MMO rambling on fohguild.org again

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barnum Would love to see this. I really think a lot of valuable dev time could be put to better use creating a larger more in-depth world, rather then the areas so many people seem to rush thru just to get to the top level anyways. I like the fact in Eve you enter the world in a somewhat safer area, but can immediately move out and take your chances or join friends who are months/years ahead of you skillwise. Your not going to be flying a titan right away, but you can still get into things quick enough.

I've had the same thought for a while now. Every time a game comes out that has quest-based progression I recall this line of thinking. Why quests, let alone level-based progression? What a huge waste of development time. Not only do you have to make tons and tons of content just to placate players through the process of getting to the endgame, but if you only have one path for the players to progress through they'll complain about lack of choice/options.

Not to mention the quests are such horrible filler anyway - I know everyone here is the same way with the 10-bear-asses quests where we've become these human scanners, able to instantly look at paragraphs of text to decipher key numbers and locations and go find the bears who have the specific asses necessary for quest completion. Frankly I still prefer EQ camp grinding to that, although I'm fairly sure I'm in the minority on that point haha.

I mean again looking at UO, or even EVE as a more recent example (which we know today is successful as far as profit and stability/growth goes). The content in these games is laughable. When really they should be the ones laughing at the diku games. Everquest on it's 16th expansion... WoW redoing their entire game and stats system due to mudflation and other mechanic changes (flying mounts etc.)... it's a joke when you have systems in place to either bypass this content or create it dynamically. Now I'm not saying some random EVE solar system has the same depth and beauty of any given WoW zone, certainly they do not. However, the development cost difference is inarguable.

I'm not saying this is the Final Solution for all MMO players. Obviously it's a different market. Hell, it might even be a niche market at this point with how engraved into people's minds level/quest-based progression is. But I highly doubt it's not a profit-worthy share of the MMO market waiting to be tapped (specifically, a current-gen fantasy "sandbox" mmo). And for unproven, small developers looking to stake their claim in the market, this really seems like a given as to where they should focus their design - NOT on the massive content heavy timesinks that are diku/wow-likes.

In reply to an fohguild thread on 11/3/2009.

Reply about Graphics in MMOs on fohguild.org

I agree, good graphics are completely unnecessary. I can safely say that none of my fondest memories in MMOs have anything to do with graphics and everything to do with atmosphere/setting.

It actually goes beyond that, to the point of which when graphical "improvements" have ruined games for me. Two easy examples are UO and EQ. Luclin literally made me quit EQ because of the new and foreign graphics. The game didn't feel the same and I hated the fact that there was a chance people were rendering me in the new, terrible stick-up-the-ass SoL model. The original EQ player models may have been lacking polygons but they had a ton of style and familiarity. UO... well, that's a no brainer. That 3d client tore the heart and soul right out of the game (although it was gameplay stuff that made me stop playing). I do admit that Kingdom Reborn actually looks pretty good today, but those original 2d graphics are still just so gorgeous to me that I can't see any need to waste time replacing them. And they definitely stand the test of time with what people are doing on player run shards.

Posted on fohguild.org on 11/2/2009.

Bemoaning Questing on the fohguild.org forums

I'm pretty much of the mind that quests should either be done really well or hardly done at all. I might be alone here, but social grinding/instance running is way more fun to me than mindless questing, and questing takes WAY more resources to produce. Plus, with having to create questlines, it's to the point where if you even have two quest paths to level up with people will claim you don't have enough content because they get bored after 1 alt. Really seems senseless to go the quest route anymore.

So yeah, quest-based leveling = tons of content creation for - I assume - not much gain. Has anyone ever met someone who actually reads every single quest and enjoys them? Sure, you have the occasional fun quests in every game, the bombing runs and such, these should certainly remain. I just think the resources dedicated to making the hundreds/thousands of quests are better spent elsewhere, like making a more fun dynamic system in it's place. AO did fairly well here with the mission system, for its time.

