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Maybe. Molten Core wasn't as interesting - mostly giant empty caves that would be on the way to something else
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Jan 11, 2022 07:00
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Didn't they bang out MC in like a week?
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Jan 11, 2022 09:39
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Instanced dungeons are lame as gently caress unless they’re packed full of secrets and traps and stuff. Like the unrest lava illusion.
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Jan 11, 2022 10:30
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DangerDongs posted:I don't know about current EQ, but if it still doesn't have any instances it wins by default. Lost Dungeons of Norrath introduced instanced dungeons to EQ, and that was in 2003 so...not quite two decades ago now.
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Jan 11, 2022 11:55
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FrostyPox posted:I like modern "narrative" MMO dungeons but man I do miss the days of running around awful places like Wailing Caverns and Blackrock Depths I got to 49 on a P99 run last year and my time in Unrest was probably the most fun part it's an all-timer of an MMO dungeon/zone. Guy I grouped with even went on his main to go camp me a Ghoulbane which made the experience even better. Former EQ dev (who's working on the retro MMO that isn't Pantheon) has been doing interviews with people who worked on the various EQs and he did an interview with the guy who did Unrest (and several other dungeons/zones that are considered some of the best): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4gKW5XBQeQ Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Jan 11, 2022 |
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Jan 11, 2022 15:08
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Groovelord Neato posted:I got to 49 on a P99 run last year and my time in Unrest was probably the most fun part it's an all-timer of an MMO dungeon/zone. Guy I grouped with even went on his main to go camp me a Ghoulbane which made the experience even better. curious to hear more about this - are you referring to EverCraft or is there something else I should be keeping my eyes on?
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Jan 11, 2022 18:06
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Frog Act posted:curious to hear more about this - are you referring to EverCraft or is there something else I should be keeping my eyes on? Monsters & Memories: https://monstersandmemories.com/
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Jan 11, 2022 18:11
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I'm probably alone on this, and feel free to call me a crackpot, but M&M has a lot of red flags for me. They're starting out with that mission statement-y "we're not out to recreate EverQuest, but here's our philosophy mumbo jumbo on how we think we can really capture that classic feel" stuff that Pantheon started out with. Pantheon did that and then saw that that wasn't where the money is, pivoted HARD away from all of its early talk, and now it's "well we never promised anything like EQ, now did we  ?". It feels like M&M is setting itself up to have the ability to do the same. Also Shawn Lord was the lead designer or whatever on like, all of the WoW-chasing, downhill-from-here EQ expansions post-Luclin and he's a cryptobro.
Sachant fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Jan 12, 2022 |
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Jan 12, 2022 06:34
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People pining over camping is why there will never be a good(er than ff14) MMO ever again.
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Jan 12, 2022 10:38
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Sachant posted:I'm probably alone on this, and feel free to call me a crackpot, but M&M has a lot of red flags for me. They're starting out with that mission statement-y "we're not out to recreate EverQuest, but here's our philosophy mumbo jumbo on how we think we can really capture that classic feel" stuff that Pantheon started out with. Pantheon did that and then saw that that wasn't where the money is, pivoted HARD away from all of its early talk, and now it's "well we never promised anything like EQ, now did we Oh no it's absolutely never seeing the light of day. I'd have a heart attack if any retro MMO was successfully developed.
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Jan 12, 2022 14:11
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Sachant posted:I'm probably alone on this, and feel free to call me a crackpot, but M&M has a lot of red flags for me. They're starting out with that mission statement-y "we're not out to recreate EverQuest, but here's our philosophy mumbo jumbo on how we think we can really capture that classic feel" stuff that Pantheon started out with. Pantheon did that and then saw that that wasn't where the money is, pivoted HARD away from all of its early talk, and now it's "well we never promised anything like EQ, now did we I don't think you're a crackpot. You should be skeptical because every game that tries to cater to us old EQ fogies ends up being a dumpster fire. I think a lot of that comes from chasing EQ and not chasing EQ's inspiration and sources. They're bound to end up with a diluted product that way. I'm convinced if you want to build another EQ you need to somehow wrangle some old MUDders and and force a graphics engine on them. I'm positive about M&M because some of the developers were drawn from the EQEmu community, so in some sense getting an MVP out is cloning a lot of those mechanics (but see above). I think the art style they've been going for goes a long way to the EQ feel for me, they have been focusing on the low-poly painterly world and characters. They also aren't asking for money yet  I can't speak to Shawn's abilities or history but I think he's at least assembled a decent crew and he's doing a good job at showing the game in its current state on a regular basis. I am hopeful that they have a strong internal vision, because the biggest thing I'm worried about is they listen to the community a little too closely. Everyone has a different perception of what made EQ great, and if they follow the loud voices in the community they'll end up with something that makes nobody happy.
