Random (M)MORPG thoughts

[WaterMage]

@Xenich has said that Pantheon is a lot like it

Yes, but no Blood mage, no Psionicist, the classes that I want to try in Vanguard.Tested a private server but everything is placeholder.

[rusty_shackleford]

@Xenich has said that Pantheon is a lot like it

Yes, but no Blood mage, no Psionicist, the classes that I want to try in Vanguard.Tested a private server but everything is placeholder.

There's a necromancer and summoner

[WaterMage]

There's a necromancer and summoner

I know but I wanted to play vanguard for this two classes...

[Xenich]

I would say it is an EQ base, with a vanguard direction.

Sure, the names are often similar, the spells are what you know and have seen in various games that sync up with that style of class, but they are varied in different approaches to play.

Necros have pets, do dots, etc... but the system is changes in focus a bit and they don't get FD and they have far more interaction with their pets (ie entire paper doll progression for them).

Enchanters are group kings with buffs/debuffs, CC, stuns, etc.. with some different spell mechanics that sync with the technique system.

Mages are what you would know, paper doll development for pets, multiple element pets, but with more interactive abilities between the caster and pet types.

Shamans are what you know, but with different flares to the abilities and how they function.


Anyway, not EQ, but still feels like EQ and Vanguard mixed in many ways with some obvious modern adjustments.

Anyone on the fence I would say.. hold off let it progress and see where it goes if you are unsure.

If you loved EQ, Vanguard, or similar games of that era, the game play is very fun and even if the game fails, I already got my money back out of it in the hours I have played.

If you haven't played Alpha's before, or early Beta, and have issues with bugs, and other issues... and will get ******, I would wait.

If you have experienced that and don't mind, well.. game is a blast... It really is a lot of fun and there is plenty of content up to 20 that plays functional and I would say at a "beta" level even with the place holders.

[Xenich]

@Xenich has said that Pantheon is a lot like it

Yes, but no Blood mage, no Psionicist, the classes that I want to try in Vanguard.Tested a private server but everything is placeholder.

That a joke or are you talking about Vanguard Emulator?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Wildstar online

The game had some neat 2D art, but when I played the open beta, the moment to moment gameplay felt bad. The movement of your character felt sluggish which did not gel with the pseudo-actiony nature of the game where you are constantly dodging telegraphed AoEs, your attacks felt weak, and the game begins with you doing boring mediocre MMO sidequests.

[WaterMage]

That a joke or are you talking about Vanguard Emulator?

Yep. In emulator. Mobs didnt had any interesting ability...

[Xenich]

That a joke or are you talking about Vanguard Emulator?

Yep. In emulator. Mobs didnt had any interesting ability...

Ah, I think I remember that was something they were still working on.

[Xenich]

I think Vanguard emulator is kind of nearing their end of the data collection they had. When the sunset message went out, they asked people to start doing a bunch of data collection for it and while they did get quite a bit of data, and had many players who remembered a lot of the content help out, there is only so much you can do at some point.

I didn't keep up with it much, but they have tried several times to reach out to Daybreak (?) to see if they could get some aid on this issue, but I don't think that panned out.

My guess is that if games like Pantheon, M&M start to become more popular, you might see Daybreak take a shot at opening it up in some fashion (one can hope), but who knows. I even think at some point Brad was looking into trying to recover it before they really pushed into Pantheon, but that never played out apparently.

It would be nice to see some more selection in these styles of games, but the target audience is limited so it may not be feasible. Many modern players just do not like those types of systems and scream bloody murder when they encounter them.

[rusty_shackleford]

Amazed at how few games get their sourcecode leaked. You're telling me not a single person working on games like Vanguard just copied that **** to a USB? ******* losers.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Amazed at how few games get their sourcecode leaked. You're telling me not a single person working on games like Vanguard just copied that **** to a USB? ******* losers.

Fear of the lawyers, and fear of being blacklisted and unable to find work.

[rusty_shackleford]

Amazed at how few games get their sourcecode leaked. You're telling me not a single person working on games like Vanguard just copied that **** to a USB? ******* losers.

Fear of the lawyers, and fear of being blacklisted and unable to find work.

Just leak it anonymously, it's impossible to track given how large team sizes are.

[Oyster Sauce]

Amazed at how few games get their sourcecode leaked. You're telling me not a single person working on games like Vanguard just copied that **** to a USB? ******* losers.

Fear of the lawyers, and fear of being blacklisted and unable to find work.

Just leak it anonymously, it's impossible to track given how large team sizes are.

I would assume there'd be some sort of security measures on work computers like snapshotting whatever gets transferred between drives or watermarking builds with unique identifiers when they're accessed.

[rusty_shackleford]

Fear of the lawyers, and fear of being blacklisted and unable to find work.

Just leak it anonymously, it's impossible to track given how large team sizes are.