Personally I was really excited for WAR's whole "oh, you've killed 10 bandits who are raiding our village but DIDN'T get the quest for it? Well, here's your reward anyway!" - sadly they botched it as expected and it was just some gimmicky useless system. I really like exploration for the sake of exploration and being rewarded for it (roaming around with a group and finding new and interesting xp camps in early era EQ/new expansions was probably the peak of this facet), but 95% of the time you're just following the dotted line and watching your numbers increase. I dunno, it sounds a bit hypocritical when I was just saying how I can't play without quest markers - I actually PREFER walking around "in the dark", but only when I am actively finding goals and rewards on my own. When I'm walking around in the dark trying to find rabid bears, not just regular bears, to get some rabid bear asses, that's when I become annoyed.

go go rambling

In reply to a fohguild.org forum thread on 10/25/2009.

Comparing modeling applications on the Fortress Forever forum

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nezumi Did valve uses XSI to make HL2? (p.s. Red is the team to join.)

Supposedly.

The XSI mod tool with valve addon is basically everything you could ever need to model for half-life 2. The main downside is you can't render with the mod tool, but it's not a big deal really. Just set up your .qc file and whenever you need to see a fully detailed texture just export the scene to .smd, smack the .qc file to compile and refresh the model in model viewer.

Obviously, the biggest upside is that it's absolutely free.

I've learned both XSI and 3ds max 8 over the past few weeks and I have to say both have their downsides. For me, XSI just didn't want to goddamn work, ever. First I got a problem that a lot of people seem to get where the program just didn't want to start up - of course, this was after 2 days of spending all my time and effort learning how to use the program. Then it starts working again and I'm not sure whether or not to trust it (on the support forum, there was a thread from 2004 about the problem in question, lots of pages, no developer replies at all - makes me wary of their support). Anyway, I make another model in it, all is going fine... HOWEVER - for some reason I absolutely can't make my collision model (physbox) from it (which is one of the main reasons to use XSI - to skip the bullshit involved in exporting your models from 3ds - in 3ds you have to set up a bone structure and make sure everything is tied to the bone, and has a material applied - XSI basically does all of this for you). But yeah, no worky, after many hours of trying to get a very simple physbox to work (talking 2 cubes, here) it absolutely refused to. Which is damn weird because I had just made a harder physbox a few days before.

(http://www.twincannon.com/pics/crapcamera.jpg vs http://www.twincannon.com/stopsign2.jpg) yes I know the camera is ass, it was just to make sure I understood the model/unwrap/texture/compile process start to finish :)

Also UV unwrapping in XSI simply blows balls. Some people say it's the best UV unwrapper out there so maybe I was doing something wrong, but from the tutorial I followed it's much harder and dumber than 3ds's process. I mean, the base uv unwrapper itself is pretty much the same, select polys and it correlates onto the UV map, but the automated processes seem much different. In 3ds you can do different types of fully automated unwraps - like flatten mapping - and it gives you a pretty damn good unwrap right off the bat, you just have to resize everything and fit it. It also is good at making sure things are the same size, i.e. two connecting polys are the same size and near each other. In XSI, one of the only options I could find was selecting all faces from one side and unwrap that side - so you do left, right, front, back, top bottom... that's 6 operations, and at the end you basically have a giant mess of misaligned stuff and have to do tons of tweaking. I can't remember how long it took me to get the stop sign UV into workable shape but it was definitely quite a task for something so simple. http://www.twincannon.com/stopsign1.jpg

So yeah in any case I finally gave up on XSI for good and am working in 3ds now. Other benefits from 3ds aside from stability is better plugin support and easier access to tools that speed the whole modeling process up (i.e. that giant panel depending on whether you're selecting vertices, or faces, or edges etc. - there's a lot of tools that XSI seemed to be lacking).

