All Posts by Nerf09

Originally posted by Orca

I dont believe in this theory either.

I believe an MMORPG should be a set world, with a theme, and a storyline. Then the developers should add content, make events and so and so... To keep the players busy, meanwhile they do player events.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

You know, when SWG first came out, I literally spent like 6 hours traveling around looking for an NPC to sell off my junk to.  I refused to believe what everyone else was telling me that there were no NPC's that buy your junk for a set price.  So I traveled from town to town spamming on chat, "Don't tell me theres no NPC's I can't sell to, its a secret, you powergamers won't tell me where the NPC is located at, i'll find him hahahahaha.  Then i'll tell everyone else about your little secret hahaha."

I never found the NPC.

device=c:\dos\himem.sys
device=c:\dos\emm386.exe ram
dos=high,umb
devicehigh=c:\windows\mouse.sys
devicehigh=c:\dos\setver.exe
country=044,437,c:\dos\country.sys 
shell=c:\dos\command.com c:\dos /e:512 /p

Load "*",8,1

There were thousands of good, viable ideas on the SWG forums to make Jedi the alpha class, but not so powerful that everyone and their grandma would be grinding to it.  But developers lack imagination, and brainpower to do something truley revolutionary and interesting.  So I guess they just go around breaking copywrite laws by plageurizing WOW.

Good topic.

#1:  WWIIONLINE

#2:  Diablo 2

#3:  Empire Earth ONE (1)

Oh MMO's  *yawn*

#1:  WwiIONLINE

#2:  Planetside

#3:  SWG pre Holocron grind

Originally posted by KzinKiller

Socialization and a game pace that is not relentlessly frantic appeal to an older audience, don't you think?

There's a ton of money to be made from that audience, of course.  But if the SWG experience taught us anything (even if it didn't teach SOE a thing), it's that execs don't like having to serve an older audience.  They demand things like ... quality.  They quit if you treat them like idiots and deliver crap.

The younger audience endures lousy quality for a longer period if the graphics are shiny enough, and what the heck, it's usually not their money being wasted anyway.

So I think we're stuck waiting for a company that's willing to put in the hard work to get the billions of dollars available from the older, more demanding audience that insists on quality and customer service.  Somebody will do it ... but I'm not holding my breath for it to be this year.

With 10-20-30-40 million current or former subscribers, the populace has already been tapped.  Any developer who wants to take the easy road and tap into the younger base, will have to wait another 5 years.  So theyre stuck with us old geezers, and have to deliver hahaha.

Sorry our group needs a monk.

Sorry our group needs a tank.

Sorry our group needs a buffer.

Thank you, come again.

Guild Wars is a perfect example of what effect forced grouping has on the game. 

If you are in a "zone" or "area" with 100 other players around you, and you need 1 other player who is a warrior-monk class, who is not afk, understands "LFG"-speak, isn't already in a group, and isn't busy doing something else, you pretty much narrowed it down to like 1-3 other players.  And then 'you people' wonder why nobody socializes.

In pre-CU SWG, you grouped because 2 pistols was always better then 1.  Short, simple and sweat.  That was the way it was, that was the way it should be, and thats the way the ball bounces.

Originally posted by Zer078

I played and subed to

UO,EQ,AC,DAOC,Earth & beyond, AO, SWG, lineage, Lineage 2, EQ2, WOW, DDO,EVE, LOTRO, GW FF11 ,EVE

I just quit eq(was hard leaving my 8 toons with caped aa), now im looking for a mmo thats different.  cause i gotten sick of the fantasy setting for mmo's

*looks at your list again*

You think theres a game that strays from the MMO norm?  Ok, even though your list is twice as long as mine, I'll give you some names.  Planetside and WWIIONLINE.  Planetside if your a FPS junkie, WWIIONLINE if your half and half FPS/RTS junkie.  (WWIIONLINE is not RTS, its just slower paced so you have at least 2 more seconds to think about your next move, instead of rapidly wearing out your keyboards ASDW keys.)

