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A Return to the Roots of MMOs - Part 1 | Saga of Lucimia | MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
A Return to the Roots of MMOs - Part 1 | Saga of Lucimia | MMORPG.com
In this month's dev journal, were going to talk about the most recent round of alpha testing for the Saga of Lucimia, as well as upcoming goals for the next monthly build, and cover some of what we have been working on for over the past year and a half building the game up from scratch.
Comments
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Yep, the testing area has a lot of brown! Pretty standard color in the natural environment!
You'll see some more screenshots of additional zones being built in part 2 & 3, and we've got a range of colors out there in the world as players explore their way through forests, canyons, deserts, mountains, caverns, swamps, beaches, and beyond.
This zone also hasn't been through a single art, shading, lighting, or polish pass yet. Because, you know, alpha.
No glowing reticles on the ground telling you where an AOE is going to land; it'll be up to players to figure out what mobs do, what the range on their abilities is, and everything else through trial and error.
Big hill giant? No idea if he's a single-group mob or a raid mob. Hit him, see how hard he hits back, and then bring your friends along until you have enough to take him down.
No Trinity, heavy focus on support classes + crowd control + strategy and teamwork. More information can be found over at our main website and the FAQ page.
Combat testing starts on October 24th, which is just around the corner. Parts 2 and 3 of this dev journal feature more information about what's coming down the pipeline, including the first video of our initial combat testing internally.
To me, there are three really huge red flags about a small group of people with no industry experience that decide to make an MMO:
1. Money and budget. I know you say your small team will just work part time without compensation until release if you have to but I really see that resulting in either a really deficient product or a really long development time.
2. Game design- If nobody has experience developing a game I can foresee lots of issues slipping by. It's one thing to play a game, it's quite another to design it (and yet something else to actually then program it).
3. Infrastructure- This relates to my earlier question above. You could somehow nail game design, and get funding but if the infrastructure cannot handle more than a few dozen people... not good. That's why I would look to the date when you would expect to stress test (or whatever you will call it) to see how your system actually holds up in a MASSIVE player environment.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
After going back and forth with you on dozens of comments in the other thread, I know for a fact that no answer I will give you can possibly satisfy your skepticism. As such, the best answer we can give you personally is "come back in 2018 after we've launched and you can find out whether or not we pass your personal muster."
Everything else you need to know, including the fact that our infrastructure is already in place, the fact that our costs are already covered, and our team is more than capable of handling the task at hand, can be found at our game forums or on our FAQ page.
Meanwhile, stay tuned for episodes 2 and 3 to this dev journal
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
Enjoy Chronicles, Pantheon, Crowfall and your other titles! Most of us will be exploring those realms as well, along with our own.
Meanwhile, we'll have our own unique world for those who want to be involved.
There's mountains, valleys, wastelands, deserts, canyons, snowy mountain peaks, caverns, labrynths, rivers, beaches, forests, and much, much more.
Things will also change dramatically between now and launch once we start doing lighting, shading, and art passes to the zones, and get our dynamic weather + day/night cycles in.
Lots of things still ahead!
I've never played EQ, but I've always only been a fan of RPGs, Ever since the Nintendo days of FF, Zelda, Illusion of Gia and Secret of Mana, but I generally get bored very quickly of action games or FPSs. Yes WoW was my first experience with an RPGMMO, but then I had sworn off computer gaming since I was a kid as I got bored with it very quickly, and was a devout table top gamer. Wow is what changed that so give it the respect it deserves.
It's sounds good. While I don't agree with all the decisions you're making, idc as long as it has GAMEPLAY. That and typical MMO standard features that, you know, make the game an MMO. I'm so tired of companies trying to reinvent the the genre so they can try and entice more customers that would not generally play an MMO. They're nothing but gimmicks, and it makes the game very gimmicky. And yes, they've taken the multiplayer out of MMO, and it would be SOO nice to have it back in. And not in a strictly PVP manner either. Also, by their nature, MMOs can get very grindy, and the best way to break up that grind is spontaneity. The most fun experiences I've ever had in an MMO wasn't chasing down some piece of gear but spontaneous things happening in the world, wether they were pvp related or a raid boss attacking SW/Ironforge, or some other spontaneous thing happening in the world, to break up the monotony you have to have spontaneity in your world. Something that breaks all the gamers out of their typical daily routines or forces them out of the grind, if even for an hour or so, and makes them work together. Not the cycled boss spawns GW2 has, that's just another grind in itself that wears thin quickly. Stuff that everyone want's to get in on, but you have no idea that it's coming or when it's going to happen. Also grinds aren't necessarily a bad thing, depending on how you present it. If you're having fun dong the grind, it goes a lot faster, and players wont mind the grind. Moreso if you're doing it with friends.
Tab targeting is GREAT. I HATE twitch gaming, and I don't want twitchy combat in my MMO.
