Elder Scrolls Online

[Marou]

Heh, you can do FPS combat integrated straight into the hero engine now...without even having specially talented coders in house.

http://www.heroengine.com/heroengine/why-heroengine/

HEROENGINE ADVANTAGES

Live Collaborative Development — From one or many geographic locations – everyone works online, live on the server so you can share your work instantly.
No Nightly Builds — Create your game in real-time and get instant feedback on your work.
No Assumptions or Restrictions — HeroEngine lets you build your game in your own style and we provide the core technology so you don’t need to reinvent it.
Reference Worlds — Access to reference worlds of typical online games (social, FPS ect), complete with example code.
Integrated World-Class Middleware — SpeedTree®, Umbra dPVS, FaceGen, FMOD® and more world-class tools and support.

So, yeah, the age of tab-target oppression is now nearly gone. Also, having REFERENCE FPS MMO CODE and having the capabilities built straight into the engine and server architecture of major middleware takes alot of wind out of the tired decade old arguments for timer based no-aiming combat.

[Boxy Brown]

Endgame heroic/raiding/pvp gear grinding confirmed. Nail in the WoW-clone coffin. Foregone conclusion, calling it now.

You know what the sad thing is?

I have absolutely 0 problem with engame raiding/blah blah blah/yadda yadda yadda AS LONG AS THERE'S OPEN PVP AND YOUR RAID IS CONSTANTLY UNDER THREAT FROM EVERYONE ELSE ON THE SERVER.

I had a BLAST doing MLs and other such raids on Mordred, because you constantly had to be on your toes. A good 4 man could kill all 40 raiders if they struck at the right moment. Nowadays everyone cuddles up in their cozy little instance where nothing can go wrong as long as you have the right addons and haven't been lobotomized at some point in your life. Where's the fun in that? You know what makes scripted encounters fun? Other players trying to fuck your shit up. Some recent game even had the [sarcasm]genius[/sarcasm] idea to give players control of raid bosses, so it's not like developers don't realize that other players is what will kill the monotony of raiding, but I guess they're just to thick to realize that it doesn't take a fancy mechanic like player controlled NPCs to get it done.

My view on the system is that if you can down the boss and get the shinies WHILE me and my friends are trying to kill you all and steal your raid, then props to you, you deserve that amazing gear that gives you a hellishly huge advantage. If all you've done is listen to your deadly boss mods during a scripted encounter that you've already run 30 times then fuck you and everything you stand for.

[Marou]

At least the hatred of theme parks is becoming mainstream.

http://kotaku.com/5908402/its-time-t...and-shoot-them

[neino]

I really hope this won't be a WOW: The Elder Scrolls game. That would really blow.Also on that source article it appears the Imperials are not a playable race? WTF is up with that? All that aside this MMO does have great potential. I just hope it lives up to it.Online games, however, are still popular for some people who does not like MAC system, that is why some pc mmo games warframe and world of battleships-themed game navy moves have some position in gaming field. To be honest, Baseball Heroes are one of few capturing my eyes on social network sites.

[Valec]

I really hope this won't be a WOW: The Elder Scrolls game. That would really blow.

Also on that source article it appears the Imperials are not a playable race? WTF is up with that?

All that aside this MMO does have great potential. I just hope it lives up to it.

Somebody keelhaul this individual.

[Alex Mars]

A few comments, kind of at random.

If all you've done is listen to your deadly boss mods during a scripted encounter that you've already run 30 times then fuck you and everything you stand for.

That is basically the attitude of some useless, shit mouthed, ignorant 12 year old and deserves all that level of attention. Gee, child, sorry people have different tastes in games, some day mommy will sit you down and explain that your opinion doesn't mean shit to other people. Now, go make sure you put your whole head in front of the shotgun because you are wasting oxygen my cats may need some day.

I am sure someone will make a shooter style mmo and it will sell well, but that cannot be the only thing going for it. Go look at Neocron, they had shooter style combat but they arsed up the rest of the game and I think they have less than 500 people playing it. However, most of the MMO players I know, and I know quite a few, have no interest in that sort of game, of course they are older (40+), working professionals so they are not in the same demographic with most of the Cats crew. There are a lot of people who enjoy the auto-combat games and I think many of you need to come to grips with the fact.

