Monday, August 30, 2010

MMO ideas

13:36 - [O7]Garth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G5fLe3G8GY
13:37 - [O7]Garth: Wrong one
14:12 - Alexis: that was pretty impressive
14:12 - [O7]Garth: Yeah
14:13 - [O7]Garth: And the speedrun achievement for that one is 4.5 minutes, so they beat it by more than 90 seconds
14:13 - Alexis: heh
14:15 - Alexis: there's gotta be a way to mix up achievements + ladders. And a way to present it so knowing you're the 5,382,786th best player doesn't feel quite so crushing
14:16 - Alexis: like "You are in the top 19.82% of players"
14:17 - [O7]Garth: Uh-huh
14:17 - [O7]Garth: Top 20 sounds good enough
14:17 - [O7]Garth: Are there ladders?
14:17 - Alexis: Say the LK kill
14:18 - Alexis: Allocate a certain amount of points overall; you get a %age of them compared to how fast you do it between the best and worst scoring times
14:19 - Alexis: So Paragon get the whole 1000 points since presumably they've done it so many times they have the fastest time
14:19 - Alexis: We get like 400 points for doing it slowly
14:20 - Alexis: Maybe a bonus for doing it with lower buffs
14:20 - [O7]Garth: And I presume Blizz has set a standard then. Killtime: 13 minutes average dps 8K average hps 5K etc
14:21 - Alexis: I assume they do, but I'm figuring Blizz just says 1k points available and the fastest time gets 1k points
14:21 - Alexis: Everyone slower gets some amount less
14:21 - Alexis: Until the slowest run that is someone's fastest, who gets say 100 points
14:23 - Alexis: There's a certain mindset that "progression" guilds have that "friendly" guilds don't, allowing gradations of achievement might
14:23 - Alexis: help make people think of efficiency
14:23 - Alexis: maybe 500-800 points as a min would be better
14:23 - [O7]Garth: How to calculate gear though? better gear is faster, or is it all about speed?
14:23 - Alexis: Gear is ignored
14:24 - [O7]Garth: I best isn't fastest. Or are we just talking about speed now?
14:24 - Alexis: The fastest time will go down over time, as the top guild practices + gears up
14:24 - Alexis: Hmm - I'm equating best + fastest, since you need to a kill to even rank
14:24 - [O7]Garth: I mean, the Timor station speedrun was done with grenade launchers (level 27) what if you can do it without, at alower level
14:24 - Alexis: Oh and I'm talking WoW :)
14:25 - [O7]Garth: Yeah, I know, but I couldn't finda way to make it explain with wow :d
14:25 - Alexis: That's because gear in AS = spells, qualitative differences. Gear in wow = more of the same, quantitive differences.
14:26 - Alexis: So gear in wow can be neglected for speed ranking purposes, but not so much in AS... for AS I'd assume everyone is max stars + level :p
14:27 - [O7]Garth: Those guys? I guess :D
14:27 - [O7]Garth: but yeah, everybody will have the same gear etc
14:27 - Alexis: Yeah
14:27 - Alexis: It gives me another thought
14:28 - Alexis: What if you could take WoW, strip the raids out and stand that up as a game?
14:28 - Alexis: So like in the lobby you pick a class, gear build, talent build etc. Then you just pick a 'map' and boom
14:28 - [O7]Garth: A co-op boss killing game?
14:28 - Alexis: Yeah
14:29 - Alexis: Like SC2 MP has no open world, no research, you just pick a race and go
14:29 - Alexis: What if in WoW you could just pick a build and go?
14:29 - [O7]Garth: hmm I don't know, If we keep the same difficulty in boss fights etc, and keep loot/progression in the game.
14:29 - [O7]Garth: I can think of a problem
14:30 - [O7]Garth: If you make it that simple, the game becomes fast
14:30 - [O7]Garth: And WoW/Raids isn't about speed, you need coordination, time, communication etc
14:30 - Alexis: Nah no loot - you pick your ilvl as difficulty level
14:30 - Alexis: People do all that for SC too
14:30 - [O7]Garth: Speedy games don't like it cause people join/leave when they want
14:31 - Alexis: PUGs would be pretty horrendous I grant you :)
14:31 - [O7]Garth: I mean, if you want to do the LK you need to play with friends to learn it slow
14:31 - [O7]Garth: Or it will be crapfest
14:31 - Alexis: Well - that's just like joining a PUG
14:31 - [O7]Garth: Yeah
14:31 - Alexis: yeah, anyone half decent will join a guild
14:32 - [O7]Garth: But then it doesn't become a loose game like AS or Borderlands or something else that's fast and guildless
14:32 - Alexis: THat's not the idea
14:32 - [O7]Garth: Aha
14:32 - Alexis: You can't play coop SC2 at a high level without friends either
14:33 - [O7]Garth: SC2 is starcraft right?
14:33 - Alexis: THe idea is to get rid of flying around, having to enchant gear, having to level up etc etc
14:33 - Alexis: yeah
14:34 - Alexis: If a games company didn't have to make quests, open world etc they could do so much more raid content
14:34 - [O7]Garth: Hmm, it does sound interesting, but I do see some "problems"