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Jan 12, 2022 16:09
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Not everything after Luclin was bad. PoP was good. Parts of Luclin were also really really good (Caller Cycle, Hollowshade War, Grimling War, Ssra, Inner Acrylia) if sometimes underdeveloped. I'm whatever about M&M. Seems like they have nice ideas and some good people but it's too early to say anything about it. I think have an irrational bias against Unity Engine, though.
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Jan 12, 2022 17:13
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Vinestalk posted:...irrational bias against Unity Engine, though. Don't, its a poor engine for MMOs. None of the current market big name engines are really built for MMOs. Unity and Unreal are great at small / midsize maps. They have flaws with all the shortcuts they do around optimization, things outside the local area of the player are often simplified or not modeled at all, all of those things need to be reconfigured. Amazon needed a huge effort to make Lumberyard and they still could not make it work with all the bugs. Hell it was hit by Log4J in the chat box. In a digital generation or 2 someone might make an engine for MMOs, showing people how to run 100 people in a small area, 1000 people on a huge map, endless maps (aka Minecraft) and all the issues around it so you can make an MMO like you can make a shooter today. Till that day comes, we're stuck with reinventing the wheel and $50 mil minimum to get into the industry.
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Jan 12, 2022 18:50
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Vinestalk posted:
PyRosflam posted:Don't, its a poor engine for MMOs. None of the current market big name engines are really built for MMOs. Yeah, Unity sucks. They've talked about their tech stack a bit here for what it's worth: https://monstersandmemories.com/updates/update-10-quick-tech-overview I'm not one to judge, though. I'm slaving away on a mostly-2D not-so-massively wouldnt-it-be-cool-if-we-had-100-players multiplayer game in Godot 
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Jan 12, 2022 20:12
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cmdrk posted:Monsters & Memories: https://monstersandmemories.com/ Ah I remember this one now, I think it did a particularly good job modernizing / appropriating the aesthetic of EQ’s low poly armor which is why it’s absolutely going to be a dumpster fire like all the other retro MMOs. The only two projects I have any hope for now are Galaxies of Eden and EverCraft, the former because they have a good idea and relatively limited scope, and the latter because they seem to have dialed back the crazy scope creep and are using a straightforward voxel engine that I imagine will be easier to flesh a world out in Would love to see M&M materialize in particular since it’s so evocative of EQOA, my favorite MMO ever, which is stone dead and has no hope for even emulation
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Jan 12, 2022 20:23
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Frog Act posted:Ah I remember this one now, I think it did a particularly good job modernizing / appropriating the aesthetic of EQ’s low poly armor which is why it’s absolutely going to be a dumpster fire like all the other retro MMOs. The only two projects I have any hope for now are Galaxies of Eden and EverCraft, the former because they have a good idea and relatively limited scope, and the latter because they seem to have dialed back the crazy scope creep and are using a straightforward voxel engine that I imagine will be easier to flesh a world out in relatedly there seems to be a small renaissance for people doing "Playstation-style Graphics".. lowpoly, low res, no antialiasing, etc. https://discord.gg/5yuURqKg kinda cool. i hope some games come out of this.
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Jan 12, 2022 22:41
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The PS1 aesthetic's been around for several years now, though I've only really seen it done much in the context of horror games, since the fuzzy pseudoimpressionist style of PS1 low poly works great for creating an unreal, dreamlike atmosphere and blurring the details of the monsters to sell the horror better.
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Jan 12, 2022 22:45
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I’d like to see the lower fidelity but not blurry/PS1 style of EQOA make a return - it’s simple, legible, can be used to make big evocative landscapes that aren’t necessarily obscured by rendering distance, and easy enough for any hardware. My pipe dream is an EQOA mobile port with PC cross play, I’m convinced it could work if it wasn’t loaded down with micro transactions but it will never happen
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Jan 13, 2022 16:48
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Orange DeviI posted:Instanced dungeons are lame as gently caress unless they’re packed full of secrets and traps and stuff. Like the unrest lava illusion. The way I see it is there's no such thing as secrets or traps in modern MMO PVE content. Even assuming it's not datamined on download, in a matter of days players will figure out everything there is to figure out and share it with each others and calculate optimal strategies. Theres a reason after trial and error FFXIV devs quickly settled on making "boring" corridor dungeons, if you give people multiple paths to take they'll take what they think to be the optimal one. If you force players to excessively backtrack you're just disrespecting players and wasting their time. As a dev you have to ask yourself why you're spending dev time on stuff players are skipping. The traditional dungeon maze design was developed in tabletop and single player RPGs where the game design was focused on making a fun experience you play through once or maybe a few times. Many modern MMO's have been running for decades, and PVE content is designed to remain current and replayed for months or even years. This requires a fundamental difference in approach to content design. The closest you can probably get is randomized content such as Path of Exile, which is a choice but one which can't really give you that bespoke dungeon design it sounds like you're looking for.