Frankly, I like 3rd person games, sorry if that offends you all, I like to see my character, of course, there are times when 1st person is good too, games that are not shit should offer both options.

Collision detection? Sorry, blame DAoC for removing it from the genre, we had CD before DAoC came out. Of course, most of you are too young to actually remember the problems it caused, from assholes blocking banks and access to trainers to people using it to grief other players. On the other hand any PvP game that doesn't have CD is shit.

Open housing, brilliant idea! Again, most of you never saw the cluterfuck that was old school UO housing where asshats blocked off parts of the world to make their own private hunting preserves. And, of course, what we learned from the games that actually had this sort of thing was that most players leave the game after a while and leave behind empty buildings. Even when UO put in building decay some people would keep the building active to preserve it for some unknown future reason but not actually do anything with it. Same thing in SWG, lots of ghost towns littering the landscape. There is a reason they put housing in off-site zones, it doesn't fuck up the rest of the game. The attraction of housing in the long term is limited, if you actually look at what is going on in games, only a small section of the players keep and maintain a house in the long term, so the actual value this feature adds to a game is really not worth the development money to do it right.

Player run cities in a PvP environment? Ah yes, the 3 am raid while you are asleep that destroys everything you built is always so much fun. Again, to do this right takes a lot of time and money and will it bring long term value to a game or just be a novelty aspect?

Sand box games? Booorrrrriiiinnggggg! I played UO for about 4 years and I got so fucking tired running down the same roads, killing the same shit, and fighting the same assholes every night (or in EQ, sitting in the same fucking camp every night). I want a nice, entertaining story as the backdrop to my adventuring.

[Marou]

Sand box games? Booorrrrriiiinnggggg! I played UO for about 4 years and I got so fucking tired running down the same roads, killing the same shit, and fighting the same assholes every night (or in EQ, sitting in the same fucking camp every night). I want a nice, entertaining story as the backdrop to my adventuring.

The problem is the comparative narrative possibilities for MMO's render them a poor substitute for a single player game in the context you describe. When everyone is the hero, no one is. Games like Eve have their heroes and villains because they are playing to the strength of multi-player, which is emergent unscripted content. Treadmills of marginal novelty with carrots interspersed just isn't very compelling to a significant underserved minority. There hasn't been a high budget triple-A fantasy sandbox MMO released since UO.

Bethesda is going down the path all other well funded projects have in the wake of WoW, and in doing so is losing sight of all of the things that made the TES games so fun. Those things are attention to detail, ridiculous amounts of *fluff* activities like sorting clutter, capturing butterflies, getting supernatural afflictions, and cooking stew. As a result, they will fail, as SWTOR has and every other MMO that is essentially WoW has.

The Secret World, while having questionable character designs, poor animation and combat, and linear content is at least trying to offer something new. They have created a massively multiplayer adventure horror game, with extremely open character development. Never has another MMO had me puzzling over scripture to solve in game puzzles or looking for symbolism in paintings in the game world for clues. The Secret World, with it's elaborate design for *quests* and complete lack of hand-holding reinforced one thing I already knew or suspected. That theme park content, irrespective of quality, is boring after a few days/weeks.

I want to be able to do in an MMO the types of things you can do in a game like Skyrim. Stalk game across a tundra, shadow vampire/demon hunters as they go about their duties, stumble upon random conflicts between NPCs, explore for hours without ever opening a quest log or giving a fuck about a story, defeating a strong enemy via manual dexterity and game familiarity. The very types of things an MMO TES game should have focused on.

Instead TES Online looks like WoW, can't compete with WoW on content, and it's only resemblance to the gameplay features of single player TES titles is the geography. This is a recipe for much more rapid decline than even SWTOR, which at least was a Sci-Fi title.

WoW, and Rift nailed the theme park gear driven MMO sub-genre to a degree that more titles in that sub-genre are not needed. To find success companies must do as Funcom is and aim for players that are not entertained by the well crafted titles already available. The only way to do that is by offering a different gameplay experience, not the same gameplay experience with different lore and a different setting.