14:34 - [O7]Garth: That's true
14:34 - [O7]Garth: Did'nt calculate that in yet
14:34 - Alexis: Basically WoW is 3-5 games all in one
14:34 - Alexis: which is nice because it gives you a change, but causes friction too - like I will never get the pvp achieves
14:35 - [O7]Garth: but people who play a game need to be entertained by new content or challenges or different mode's, achievements etc.
14:35 - Alexis: If they could split the games out, I could play Leveling when I feel like it, Raiding when I feel like that
14:35 - [O7]Garth: Or the hunt for loot
14:35 - [O7]Garth: I mean Ignis can be so dull etc, but it's being done cause of the loot and when you get it, you're happy.
14:35 - Alexis: Achievements
14:36 - [O7]Garth: With no loot, no journey to/from, you will be bored with it after a couple of raids, so new content need to be out fast
14:36 - Alexis: I mean you could throw some unlocks etc in to give extra motivation for initial tries, but the ultimate goal is speed
14:37 - Alexis: What if instead of releasing 14 bosses at once, they released 1 boss / 2 weeks?
14:37 - Alexis: I think that might even be slower than Blizz
14:38 - [O7]Garth: 1 boss in 2 weeks.
14:38 - [O7]Garth: Hmm not enough I think
14:38 - Alexis: You would focus hard on each boss, pushing your time down, but never get totally bored with the game because in average 1 week, there's a new boss
14:38 - [O7]Garth: Does the old one disappear?
14:38 - Alexis: and you can always go back and work on old ones a bit more if you're hardcore and want to push your score
14:38 - [O7]Garth: Ah right
14:38 - Alexis: That's another beautiful thing
14:39 - Alexis: Because of the gear/level treadmill, bosses go out of date in wow
14:39 - Alexis: if you tie all that to a difficulty level instead, your content never dies
14:39 - Alexis: I mean... some of it will start looking pretty gash... but people don't have to do it
14:39 - [O7]Garth: I like that
14:40 - Alexis: 1/2wks could be the 'base rate', with bonus boss weekends
14:40 - [O7]Garth: but, maybe build a difficulty level in it as well?
14:40 - [O7]Garth: Like you cant go to boss X without level Y
14:40 - Alexis: Yeah the biggest issue I see is teaching people to play
14:40 - [O7]Garth: Oh wait, you mentioned unlocks already :D
14:41 - Alexis: :D
14:41 - [O7]Garth: Training rooms?
14:41 - Alexis: Yeah. Simple bosses with restricted skill sets
14:41 - [O7]Garth: Wow Is ofcourse a big trainingroom to rest skills and spells and other stuff
14:41 - [O7]Garth: Choosing your talent from scrap is hard
14:42 - Alexis: Yet, a very poor one. You can't really learn to tank while levelling
14:42 - Alexis: and healing is nonrepresentative, most of the fun/difficulty comes from multiple targets
14:42 - [O7]Garth: Could make it more mobile though, Not all of them require a tank, more of a berserker(borderlands) kind of class?
14:43 - Alexis: Well... I like the tank-cooldown model
14:43 - [O7]Garth: Less complicated, more with synergy
14:43 - Alexis: Imagine if every DPS class had an Evasion equivalent, and a taunt
14:44 - Alexis: the evasions wouldn't have to be identical... some could be selfhealing, some absorbs, some magic-resist, some armor - etc
14:44 - [O7]Garth: That will be chaos
14:44 - Alexis: Until you learn to control it :)
14:44 - [O7]Garth: people will taunt from eachother etc
14:44 - Alexis: that's the idea
14:44 - [O7]Garth: How many people?
14:45 - Alexis: 5-10
14:45 - Alexis: We're mixing up two ideas now
14:45 - [O7]Garth: Cause, it's hard enough, at times to get a good 3 man interuption rotation going, let alone a 5-10 man taunt rotation
14:45 - [O7]Garth: I'm not negative on all it, I just someone who thinks about negative sides of stuff before the positive side btw :)
14:46 - Alexis: I imagine most encounters would be multiple boss, so you'd break into 2-3 teams and have some people sit out of taunt rotation
14:46 - Alexis: It's easy to get excited about game ideas, much harder to defend them
14:46 - Alexis: There's so much cool stuff Blizz have tried, that the playerbase just broke, lol
14:47 - Alexis: For a tough fight - imagine twin emperors
14:47 - Alexis: You have 3 people tanking one; 3 the other; 4 handling adds
14:47 - Alexis: at set points, the 3 teams swap because they've been debuffed
14:48 - Alexis: or you could have a thorim like map - 5 people at the bottom, 3 on thorim, 2 on adds
14:48 - Alexis: 5 people up top just DPSing like nuts
14:48 - Alexis: at a given point, the top 5 have to click an orb and jump down, in time to let the bottom 5 escape
14:49 - [O7]Garth: Escape?
14:50 - Alexis: Up to the top :)
14:50 - Alexis: Say the boss has an evil damage aura and the orb gives you a limited time resist buff
14:50 - Alexis: with a cooldown period which forces you to use 2 teams, so as to get 110% time coverage

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