Originally posted by KirinShadow

Gameplay would definitely be the hard part. More importantly, preventing exploitation.  For example, one could say that to have the ultimate immersive world experience, you would technically have to enable FFA killing (after all, in the real world and most pen and paper games, one can usually (try to) kill anyone at any time.) This in turn opens up the ability for people to slaughter new players mercilessly, Because the game is based on uber-loot-gear.  In a RTS game, or FPS game, one grunt is as good as any other, the definition of a gank is a coward and a wimp so you balance that with an infamy system that says guards will kill on sight any player over X infamy or in a faction opposed to that guard.. Okay, now you have people who will attack you to piss you off and then drag you to the guards, and it becomes a chicken-run instead of a battle... Only because the game is based on levels and uber-gear So you prevent the guards from attacking people who didn't instigate a fight, however the guards are now psychic, and as such the world is no longer immersive.. how did the average club-wielding blockhead at the gates learn to tell the innocent from the guilty?

Such extrapolations can be made from just about any single "risky" feature in any multiplayer environment, of which there are thousands. Solving these issues requires balancing hundreds of ways at once, and the whole development process of creating a game wherein you don't end up with a single exploitative tactic ruining the immersiveness and the community (Hi, Shadowbane!!) is a mind-screw at its easiest.

Communities are extremely unpredictable, which is the key dificulty in incorporating so many of the features that people throw around on these forums like they could just be slapped into a game and save the MMORPG day. That said, what you REALLY need are people willing to spend plenty of time with pens, paper, and a lot of crappy ideas before they ever touch an engine, but good luck getting indie studios to do that, they want to see results soon.. The groups where this sort of thing DOES happen (On forums or other communication media) almost never get their act together enough to really get a project in gear, or fall prey to social issues that break the project before it really even starts.

 

So you don't got uber gear, and your not grinding up to level 200, then what does a player do with his time? 

What does a player do in a RTS game?  THEY COLLECT RESOURCES AND BUILD UP AN ARMY! 

What does a player do in a FPS shooter game?  THEY SHOOT OThEr PLAYERS! 

What does a player do in a strategy game?  THEY BUILD UP AN EMPIRE! 

What does a player do in Sim City?  THEY BUILD UP A CITY! 

Only in a Roleplaying game is it gear-level centric.  Why do all MMO's have to be Roleplaying games anyways, and when was the last time you saw an MMORPG player play a role?  Is there an unwritten rule somewhere stating that, "All MMO's shall be MMORPG Everquest clones"

Skill Tree:

-Bending Sticks I

-Bending Sticks II

-Bending Sticks III

-Advanced Bending Sticks

*requires opposable thumbs Specialization

_____________________________

-Rudimentary Grunts and Gestures

-Grunts and Gestures I

-Grunts and Gestures II

-Advanced Grunts and Gestures

*requires Specialization in either Grunts, or Gestures

Ok fine.  But there needs to be changes.

There needs to be an economy.  That means, no NPC's creating items out of thin air (Get Radiant AI to make them work for it).  There already is item usage breakdown, so thats good, but not good enough.

And NPC's should reproduce, so you can kill them PERMANENTLY! 

AND NO QUESTS!  Give NPC's new attributes in their Radiant AI file, like faction politics.  So if you are one faction, and the NPC is the other faction, then the NPC will hate you, maybe hate you enough to attack you.

Otherwise this will be another Everquest Clone.

Originally posted by Malkosha

I've played CoX and even thought about going back there. Played EVE but I never really got inot it. Maybe I didn't give it a chance. Never played Guild Wars though. Might have to try it out.

 

Thanks!

 

Group LF Monk

Monk LFG

Poster LF Game

Game LF Developer

Developer LF clue

Originally posted by Neanderthal

Mercenary group my ass.  When has anyone ever paid a guild to fight for them.  When has a guild ever had any interest in anything but themselves.

Nope.  They are authoritarian socialist communes.  It just fits too perfectly.

Originally posted by Vhaln

 

Originally posted by Nerf09

In SWG (Pre WOW emulator), players grouped because 2 pistols are better then 1.  Its as simple as that, and it should be as simple as that.  There should be no other artificial forces involved like tank-healer-buffer group needs a ranged, or tank-healer-ranged group needs a buffer. 

That is so incredibly structured its lame.

 

I think structure is what makes a game.  Guilds are such an important part of making MMOs worth playing that I think they should be way more structured, kind of like the OP seems to be suggesting.

In SWG, groups were just zergs.  I find that boring, it's like chess with only pawns.