Madden Football is the same year after year with slight embellishments. Most new MMO's are like sequels in the Madden franchise. All adhering so strictly to the gameplay formulas of their predacessors that all they offer are a few twists on doing the same thing all over again. Only titles that break the mold have the potential to reap more than moderate success.

[Sillywilly]

How is Rift doing? I actually found the game to be fairly fun. In the end the PvsP wasn't going to be enough for me to play it long term but I did subscribe for 1 month if I remember correctly. Is it a well established MMO at this point?

[Alex Mars]

The problem is the comparative narrative possibilities for MMO's render them a poor substitute for a single player game in the context you describe. When everyone is the hero, no one is. Games like Eve have their heroes and villains because they are playing to the strength of multi-player, which is emergent unscripted content. Treadmills of marginal novelty with carrots interspersed just isn't very compelling to a significant underserved minority. There hasn't been a high budget triple-A fantasy sandbox MMO released since UO.

Part of the issue here is multiplayer. You are right in saying that a SP game does better storytelling, but I like to play with a friend, and that means playing a MMO. I tend to feel lonely and isolated in SP games. If we could have had a true MP Mass Effect, for example, where we each ran a character in a cooperative path through the whole story then we would be playing that and not MMOs (particularly since we tend to ignore most of the other players in a MMO and keep to ourselves) and I think this is true for a lot of MMO players who are not in the game for the wider social aspects. Unfortunately the MP aspect of SP games is mindless deathmatch crap designed for stupid kids just so the developer can put the words "multiplayer" on the box.

I appreciate what you are talking about doing in Skyrim and wanting to do the same in a MMO, I think that would be fun, but so far the sandbox MMOs like UO and AC have never offered that. People blame WoW for setting the mold for MMOs but it was really EQ that did it, WoW just added questing to level and (I believe) saved the genre for those of us who hate sitting in camps and endless grinding to level.

Frankly, my perfect MMO would be laid out in a checkerboard, with the red squares being scripted questing zones and the black squares being open sand box zones, thus allowing a player to do what they wanted. I love exploring and such, which is not always that rewarding in theme park games I admit.

[Alex Mars]

How is Rift doing? I actually found the game to be fairly fun. In the end the PvsP wasn't going to be enough for me to play it long term but I did subscribe for 1 month if I remember correctly. Is it a well established MMO at this point?

RIFT was fun, but I find the voice acting and long story arcs in SWTOR to be better, so I dumped RIFT after playing it for a year.

[Alex Mars]

A couple of other things I thought of:

Bethesda is going down the path all other well funded projects have in the wake of WoW, and in doing so is losing sight of all of the things that made the TES games so fun. Those things are attention to detail, ridiculous amounts of *fluff* activities like sorting clutter, capturing butterflies, getting supernatural afflictions, and cooking stew. As a result, they will fail, as SWTOR has and every other MMO that is essentially WoW has.

While I never liked the TES games, the fact that they are abandoning what made their fans appreciate the game is a bad idea.

The Secret World, while having questionable character designs, poor animation and combat, and linear content is at least trying to offer something new. They have created a massively multiplayer adventure horror game, with extremely open character development. Never has another MMO had me puzzling over scripture to solve in game puzzles or looking for symbolism in paintings in the game world for clues. The Secret World, with it's elaborate design for *quests* and complete lack of hand-holding reinforced one thing I already knew or suspected. That theme park content, irrespective of quality, is boring after a few days/weeks.

TSW is a theme park game for intellectuals. To bad the actual gameplay sucks ass.

I want to be able to do in an MMO the types of things you can do in a game like Skyrim. Stalk game across a tundra, shadow vampire/demon hunters as they go about their duties, stumble upon random conflicts between NPCs, explore for hours without ever opening a quest log or giving a fuck about a story, defeating a strong enemy via manual dexterity and game familiarity. The very types of things an MMO TES game should have focused on.