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Jan 13, 2022 19:17
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Frog Act posted:I’d like to see the lower fidelity but not blurry/PS1 style of EQOA make a return - it’s simple, legible, can be used to make big evocative landscapes that aren’t necessarily obscured by rendering distance, and easy enough for any hardware. My pipe dream is an EQOA mobile port with PC cross play, I’m convinced it could work if it wasn’t loaded down with micro transactions but it will never happen I'm so down with that. My friend and I were just commenting on this in EQ.. sure, trees are approximately a cone with some largely rectangular branches and the leaves are just 2d planes with a leafy texture on them, but you know that's a tree even from max distance. There's definitely charm in that art style. you know, open world games are cool and all, but I really think zones should come back into fashion. Each zone can be its own canvas for designers to paint a piece of the world, with its own clear boundaries, themes, mechanics, restrictions, etc. I think this is especially true as developers start to democratize content generation, where players could be given the tools to build their own adventures. Of course if it's fully freeform and open, someone will come along day 1 and make the most optimal area for xp/money grind, but whatever.
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Jan 13, 2022 19:18
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Frog Act posted:I’d like to see the lower fidelity but not blurry/PS1 style of EQOA make a return - it’s simple, legible, can be used to make big evocative landscapes that aren’t necessarily obscured by rendering distance, and easy enough for any hardware. My pipe dream is an EQOA mobile port with PC cross play, I’m convinced it could work if it wasn’t loaded down with micro transactions but it will never happen You may be on to something, by most accounts the second most played MMO in 2022 looks like this:    And a massive portion of it's growth was driven by a mobile game client release: 
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Jan 13, 2022 19:28
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Lazy Fair posted:The way I see it is there's no such thing as secrets or traps in modern MMO PVE content. Even assuming it's not datamined on download, in a matter of days players will figure out everything there is to figure out and share it with each others and calculate optimal strategies. I wonder if you could create a dungeon theme and static bosses, but randomize everything else. Maybe have assets shared across a dungeon with randomized trash, treasure chests, and traps, but keep the same bosses. So, let's say your making a simple vampire crypt with undead skeletons for trash and some vampire lords as the bosses. The path to get to the vampire lord would be randomized, the trash would have random placement and different abilities (think Diablo), and the traps could range from spike strips to a ceiling collapse. To keep the bosses interesting, you could also randomize their abilities, but still keep them within the vampire theme (maybe have a rotating pool of vampire skills that gets updated every week.) Lore would be hard to get right though, not sure how you could make interesting lore about a vampire lord that remains in the world for a week.
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Jan 13, 2022 20:42
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Isn't that just literally PoE, though? Or like half the roguelite genre?
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Jan 13, 2022 22:04
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PoE in MMO form? I'll take it!
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Jan 13, 2022 22:48
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Cardboard Fox posted:PoE in MMO form? I'll take it! I think Hellgate: London attempted to do this. Sadly, it did not work out.
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Jan 14, 2022 01:26
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Cardboard Fox posted:PoE in MMO form? I'll take it! PoE maps go away the moment you leave them, though- it sounds like in this case, the map would stick around long enough to make discovery satisfying & worthwhile, and then go away. With roguelikes there's not really a process of learning the map because you don't care about their features after you walk away from them (& also they have to remain straightforward enough that that's not a problem). If the map is around for a week or a month, then you can have the old EQ style nonsense mazes and map them out, etc. and then when it starts to become well-understood, it vanishes. Or you could have a lot of very small servers of a few hundred people and randomly generate each one- this is basically why discovery is interesting in valheim. I like the idea of having long-term temporary maps just because if they're sticking around that long, it would be reasonably easy to have enough POI tiles that there's new or new-to-you stuff every time.
