All Posts by Hexxeity

Any duo that contains a healer will do very well.

Even two healers can be great if one of them is somewhat DPS oriented, such as Fury.

Well, the guys behind Citadel of Sorcery are promising a world where every bit of the story is tailor-made for your character, and no two players' stories are alike.  They say their quest engine is very complex, sophisticated, and dynamic.  They are also promising advanced AI strategies that will make PvE a real challenge for the first time in MMO history.

Will they be able to deliver on their promises?  Who knows?  Will the quests generated by such a system be picked apart and spoiled on fan sites once players figure out how they are being constructed?  Probably.

But at least someone is trying.

Originally posted by Delanor

Originally posted by Scriar

From reading that it sounded like they planned to release an unfinished game if they did not have a US publisher, which is worrying.

Not an unfinished game, but a game without the content that  would have been included lateron. Although, in a way, an mmorpg is never finished, but that never worried anyone yet.

No one ever said an MMO gets "finished."

"Polished," yes.  "Running smoothly," yes.  "Ready for market," YES.

These are all things a consumer has a right to expect from any game he buys.

Unlike a lot of WoW-heads, I didn't start playing the second the game was released.  At the time, I was enjoying CoH and (briefly) EQ2.

So I'm not burned out and desperate for a new game, and I am not an Achiever, so i won't be hitting 70 on most of my toons anytime soon.

There's a lot of Wow left for me to see, but even if there weren't, I would still have no interest in AoC or WAR.  Both of those titles seem to emphasize features I simply don't care about, so they hold no interest for me.

In fact, I'd say that in general, neither AoC nor WAR is really a direct competitor for the WoW audience, and threads such as this one show a distinct lack of understanding about why people like WoW.

Good thing I don't care about PvP or raiding.  Community is MMOs is generally bad, so I play WoW with friends.  As  for Lore ... ha.  If anyone honestly thinks WoW is lacking in this department, we have a serious difference of opinion.  (I'm not a big LoTR fan anyway.)  And DOMO?  Are you freakin' KIDDING me?  No game will ever beat WoW for casual gameplay -- that is why it's number one.

Developers have been ABLE to make smart AI for a very long time.  The problems with doing so are twofold:  1) most games are built on a model of "kill monsters to get XP," meaning you have to be able to win lots of fights in order to advance your character, and 2) players have been conditioned to expect that they will be able to win every battle, and that losing a fight is a Very Bad Thing.

So clearly, this is a big, big risk for MMO Magic.

But they just might pull it off if they build their game so that the player's advancement is not dependent on the outright killing of every enemy you see.  In a more quest-based environment, monsters can become mere obstacles to the fulfillment of your goals, rather than the primary means of accomplishing the single-minded goal of XP gain for advancement.

D&D Online has its problems, but it does illustrate this point to a degree.  In DDO, you don't HAVE to kill everything in sight (even though you can, and most people do).  But the killing only gets you a little bit of money.  In order to get XP, you have to finish the quests.  Sadly, DDO doesn't really make the most of this system, and the AI is not as stellar as it could be.

Anyway, in this kind of world, you have to make it very clear to players that winning fights is not the be-all, end-all.  You have to make it clear that the quest is the important thing.  You have to show that a total, decisive victory against a smart AI is a rare thing that will only happen every once in a great while.  Most important, you need to include big rewards for players who defeat such an AI.

And yet, it's probably a good idea to have plenty of stupid creatures running around on which the less philosophically minded players can take out their frustrations.  Players do enjoy a fight they can win, after all.

One thing I'd like to see more of is retreating.  If you want your AI to be at all believeable, you need to make outnumbered or relatively weak (but smart) monsters RUN AWAY.  Like, immediately.  At the first sign of trouble.  Preferably to get reinforcements.  Any creature with humanoid intelligence should NEVER throw its life away on an obviously impossible fight.

Of course, this could make entrapment abilities a lot more popular among players, and I'm fine with that.

Which brings me to another point ... players should NOT have access to strategies and abilities that are not available to the AI.  Taunt is quite stupid in my opinion, but in the past it has been a necessary evil.  But it's made so much worse by the fact that very few games let the monsters taunt the players.

Good old (poor excuse for a designer) Brad McQuaid once said he didn't like giving monsters crowd control powers because it's no fun for the player to be on the receiving end, powerless to participate in a fight.  I say tough darts.  If your game is more "fun" for the players than the monsters, it is probably not very challenging.  (Of course, the smart developer gives both players and monsters the ability to break free from CC abilities.)

All in all, I would hope for any fight between players and an equal number of AI opponents should have even odds of going either way.  THAT would be my measuring stick for challenge, and I think the game should take such odds into account when assigning rewards.

Originally posted by jagust05

 

Originally posted by Greymain

Even trolls are better than nothing. Providing they generate discussion.  A dead, inactive forum is the one to be feared.

Yeah i agree i hate dead forums, especially when you are the one who creates them, lol.

 

This may be a stupid question, but what is the difference between Flames and trolls...i am pretty new to forums and posting, though i am not new to mmo's.  Just wondering if someone would kindly help me out, thanks!

Flames are personal attacks against another poster.

Trolling is a blatant attempt to stir up anger just for the sake of making people mad -- it is often accomplished by mentioning controversial subjects for no reason or by taking a contrarian stance you don't necessarily even believe in.

What trolling is NOT:   Someone giving his/her honest opinion about a game or game feature, even if that opinion is highly critical.

1. No

2. Yes, if you don't feed it.  You can also choose to abandon it.

3. Yes

4. It becomes unhappy and doesn't fight as well, then it  runs away.

5. Yes, but you will have to learn higher level skills from other animals and teach them to your primary pet

6. No.  Non-combat pets have nothing to do with the Hunter class.

7. No

8. No

Please visit a site such as http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/ for more information.

"Thanks to everyone who voted"?

A few dozen responses isn't even a good sample for this site on this day only, let alone the MMORPG.com readership as a whole.

You didn't learn anything from this poll, even if you think you did.

Call me crazy, but I kinda wish this weren't a joke.

I wouldn't want to use it ALL the time, but I think it would be great fun every now and then.

1. No one cares
2. By subscribing to Vanguard, you've already proclaimed to the world that you LIKE abuse and you enjoy a thoroughly unprofessional MMOG experience. So I'm really not sure why GM abuse would surprise you.
3. What on earth are you talking about? <Mod edit>

Some out-of-the-box UIs are definitely better than others, and WoW's is one of the best.

But the REAL lesson WoW taught us about UIs is that no two people will ever agree on what constitutes a good UI.  Therefore your best best is to make the UI customizable.  Which Blizzard did.  Which is one of many reasons it's the number one game.