Anyway the whole reason I even started XSI up was because Generalvivi's tutorials were down and I had forgotten basically everything I knew about modeling when I started back up a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately some of them are still down, but the first few are up, it seems. His tutorials really helped me go from "opening max = brain explodes" to being able to model map props quite efficiently. A friend sent me the last tutorial I had needed (compiling your bench model) and that pretty much refreshed my memory of how to work around in 3ds (since that's basically what it's all about, is learning the hotkeys and how to use things efficiently).

edit: and yeah, obviously I'm just an infant modeler at this point so take everything I said with a grain of salt ;). Mainly learned to do simple map props but I must admit, I watched some character and animation tutorials and the process seems pretty straight forward so I may try it someday. Sadly I can't do concept art to save my life, and it's a pretty important part of it.

In reply to a Fortress Forever forum thread on 3/22/2007

Talking about World of Goo copy protection on the 2D Boy board

I highly doubt steam has an equal piracy rate to non-steam games, I mean heck, it's just convenient, and I trust it more than other download services.

Convenience is a really big thing. Younger audiences will try and pirate stuff in a lot of cases simply because they're young and often don't have the money/credit card, but for older gamers who can drop a few bucks, it boils down to how easy it is to get ahold of it... if it means a trip to the store, piracy is a viable alternative. Obviously WoG has this covered, though.

In any case, I think you're doing the right thing by going to multiple platforms. As for PC... follow the golden rule IMO, if the copy protection is going to cause paying customers grief, don't do it. You should certainly try and protect your work to some degree, though. Some sort of network access that you can only utilize with an account is a nice way of doing it. Again, pointing to audiosurf, that game wouldn't be much fun at all to me if I didn't have the ability to save my high scores. Patches are always good too.

Posted on 2D Boy forums on 3/6/2008

Raving about Morrowind on The Escapist forums

MW/TES3 was an explorer gamer's wet dream. Sadly, they completely missed this point in OB/TES4. Whereas in MW the world felt completely hand-crafted and every nook and cranny held different secrets, and me and my friends were talking about rare books we had found and which was our favorite; OB felt entirely "generated" and that once you had seen one aspect, you've seen it all. Caves, gates, bandits, etc... they were all boring and same-y. The quest system reflects this as it felt straight out of an MMO barring a few "look at me" quests like the Painter quest. The fast travel only adds to this feel.

MW was one of the best experiences I've had in gaming and I explored that world for months. Oblivion was, simply, a good game. Really, OB could've never lived up to what MW made for me... a shame, really.

In reply to Escapist forum thread on 3/11/2008

Discussing King's Field on Destructoid

Wow, how did I miss this article? More proof that Ashley is awesome. The King's Field series is probably one of the most underrated series of all time. I was actually really disheartened when I saw that Demon's Souls was third person. Something about KF really makes the first person view very powerful... I'm not sure why or how; every little nuance from falling into a pit and turning around to see a slew of monsters, to bending over to pick up an herb really makes you feel like you're there in the caverns. I think even the annoying aspects of the game like the slow turning and the limited view distance amplified this effect, as odd as it sounds - the game just wouldn't have been what it was if you could do instant 180o spins ala Quake (and trust me, I'm a huge quake nerd). Another "bad" aspect that really worked was the fact that you were just so alone. Towns were few and far between and barely had more than a shopkeeper. The enemies in the game were either alien in nature or hauntingly inhuman and provided no comfort whereas in other games sometimes even the enemies prevent you from feeling alone. Not the case in KF.

As well, I love how open-ended the first games were. I know this term is thrown around a lot but KF truly was nonlinear. From the very moment you're dropped on the shore and listening to the atmospheric music and echoing ambiance you have at least half a dozen different options for paths to traverse. Glad to see other people remembering the games so fondly.

Also, a couple more songs for your listening pleasure: Passage for a Monk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDapXvnjAhI and West Coast http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyIjbs_TPgM

In reply to a Destructoid Article on 10/8/2009.