I would assume there'd be some sort of security measures on work computers like snapshotting whatever gets transferred between drives or watermarking builds with unique identifiers when they're accessed.

There's no way to detect someone just copying the source code to a USB stick from a dev machine.

[Oyster Sauce]

Just leak it anonymously, it's impossible to track given how large team sizes are.

I would assume there'd be some sort of security measures on work computers like snapshotting whatever gets transferred between drives or watermarking builds with unique identifiers when they're accessed.

There's no way to detect someone just copying the source code to a USB stick from a dev machine.

The two people I've known with supplied WFH laptops had constant screen recording of some sort.

[rusty_shackleford]

I would assume there'd be some sort of security measures on work computers like snapshotting whatever gets transferred between drives or watermarking builds with unique identifiers when they're accessed.

There's no way to detect someone just copying the source code to a USB stick from a dev machine.

The two people I've known with supplied WFH laptops had constant screen recording of some sort.

Scribbles note about oyster sauce working for bioware into journal
Updated my journal.

[Xenich]

Amazed at how few games get their sourcecode leaked. You're telling me not a single person working on games like Vanguard just copied that **** to a USB? ******* losers.

Fear of the lawyers, and fear of being blacklisted and unable to find work.

Just leak it anonymously, it's impossible to track given how large team sizes are.

I am surprised Brad didn't keep a copy and down the road when Sony screwed it and sunset it, just quietly "leak" it out anonymously. It isn't like he could not have stealthed a copy of his own game.

[Hyborian]

MMOs are dogshit. Always have been. Doesn't mean you can't have fun with dogshit games. Just ask millions of people playing live-service slop today. I certainly had an absolute blast with mmos 20 years ago, and made a ton of friends online and in real life through them. They were fun when they were novel and internet was still in its early period, but looking at their game design from objective point, you realize they were absolute garbage and had braindead, embarrassingly poor gameplay. Yes, even your favorite childhood mmo. ******* dogshit. I can forgive the early pioneer mmos for ****** game design, because the technology wasn't there to support more advanced and sophisticated ideas, but 25-30 years later MMOs still have the same exact mechanics, same systems, same aesthetics, same combat, same gameplay loops and so on. They keep making the same banal slop no one is interested in anymore, and it's little wonder the genre is dead. There's a complete lack of innovation and retrospection by mmo devs.

The player exodus already started 15 years ago, largely for the same reasons. MMOs were getting stale and failed to offer new, interesting and exciting experiences for their audience. I saw entire competitive guilds migrate to MOBAs. Then survival games and hero shooters pulled more people away. Then battle royale games. Seems like only ******, addicts and russians are still playing them. There have been a few smaller mmos trying to do something different, but they didn't have the financial means nor talent to pull it off, and mmo players weren't giving them a chance, because they have this mindset that anything unorthodox is bad and is going to fail anyway so there's no point in playing them, which results in a self-fulfilled prophecy. Some blame for the absolute state of MMOs goes to ******** mmo players.

[Xenich]

MMOs are dogshit. Always have been. Doesn't mean you can't have fun with dogshit games. Just ask millions of people playing live-service slop today. I certainly had an absolute blast with mmos 20 years ago, and made a ton of friends online and in real life through them. They were fun when they were novel and internet was still in its early period, but looking at their game design from objective point, you realize they were absolute garbage and had braindead, embarrassingly poor gameplay. Yes, even your favorite childhood mmo. ******* dogshit. I can forgive the early pioneer mmos for ****** game design, because the technology wasn't there to support more advanced and sophisticated ideas, but 25-30 years later MMOs still have the same exact mechanics, same systems, same aesthetics, same combat, same gameplay loops and so on. They keep making the same banal slop no one is interested in anymore, and it's little wonder the genre is dead. There's a complete lack of innovation and retrospection by mmo devs.

The player exodus already started 15 years ago, largely for the same reasons. MMOs were getting stale and failed to offer new, interesting and exciting experiences for their audience. I saw entire competitive guilds migrate to MOBAs. Then survival games and hero shooters pulled more people away. Then battle royale games. Seems like only ******, addicts and russians are still playing them. There have been a few smaller mmos trying to do something different, but they didn't have the financial means nor talent to pull it off, and mmo players weren't giving them a chance, because they have this mindset that anything unorthodox is bad and is going to fail anyway so there's no point in playing them, which results in a self-fulfilled prophecy. Some blame for the absolute state of MMOs goes to ******** mmo players.

There is something about the base mechanics of games like EQ that I like. It is key things that people said were limitations and antiquated tech or poor design to which they moved on to what is modern MMO design of today.

I always wanted to see EQ evolve, staying within those core concepts, but refining them, expanding and improving their concepts (vanguard was a nice attempt, EQ 2 was a complete misunderstanding of the core concepts). They didn't, rather design chased "convenience" in play until they lost all the things that I felt made them enjoyable.