12 abilities is good, more is better. Yes I know I'm a rare breed, but I actually LIKED having a bazillion abilities in WoW. First, it separated the good gamers from the elitist. Yes you're going to have a handful of abilities that will compromise the majority of your rotation, but any twit can spam 5 abilites, but the really good gamer was one that would remember to use that rare ability stuck off on the side of the action bar somewhere when the right time for it to use it came up. Also it helps define the classes better. which brings up
class specific abilities. You need them. having a pool of 500 abilities everyone picks from is meh, personally I'd rather have a better talent tree, which really is all that is, but even if you go this route, you have to have class only abilities. That's what separates the classes and changes there game styles and keeps them from feeling generic.
No fancy glowy shit on the ground. YES!!! Ty for bringing elitism back. I miss the days of having to eyeball the boss and look or listen for tale-tale signs of when he was going to use his kill-the-scrub-dps maneuver. All these alarm bells before hand just makes me wonder why the devs don't just play the game for me.
Holy Trinity- why not? what's wrong with the holy trinity? There's a reason why it's called the CLASSIC trinity. Without it all the squishies die and there's no reason to play a tanky character. Everyone just rolls dps and roflstomps their way through the dungeon. Also adds to class distinction. GW tried it and quite frankly, it sucked. You see how many people are playing GW. If it's not broke don't fix it.
(cont.)
Support classes are awesome, so are hybrids, just whatever you do don't 'tax' or 'punish' them like Blizzard did in Vanilla WoW, otherwise the raid leaders just load up on the 'best' specialized dps class and and nuke their way through the dungeon (aka: mages in vanilla WoW)But don't overlook your specialized classes either. If all you do is have a bunch of hybrids in the game, then it makes your classes very generic and they all feel the same. People LIKE having a specific task only they can fulfill in the group, it makes them feel needed, and it creates a demand for their class.
Speaking of classes, PLEASE have Pallies! Or at least some sort of caster-tank class. I loved my mage. I LOVED tanking on my Pally. But 5 years of WoW and I never ever could play a warrior. That really says something about how well the developers designed a game and the classes when you as a player can fulfill one role on one class, but not on another. Not saying I won't like warriors on in your game, but I developed a real love for the class tanking on my pally for 3 years. They do everything a warrior does just with more flash and flare. :proud:
Also, learning and leveling up class specific abilities and doing class specific quests. These in WoW were so AWESOME, and really help distinguish the class experience as you leveled up. I've never come across anything remotely as good any any other MMORPG I've played since, and I've played a few. Some of my best moments in WoW were doing these quests. Having to travel all over Azeroth for my Mage teleports, grinding up my poison and lock picking skills on my rogue. The warlock quest, omg the warlock quests. I still recall in abject horror that fateful run through swamp of sorrows to get my level 30 demon, with spiders and T-rexes with skulls next to them (their lvl) chasing after me. Doing the fell guard quest at lvl 60. By that time everyone was in Outlands and getting a pug for it was impossible, not that anyone had a key anyways. Did it with guildies but still had to hire a pally to come heal for us though. But it was so worth it. Afterwards everyone in the group remarked how much fun it was, but I guarantee you no one's done that quest in at least 5 years. Helping pallies with their quest in Stratholm. The best pet class was the hunter though. All the hours and the hard work I spent getting the perfect pet and training it up. Especially capturing an elite pet and the danger and work put into it, but the rewards were so awesome. I still recall Snookums (Rak' Shiri) fondly. How hard it was to find and capture her, the special skin she had unique to her, the way she whined then shook her head till her jowls slobbered everywhere. Man the shit me and that cat went through. The point of all this, is that the more depth you put into the classes, the more unique they are and the more people will associate with their class. The more detail you put into each class also makes the experience playing that class in the same world as previous one's a more unique experience, giving your game more replayability. Also, the harder you make it to get something, the more people appreciate it and want it. A strange thing in today's give it to me now and easily RPG landscape.
MICRO DUNGEONS!!!!! - MICRO DUNGEONS! MICRO DUNGEONS! MICRO DUNGEONS!. I can't stress this enough. Yes I'm one of those explorer types, it's my most favorite thing to do in an MMO. I want to look into every nook and cranny, but the REASON I want to do this is I'm looking for a micro-dungeon. I go exploring to find these! Blizzard understood this perfectly, and had them EVERYWHERE in vanilla WoW. Unfortunately they slacked off on them in later patches. Every crypt, every abandoned (or not so abandoned) castle, every cave, every tower, every sunken ship. They were all micro dungeons and they're what players like me just totally dig finding. Don't listen to ArenaNet, I'm not the slightest bit interested in discovering some silly random point on the map to fulfill some silly map quest. Quite frankly it was rather insulting. That an explorer does not make. Likewise I don't want to have to pick it as a profession like in Wildstar. It's something I want to DO! On every character. I WANT that spooky feeling when going through a new cave, castle or crypt I've never been through before. I WANT the world to legitimately feel like something is going to jump out at me from around the corner and butcher me. (On a mage, this was a very real threat btw) Some should be out in the open, quite a few should be hidden and you have to find them, like the hidden crypt crawl under Ravenhill Cemetary in Duskwood. A good deal should require groups, and/or have group quests to complete, such as some of the towers and castles with elite 'bosses' at the top, or Stromguard. But most should just be places where the player can explore on there own. I know some want to burst their way to the level cap, but for me, even on alts, the journey was always the best part.