Monk LFG

GLF monk

Monk LFG

(Guild Was is a perfect example of this structured idiocy)

Idiot LFG

GLF Idiot

When you get to level 70, now you have to raid-grind.  When your finished with raid-grinding, then what do you do?  Wait for another expansion?

If you knew your destiny beforehand, wouldn't life be borring.

Hell, yesterday I was surfing the internet for a MUD, or some sort of text D and D game (with an active PC Game Master), that I could play.

But it looks like the MUD's basically use the same game mechanics as your average RPG.  Don't know about old fashion pen and paper D and D.

I know developers spend massive amount of money making landscape.  Has anyone ever tried to make a map with Steam for HalfLife 2?  You got to put in every light, every brick in the wall, the sun, the skybox, every blade of grass, every tree, and the hardest thing for me was making land elevate up and down without making it look blocky. 

Then you compile it, start the game, and your FPS goes to 5 because you put too much dynamic lighting in.  ARGH!

If you have 100,000 subscribers, then there are going to be 100,000 different decorated houses.  How much money or how many programmers would need to be hired to put 100,000 different buildings on a map?  And what an eyesore, and what a bore it is to play these games where one building is exactly like another.

Developers spend massive amounts of time and money trying to diversify the landscape, when the answer has been open to them the entire time:  LET THE PLAYERS DO IT!

But.  And this is a big butt, there has to be an incentive to do it. 

I would like to thank the poster who brought up 'The Sims'.  There is a different demographic of subscribers who play 'The Sims', or WWIIONLINE, or World of Warcraft.  I have never played 'the Sims' cause its not even a game.  So therefore I have no incentive to (not only not subscribe to The Sims) decorate a house.  UO and SWG was the only game where there was an incentive to do such a thing in a demographic of players who desire combat.  You had to store stuff, so you buy a house and decorate it whether you like it or not.  Thats the incentive.

Incentive.  ME ME ME ME!  Were selfish players.  We do things for ME and I.  Roleplaying can only be derived from incentive, it cannot be forced, it cannot be artificial, it cannot be invented by the programmers.  Nobody follows the lore either, because theres no incentive to do it.  Lore is artificial roleplaying.  Im starting to ramble incoherently, must stop.

In SWG (Pre WOW emulator), players grouped because 2 pistols are better then 1.  Its as simple as that, and it should be as simple as that.  There should be no other artificial forces involved like tank-healer-buffer group needs a ranged, or tank-healer-ranged group needs a buffer. 

That is so incredibly structured its lame.

Originally posted by Gameloading

I honnestly prefer developers to pay attention things like combat, group dynamics or even questing (despite the fact I'm not a huge fan of questing) than so called "sandbox" things like playerhousing. If I wanted to decorate my house, I'd play the freaking Sims.

That player decorating his house was accomplishing 2 goals.

-Organization.  Easy to see what you are looking for.

-Storage space.

This player in the video has a neat and tidy personality.  When I played SWG, my personality was shown cause I bought the cheapest house, and just threw junk on the ground randomly.  I live like a slob.

-Roleplaying.

-Personality.

You'll never see roleplaying and personality in a ratmaze game, unless its hardcoded into the lore by a programmer, and at great cost to the production of the title I might add.

Originally posted by DrSaw

Man, I really wanted to play a MMORPG tonight.  Looking at my desktop, there are plenty installed: Guild Wars, WoW, LOTRO, and 9Dragons.  Nothing appeals to me.

I want...

* ... to jump on my swoop and ride to my guild's city and check my factories.

* ... survey for more resources and setup a few harvesters.

* ... hit my personal weaponsmith workshop and make some truly exceptional weapons.

* ... Visit the guild mall and see if my merchant has sold anything.

* ... stop by my mansion and put some more loot on display.

* ... jump in my tie-fighter and shoot down a few X-wings.

 

It has now been over a year since I logged into SWG and some evenings like tonight I still can't believe that it is all gone.

Goddamn you, Sony.  Goddamn you.

Quest 1)  Jump in vehicle, visit guildhall.

Quest 2)  Survey for resources.

Quest 3)  Visit weaponsmith, craft weapons.

Quest 4)  Visit merchant.

QUest 5)  Stop by house and decorate.

Quest 6)  Shoot at stuff.

All these quests without a computer telling you exactly what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and where to do it at.  Gee golly willakers.  Who woulda thunk it.  Daaaaang.