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Jan 14, 2022 06:11
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seasonal servers with randomized dungeon layouts would own this year the old mage tower is full of piles and piles of skeletons with the skeleton lord at the top who drops a key to the loot crypt, next year it's full of summoned monsters and there's a portal to the elemental planes at the top
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Jan 14, 2022 07:31
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I don't know, for me any concept of discovery goes out the window the moment poo poo is randomized rather than handmade. This might just be a problem with me being a jaded old tech guy, but with any kind of proc-gen there is no discovery - the seams are all apparent no matter how hard you try to hide them and it literally doesn't matter what's behind the bend: I've already seen it anyway, it just might be in a new orientation. And that's fine for what it is, I like having a fresh maze with a new coat of paint to traverse as much as anyone, but to think it has some novelty of discovery is just absurd to me. Like your best case scenario is your algorithm hosed up and created some glitched out monstrosity, at least that's vaguely interesting and potentially funny. It's the same reason something like Subnautica is such a sublime stand-out among the piles of soulless open world survival junk.
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Jan 14, 2022 11:07
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Hra Mormo posted:I don't know, for me any concept of discovery goes out the window the moment poo poo is randomized rather than handmade. This might just be a problem with me being a jaded old tech guy, but with any kind of proc-gen there is no discovery - the seams are all apparent no matter how hard you try to hide them and it literally doesn't matter what's behind the bend: I've already seen it anyway, it just might be in a new orientation. And that's fine for what it is, I like having a fresh maze with a new coat of paint to traverse as much as anyone, but to think it has some novelty of discovery is just absurd to me. Like your best case scenario is your algorithm hosed up and created some glitched out monstrosity, at least that's vaguely interesting and potentially funny. I'd agree 99% with this. The remaining 1% is how beautiful the Valheim world generator can be. But that's landscaping, as opposed to the cool nooks and crannies hand-made content can deliver, so your point stands.
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Jan 14, 2022 15:03
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I don't mind procgen worlds if it's "signed off on" by humans, and adds some discovery and secrets to the world in ways that can't be datamined. I really like the core idea of Crowfall's campaign worlds, and I'd love to see a game do that but in a primarily PvE oriented way with more of an emphasis on different world elements. Semi procgen (but hand-polished) campaign world goes up for 1-3 months, there are rules about what characters you can bring in and out of said world, the world progresses over the course of said 1-3 month period, then dies, and you bring your characters back with whatever you got from your adventuring, and prepare for the next campaign. I think that's a really interesting approach that could beat perfectly solved wiki-everything PvE.
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Jan 14, 2022 19:15
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Sachant posted:I don't mind procgen worlds if it's "signed off on" by humans, and adds some discovery and secrets to the world in ways that can't be datamined Man, one thousand times this. Data mining really has spoiled a lot of games. I think it's not insurmountable to stream assets from the server, but I imagine it'd be a huge tech stack shift that you would only do if your game really hinged on discoverable secrets.
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Jan 14, 2022 20:48
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cmdrk posted:I imagine it'd be a huge tech stack shift that you would only do if your game really hinged on discoverable secrets. I've been playing classic EQ and P99 for god knows how long now and I still don't have a clear picture of how or which stats factor into crafting combine success, or to what degree.
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Jan 14, 2022 21:07
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Any chance AI will solve this problem in the future, or is that just over-hyped nonsense? My dream MMO was always a mixture of SWG and Everquest, but with massive persistent elements that kept content fresh and ever changing, unlike static content in games like WoW where the developers are just adding new dungeons, quests, and whole zones on top of old ones, essentially making a giant bloated corpse over time. I've always wanted a game where the world around you changed based on what players did. A zone like Elwyyn Forest in WoW would undergo seasonal, weather, and elemental changes. Mobs would react to other NPCs and players alike. Wolves would hunt deer dynamically through the zone. Players would be able to deplete the bear population, and the world would react to an overly aggressive playerbase. Overtime, the zone would construct new buildings by NPC factions that migrated over, cities would be taken over by evil Gnolls, players would have to face bandit camps that combine with other tribes to kill you. The problem with this is of course is balance, and most importantly, developer time. I don't think it's possible for this game to exist, because otherwise why hasn't there been anything like this already done? I've seen the same boring static mob placement with a "chase player for 10 meters" script copy/pasted forever. Even that Ashes of Creation game that is now running on Unreal Engine 5 has the same 20 year old mob AI. Is it an issue with technology? We can make skin appear as real as our own, but can't explain to a computer how to create an interesting world?
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Jan 14, 2022 21:11
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Cardboard Fox posted:Any chance AI will solve this problem in the future, or is that just over-hyped nonsense? There was something maybe a few pages back or maybe just in my head about how Everquest Next tried to have a complex AI in combination with a dynamic voxelated world and it ended up killing the game because the pathing was too complex to work reliably
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Jan 14, 2022 23:44
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Cardboard Fox posted:Is it an issue with technology? We can make skin appear as real as our own, but can't explain to a computer how to create an interesting world? There is a drastic difference between teaching a computer more efficient ways to render graphics and teaching a computer to behave in a way that is both realistic and, more importantly, enjoyable for the player. For what it's worth, the things you describe have actually been attempted before. Ultima Online had a whole ecology that got annihilated the moment servers launched. The issue is not so much what is technology capable of it, its how players interact with your world. And inevitably, MMO players play like locusts.