The question is, how many people can you have doing things like that in a MMO? If everyone is out shadowing smugglers or bandits as they travel or looking for NPCs fighting amongst themselves it will get crowded. I tend to think that these sorts of activities are not suitable for a real MMO with lots of people on a server. The only way I could see this work is if they made MMO worlds the size they are now but limited the population on a server so low that you could travel without seeing another player, and then you have a game that cannot demand any grouping because the server population would be too low.

[Marou]

The question is, how many people can you have doing things like that in a MMO? If everyone is out shadowing smugglers or bandits as they travel or looking for NPCs fighting amongst themselves it will get crowded. I tend to think that these sorts of activities are not suitable for a real MMO with lots of people on a server. The only way I could see this work is if they made MMO worlds the size they are now but limited the population on a server so low that you could travel without seeing another player, and then you have a game that cannot demand any grouping because the server population would be too low.

TES 2: Daggerfall was the size of great Britain in landmass. You could run in the same direction for real life days and never hit the end of it. You can procedurally generate theoretically infinite amounts of surface area and dungeons. So, make an MMO the size of the older TES game Daggerfall, dump everyone in the same server, and let em loose. If you want to find people to group with go to a large city, else, set out into the wilds. Have things like trade caravans, resource systems, in depth crafting, political control, and guild vs guild PvP. Have lawful areas where NPC patrols of uberness kick people's ass for RPK. Have other wild areas that have no such lawfulness. Let people build stuff, or don't, but let them *have* stuff that's really in the game world. Do away with instancing. Doesn't need any quests. Focus on core gameplay and seeding the procedural content with hand-crafted easter eggs of awesome.

Include the factions from the game and make them real organizations. Put your theme park stuff here, but randomize where story elements occur. Make gear and other crafted stuff (structures, wagons, etc) suffer wear and tear. Base the economy on resources and crafting. When someone clears a dungeon it's entrance should be sealed, eventually to fade away. Somewhere else in the world a new one opens. Make raids an epic discovery, not a repeatable grind. Make the locations of special content yet another commodity to be bought and sold.

Essentially I want a bigass single server fantasy simulation. It's all I've really wanted ever since I played Daggerfall and imagined one day playing such a game with multiplayer. It's yet to be done but there are no technical hurdles to prevent it from being reality, there haven't been for years. Modern MMO's have way less AI and simulation than even EQ and (ecspecially) UO did. Now it's just a bunch of guys that stand in place to hand out quests to kill things or guys that wander around a 150M area waiting to people to come kill them. I want stuff like Skyrim, where I wander into a group of Aldmeri dominion fighting Stormcloaks. Or, bandits robbing a merchant, or a pack of wolves hunting a stag. Give me a living world, fill it with activities, and I need nothing else. You can take leveling out of it, it's not even needed. People will fall into roles they like to do without artificial limitations or classes.

This is what a TES Online game should be. This shit they unveiled is a complete perversion that utterly disregards the core concepts and gameplay elements that make the single player games compelling.

[Alex Mars]

You should have played AC1, it was huge, I never did see all of that world.

Your idea is interesting, but a lot of work to get it right (balancing all the elements you want would be HARD), developing all those features would be expensive but all you need are enough investors. You get the money and I will write the game mechanics.

Of course, the game I want to design is set in an a late 18th century/early 19th century style world where civilization is just verging into the industrial era but beyond the edge of civilization the maps are blank and fantastic things can be found. Toss in Napoleonic style uniforms for a very cool look and serve.

[Marou]

You should have played AC1, it was huge, I never did see all of that world.

Your idea is interesting, but a lot of work to get it right (balancing all the elements you want would be HARD), developing all those features would be expensive but all you need are enough investors. You get the money and I will write the game mechanics.

Of course, the game I want to design is set in an a late 18th century/early 19th century style world where civilization is just verging into the industrial era but beyond the edge of civilization the maps are blank and fantastic things can be found. Toss in Napoleonic style uniforms for a very cool look and serve.

I'd be all about the same thing in a steampunk setting.