Maybe I am an oddball, but I don't think so. There are a lot of people in Pantheon who feel the same way about such mechanics.

[DemoGraph]

I would assume there'd be some sort of security measures on work computers like snapshotting whatever gets transferred between drives or watermarking builds with unique identifiers when they're accessed.

There's no way to detect someone just copying the source code to a USB stick from a dev machine.

The two people I've known with supplied WFH laptops had constant screen recording of some sort.

I've worked at several banks and in every one of them security was strict. All USB ports are blocked. All your actions are logged constantly, especially if you work with customer data.
Once I've decided to send an archive with a password via mail. Corp autoscanner wasn't able to process it. Seconds later my mail was blocked, then my PC and then I got a call from security. They were friendly and polite (I actually did nothing wrong), but the iron grip is there, always. I imagine that situation is at least the same for every large corp.
Or worse. Some of my acquaintances worked for American IT transnationals. They were forced to always keep laptop camera open, so that at any moment security could check what's happening around them. It's a goddamn panopticon.

The only thing you can do comparatively innocently is take a photo of your screen. And that is if you don't have a camera behind you.

[Kalarion]

There's no way to detect someone just copying the source code to a USB stick from a dev machine.

The two people I've known with supplied WFH laptops had constant screen recording of some sort.

I've worked at several banks and in every one of them security was strict. All USB ports are blocked. All your actions are logged constantly, especially if you work with customer data.
Once I've decided to send an archive with a password via mail. Corp autoscanner wasn't able to process it. Seconds later my mail was blocked, then my PC and then I got a call from security. They were friendly and polite (I actually did nothing wrong), but the iron grip is there, always. I imagine that situation is at least the same for every large corp.
Or worse. Some of my acquaintances worked for American IT transnationals. They were forced to always keep laptop camera open, so that at any moment security could check what's happening around them. It's a goddamn panopticon.

The only thing you can do comparatively innocently is take a photo of your screen. And that is if you don't have a camera behind you.

And to Rusty's specific point, I imagine most of these companies employ some form of Data Loss Protection software. So yes, the company will in fact know exactly that someone is doing something like that, especially if it's going to a removable drive. The software will then either block the transfer, report it to IT security, or both.

It can be gotten around, but it's not trivial.

[rusty_shackleford]

I guarantee not a single game developer is actually doing any of this, most of them struggle to even use version control properly.

[rusty_shackleford]

@Kalarion

this looks like one of those jank online RPGs you'd play

[swbgtoc]

They keep making the same banal slop no one is interested in anymore, and it's little wonder the genre is dead. There's a complete lack of innovation and retrospection by mmo devs.

That's the reason I ended up dropping the genre even though I used to be obsessed with MMOs. Every new game is a copy and paste with barely any change, and the few novelties are based on vague meaningless buzzwords like "player driven economy" or "class identity" but in the end it's all just WoW but somehow worse, again and again.
And yet, I keep in a corner of my heart the fantasy that I'll one day make my dream MMO. I still write down my ideas. And I even have so many conflicting ideas that I had to split them into different games. There is so much to do, I don't get why the genre is frozen.

[rusty_shackleford]

I really hate "horizontal" gear progression.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I really hate "horizontal" gear progression.

Why? I rather prefer the idea that the gear I worked hard to acquire will actually last me quite a while. I hate working hard to acquire high ilevel only for it to be rendered irrelevant come the next patch when it introduces even more powerful gear that is easily acquired.

[rusty_shackleford]

I really hate "horizontal" gear progression.

Why? I rather prefer the idea that the gear I worked hard to acquire will actually last me quite a while. I hate working hard to acquire high ilevel only for it to be rendered irrelevant come the next patch when it introduces even more powerful gear that is easily acquired.

Because it typically means the best gear is very easy to achieve otherwise it wouldn't be horizontal anymore

[methoxetamine]

Every day I am thankful that I'm no longer a degenerate mmofag. I had some great times playing the genre and I'm thankful for the experience of playing them, but it sickens me to know how many great games I missed out on over the years

[Vergil]

Are there any MMOs where gear autism isn't the primary focus?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Are there any MMOs where gear autism isn't the primary focus?

In GW2 you hit the level cap of 80 very quickly and then you can buy a full set of exotic gear off of the auction house for a few gold, and then you are set for life. The only thing more powerful than exotic gear is Ascended/Legendary gear, but it only provides a marginal stat increase, and the expansions have added other forms of powercreep besides gear. Equipping an elite specialization makes you far more powerful than running around with just base game specs. EoD introduces the Jade Bot, which allows you to gain 30 seconds of every buff in the game (crit, haste, shields, HP regen, etc) each time you enter combat.