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Jan 15, 2022 00:00
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Yeah the issue with fully simulated dynamic world ecosystems is a combination of: 1) The players won't care 2) Some will actively hate it (UGH i can't get my griffon buttskin belt because the orcs control this territory right now and the griffons only appear when the elves are here) 3) The players will absolute wreck it beyond repair
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Jan 15, 2022 00:48
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Here's my theory: I think players, especially online players, who grind things kind of value it based on a rewards / time) function. So even if the rewards are the same, then they'll optimize for efficiency of time. In the event they're all equally rewarding and require the same time commitment, they'll optimize for ease. If everything is equally easy, rewarding, and requires the same time commitment only then will players decide to select for fun. But also, they'll probably move to something else because other games might seem to be more rewarding to their simple incentive/reward-focused brain. So maybe, with the truth that rewards in video games are meaningless and illusory, developers should try to simply make a game fun and then only allow (or incentivize) you to do the fun things and disincentive non-fun behavior. In MMOs the real reward should be the friends you make along the way, and they should incentivize social behavior like dressup, group play, and shared experiences. I can slay an orc in any game, but slaying an orc in an MMO should be a pretty dang social experience. I think this is why WoW has the best gameplay, and the loving worst community: people are playing it for rewards and rewards alone. Other people only hinder or help that very specific goal. Very toxic. But the gameplay/combat is top-tier. I bet this is why it makes so much money. It's a good game if the grind, the community, and the horrific company running it were removed/changed. Writing is dogshit, though. jokes fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Jan 15, 2022 |
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Jan 15, 2022 01:07
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The fundamental problem of MMOs is that they are the best when lots of people play it and most 'living worlds' or 'your choices matter' or 'player driven economy' style design decisions scare people away. Of course a group focused game should try and encourage group play but people don't like being forced to group to progress. A faction system works out until everyone wants to play on the 'dominant' faction and you get the incredibly imbalanced ratios of some of WoW's servers. And, yes, a realistic ecology system sounds cool until you get people who either want to get every skill point/gold available to murder everything or just like killing virtual animals and screwing up the whole economy. I don't think it's a coincidence that the most popular MMOs in recent years are two games that you can play as single player games, especially since FFXIV actively forces you to play single player most of the time.
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Jan 15, 2022 02:07
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Sachant posted:Yeah the issue with fully simulated dynamic world ecosystems is a combination of: Yeah, there's an article about UO that explains how they tried to create a virtual ecosystem, but scrapped it because players just murdered everything and made it pointless. I was thinking about in game day/night cycles recently. WoW went with the 24 hour cycle while other games have gone with much shorter cycles. I remember playing DAoC and how dark night could actually be, needing to toggle your torch on. No matter what the cycle is, we end up with in game holidays that span weeks or essentially months of in game days. Are there any games that have an in game calendar based on the passage of time in the game world (not a 365 day calendar)? Imagine an in game calendar where each Earth day is six in game days. An in game year could pass in about two months (or whatever you want a year to be in your game world). In game seasons could change weekly (monthly, whatever) with in game events occurring more regularly. Of course, as I write this out, now I'm imagining how drat old characters would theoretically be as the years went on, but it's a video game where multiple days pass in a single login session anyway and people magically come back to life, so whatever. Anyway, I'd love to see the passage of time and seasons implemented in games, but if you made any content where something was only available some of the time, people would probably be mad they had to wait a month or so for it to come back. In conclusion, I'm done rambling and gamers suck the fun out of everything.
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Jan 15, 2022 02:41
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Hellioning posted:I don't think it's a coincidence that the most popular MMOs in recent years are two games that you can play as single player games, especially since FFXIV actively forces you to play single player most of the time. What's interesting about FFXIV to me is that it not only actively forces you to play solo a decent amount of the time, it's also the only current MMO I can think of that also forces you to group fairly regularly. I can't think of any other major MMO that requires players to take part in group instances as part of the leveling process and will gate your progress until you do. Guild Wars 2 used to have a group instance required for the main story but a) the story's optional in GW2, and b) they retooled it to be a solo instance a few years back. Granted GW2 is kind of different because the open world is also group content kinda, but maybe that's beside the point. FFXIV's required group content requires minimal communication, which is probably why it works at all, but I think that's an interesting quirk, especially for the MMO that many people point to as "actually a single-player JRPG."
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