The crazy thing about games like SWTOR is they spend practically nothing on core gameplay systems. They spent all those dollars on scripted questlines and voiceovers. I'd argue the money is going into the wrong bucket. You can have Hugh Jackman play a lieutenant (that stands permanently in place) to VO the lead in to disposable scripted content that took 12 people 3 weeks to create for tons of money. Or, you can set an artist, a programmer, and an animator loose 4-5 days for a song and have another neat new gameplay feature, like maybe spear fishing, or crop harvesting. So, a 20 minute quest that is a one shot deal, will only be paid attention to once ever, or activity that might entertain someone for hours (or more). Where does the value lie? I think publishers are spending money on MMO development so very wrong.

[Valec]

You should have played AC1, it was huge, I never did see all of that world.

Your idea is interesting, but a lot of work to get it right (balancing all the elements you want would be HARD), developing all those features would be expensive but all you need are enough investors. You get the money and I will write the game mechanics.

Of course, the game I want to design is set in an a late 18th century/early 19th century style world where civilization is just verging into the industrial era but beyond the edge of civilization the maps are blank and fantastic things can be found. Toss in Napoleonic style uniforms for a very cool look and serve.

Make a good presentation and put it on kickstarter.

[Alex Mars]

I'd be all about the same thing in a steampunk setting.

The crazy thing about games like SWTOR is they spend practically nothing on core gameplay systems. They spent all those dollars on scripted questlines and voiceovers. I'd argue the money is going into the wrong bucket. You can have Hugh Jackman play a lieutenant (that stands permanently in place) to VO the lead in to disposable scripted content that took 12 people 3 weeks to create for tons of money. Or, you can set an artist, a programmer, and an animator loose 4-5 days for a song and have another neat new gameplay feature, like maybe spear fishing, or crop harvesting. So, a 20 minute quest that is a one shot deal, will only be paid attention to once ever, or activity that might entertain someone for hours (or more). Where does the value lie? I think publishers are spending money on MMO development so very wrong.

Well, be honest, that one quest will probably be played by each player in the game (or each in the faction that has access to the quest) a few times, depending on how bad a case of altitis they have, which is a lot of usage.

In addition, I really like the VO. The nuance and characterization you get in some of the SWTOR dialogue adds a lot for me, I am not sure how willing I am going to be to go to a game where it is all text again, and having a choice of responses, even though they are essentially meaningless in terms of impact on your story, is also a lot of fun. I really enjoy that. In TSW one of the many things that annoyed me was being this mute drone who just stood there and took instructions and had nothing to say.

[Sillywilly]

So they're gonna do this game on an instanced mega-server? Gotta admit right off the bat I'm turned off by the idea. No specialty servers typically means I don't stick around past the 1st month. I was hoping for a hardcore RP server for this game.

[VKhaun]

So they're gonna do this game on an instanced mega-server? Gotta admit right off the bat I'm turned off by the idea. No specialty servers typically means I don't stick around past the 1st month. I was hoping for a hardcore RP server for this game.

Hardcore RP servers being the last place on earth you can be openly racist and not take flak for it?

That's not even an insult... back when I thought GW2 was going to divide the PvP area into racial teams I was going to make a human-only guild lol.

[Zavon]

So they're gonna do this game on an instanced mega-server? Gotta admit right off the bat I'm turned off by the idea. No specialty servers typically means I don't stick around past the 1st month. I was hoping for a hardcore RP server for this game.

Actually Silly, from what I understand, you will only be able to "see players" that are like you. From an interview I saw, the way it works is you check boxes for things that you like. Stuff like casual, RP, older, etc. Other players who describe themselves as that kind of gamer will show up first. Given that there will be only one mega-server that means you'll almost always see like minded players.

[Alex Mars]

Actually Silly, from what I understand, you will only be able to "see players" that are like you. From an interview I saw, the way it works is you check boxes for things that you like. Stuff like casual, RP, older, etc. Other players who describe themselves as that kind of gamer will show up first. Given that there will be only one mega-server that means you'll almost always see like minded players.

They are going to filter the world? The idea is both interesting and odd, I am not sure how I feel about it right now.

[Zavon]

They are going to filter the world? The idea is both interesting and odd, I am not sure how I feel about it right now.

Well from what I understand its not so much a filter as it is a priority system.