Email address)

Aion... is there a free trial? I might do that, but paying about $100 (Australian dollar, even though it's pretty much 1:1 USD atm) plus, like, $50 for the Aion/NCSoft 60 day game time card isn't really in my best interests.

Maybe when I get a full time job or something - until then, I'll stick to my pre-paid game which has, oh, maybe another ten weeks worth of cards going.

Wooo.

Originally posted by arctarus

Mr.T...

Don't forget William Shatner and his shaman.

I would say that Blizzard's huge MMO would be due to their huge single/multiplayer non-MMO success before moving into the MMO territory. Sort of a reverse of what CCP is doing with EvE and Dust 514.

If you remember the numbers of Starcraft, Diablo series and Warcraft series even before WoW it had some ridiculous millions of sales, as shown on the front of the box.

With this, you see, they already had a huge, loyal, and almost fanatical fanbase that would gladly buy anything Blizzard throws at them - when Blizzard said "Subscription-based MMO! With expansions!" The fans cheered, simply from hearing the voice of their favourite company's CEO, or whoever announced it.

A strong, loyal player-base to make a game for is a good marketing strategy - their fanbase generally like 'Blizzard' games... so they did what they did with their other games. They made a game of a fairly popular genre, simplified it, and polished it - making sure to fill the world with lore-rich content.

They did the "Blizzard" formula, and it worked really well.

Originally posted by Plasuma!!!

If you want to boil a player's blood, injustice is the perfect way to do it. If all they encounter is injustice, however, it stops meaning anything.

By this do you mean, say, as a werewolf, perhaps, when you are found out, places that you once went are now slamming the doors in your face now that they know you are a werewolf, but perhaps one or two other half-breed NPCs will allow you to hide out for the night, or something?

The idea being that, on occaision, something unjust should happen for emotional effect, which in turn can make the player either fight against it or accept it meekly and turn elsewhere for companionship and other such things someone would want in real life...?

I'm a bit of a lore-whore, that said, I enjoy actually running the instances the way I was supposed to, rather than being run through by a high level friend, usually.

However, I want to kill Arthas in the coming 3.3 patch for WoW, so I currently need to get my 34 warrior to 80 quick. Instance runs have been had - but I still remember the lore behind most things in there... looking forward to killing that anti-christ Arthas, though.

Originally posted by Oyjord

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

Originally posted by Stratford

Sorry, but if I only had 4 choices what to do every given fight, I'd leave the game in a hearbeat.  How freaking boring.  Hell, a monkey has good odds of fighting "well" if there are only 4 choices every given cooldown.

 

I left Champions Online in late beta because each fight was mindlessly simple.  If you have only a choice of, what, 7, 8 abilities every given fight, where's the thought in that?  My Warlock in WoW had a choice of 20-30 options any given round of a fight.  That kind of choice separates the button-mashing morons from the good players in a snap.

Ah, but that is a function of how drab and repetitive most combat is.

If location and facing were much more important, than you wouldn't need to invent 1/2 dozen spell rotations to keep combat from being boring.

Speaking of movement - I'd like to see combat maneuvers in MMOs. Rolling to the side, or a backwards cartwheel, that sort of thing.

 

You're confusing MMORPGs with FPS's.  Please don't.  I hate when devs try and appease the other audience by mixing both genres.  Please do go enjoy the PEW PEW FPS's, allowing for strafing and bunny hoping and terrain exploiting and all the like.  I prefer the slightly more cerebral MMORPG fight where I have to make quick choices (based upon numerous conditions) and not just rely on me having less lag and latency than my opponent.

Would you argue against the more twitch-based combat, say, involving movement maneuvers like rolling and such, if everyone's internet was always fantastic?

Originally posted by s4nder

That's like saying you're drinking too much of the water you've already paid for.

I'd say it's more like they're giving you rental of a water fountain for the month, and you're using the water fountain too much.

Now, if bandwidth was actually measurable, like, say, a body of water, it would be understandable to limit people somewhat, but all you're really paying for is... what... a satellite? A big ol' bunch of wires that connect to various points that connect to satellite dishes that connect to other service providers and relay information?

Really, what you're paying for for "internet" just seems to be... electrical signals, and perhaps line rental.

I don't see how they can run out of electrical signals - except, well, if they run out of electricity.

All that said, I hate Australia's internet.

I would argue that those classes with "zero" abilities still have one ability - shoot. That said though, getting away from the technicalities of "shooting" or whatever else, I probably wouldn't. I need a little more variety.

Give me about 8 special abilities per class, though, and I'll be happy.

I'd prefer it if they made more classes with fewer abilities, as then the class would be defined a bit better. Just make sure every class can actually kill things somehow?

That said, I would say that you should allow for non-combat roles... this topic is pretty broad, I'ma stop now.

Meh - it does offer the chance to be part of a small, loveable community.

That's something that the big boys like WoW miss out on. For example - you log into your server in WoW in a main city on your level 80 warrior in full Tier 9 and... meh, life goes on.

But if you log into your server (probably end up just having the one) in Alganon in a main city on your level 50 (I think is the cap?) soldier, and the five other level 50s will be like "Hey! Man! What have you been up to!? We've been thinking of doing a raid on such-and-such, but we needed a good tank! Our Magus is offline... his internet's been disconnected for a while. You up for it?"

There's something warm and fuzzy about being in a small community. But who knows - maybe only having a few thousand players will be good for Alganon? I mean, even if they only get 2000 players (which they might) that's still $30,000 a month in fees, after the initial, what, $100,000 from sales... that's... a start. It means they might be able to keep the bare bones and keep the game running for a while... and if those 2000 players get their friends, you could get a viral marketting thing going on and keep expanding the game and developer base for the income.

I expect something like that will happen - as there seems to be some support for the game. *shrugs* I'm no mind reader, though, and, like always, we'll just have to wait and see.