Lastly, are level caps and xpacs. Don't make the mistakes Blizzard made and come out with xpacs too soon or increase the level cap so much. Also this leads into the level caps as devs always seem to think that xpacs also need to have a lvl cap increase. Here's the thing about the level cap. Naturally once your game matures, everyone is going to be at the end game and lvl cap. The problem with this is the bigger the gap from lvl 1 to lvl xx is, this makes it that much harder for new players and old players on alts to do group quests, find people to do dungeons with, etc. These areas become a ghost town and group content not only becomes not fun, but also a major stumbling block to the grind to the top. This will put off new players to the game as they will not be able to complete the group projects, the real fun of leveling up, and it will put off veterans from leveling alts, which if your classes are designed well, are you replayablity feature for your vets. And while everyone may have a favorite class, EVERYONE wants to play more than one class. In wow I always had a dungeon main and a pvp main, as different classes. This was something Rift and GW2 just didn't get by putting their group spawns in their games. Blizzard fixed it by just making everything soloable and nerfing the elite mobs, but this also took so much of the fun out of the game, but there wasn't really any other way for them to fix it. Raising the lvl cap with each xpac was a bad idea as well. For some reason devs think you have to increase the cap. You don't. It's entirely possible to tune the dungeon to require the best gear already in the game, or lock it behind a key grind. While those key grinds could be a pain, they could also be hella fun too! Especially when they required mats you grinded from previous dungeons which you were doing as a group anyways.
(cont.)
The reason Blizzard had and still has such a high player base in WoW is it had something for everyone. Dungeons were there for group content and the elitist. But there was so much more to do that even casual players that couldn't keep a raid schedule still had stuff to do. This got even better after BC where Blizz actually tuned the dungeons to be completed with pugs and skilled groups. I actually had a routine I did. Several nights a week were spent doing the guild raids. After the raid I'd go farm mats, or log onto an alt. On nights off of raiding I either leveled an alt or pvped, or grinded mats for cash or grinded my profs. The point is there was so much to do, you could never do it all, and there's something for everyone, even for casuals, and that's what pulls in various types of players, and keeps them coming back.
The deeper the depth you put into the design of your game world, the longer it's going to take for people to get through it and the more time you need between xpacs. Especially so if you lock dungeons behind long grinds like Blizzard did. With the depth of design they had in their original world and the long unlock grinds they had for the dungeons, Blizzard could have easily gone another 2 to 3 years before coming out with BC. Coming out with an expac after 2 years and one every two years afterwards was just too soon for people to get through the content. Even when they made them more accessible, they were still too soon. Especially since your success rate at getting through the content was largely dependent on your ability to find a good guild to grind it with, and those weren't easy to come by. Good palyers tend to group together, and they're always a fairly selective bunch. I FINALLY managed to get through the content (mostly) in Wrath, but that was just on my main. Never was able to do it on alts. In the end it's really just a glorified gear chase, and I'm completely fed up with gear chases. I refuse to do them and trust me, I can spot them a mile away.
And one thing about F2P games. When I see F2P on a game anymore, I see "My game isn't good enough to get you to pay a monthly fee so we need to sucker all our money out you in the first week of you playing" I refuse to give money to a F2P game anymore and personally I think they're doing the most to ruin gaming as a whole more than anything. If you design a game good enough, people will pay 15 bucks a month to play it.
Ultimately, you're not going to please everyone. But here's the thing, that's ok. All the other MMOs out there are trying to exactly that, please everyone to increase their player base, and ultimately they're just killing it. Stay away from gimmicks. Everyone has a gimmick now days. There's ACTION MMORPGS, and PVP MMORPGS, and WvWvW (>:( really?) and GROUP CONTENT MMOs. These are all gimmicks trying to attract people that whine about things they don't like in MMOs. Not everyone is an MMO player. That's fine. But don't break my MMOs just to suite them. Build an MMO for MMO players and I promise you We'll play it. I read an article a few days ago by someone about the next 'WoW Killer' He asserted that the 'WoW Killer' would have to do a lot of stuff different. I wrote a lengthy response to it asserting that the 'WoW Killer' would most certainly NOT do a lot of things different. In fact if there is ever a WoW killer, it will most of the things THE SAME. Why? Because IT WORKED. WoW is waning, yet it still has a player base most developers drool over, and on top they still pay fifteen bucks a month to play it when other developers have to give their games away for free. In short, don't reinvent the wheel.