The first order of business is a working adventure sphere. Period.
Sevens points out one very, very important thing - release a broken game either to hit some deadline (which, by the way, VR controls entirely for PRotF) or because you wanted to try and do a lot of things half-arsed, and yeah, your game will fail.
The first, most vital, absolute must is working adventuring. 1 out of 1,000 people will fondly recall their first badass tradeskill accomplishment, but 999 out of 1,000 remember their first sick, cool, awesome adventuring feat. Yes, I do recall being a max level jewelcrafter on my enchanter, and enchanting velium bars one at a time for an entire weekend once. Yup, I recall that...vaguely. But right now, 14 years later, I can name almost the entire raid party of my first Aaryanar kill in ToV, like it happened 10 minutes ago. I can also recall, down to the last forum comment, every "whoops, we never meant for Skill X to work like that, so we're nerfing it" Dev screwup SOE made for the first 3 years. People still talk about it. In my level 90-100 grind the other night, we were all talking about when SOE nerfed Charm entirely in Kael Drakkel because the 6 man enchanter squad used charmed giants properly to smoke the Avatar of War with fewer people than was intended. 13 years later...and we're still mad about that crap.
Point being, busted mechanics, holes in the world, broken quests, and any other adventuring glitch, no matter how small....the players remember all that, they hold onto the grudge forever, and they delight in bad mouthing it to the forums and the whole freaking internet. For an example, please see "Fires of Heaven wrecking SOE face because Vex Thal was not working when Luclin was released" or "Conquest didn't get banned for an exploit, but because they figured out how to do something the devs talked smack about being impossible."
The adventuring game IS THE GAME. Tradeskills, housing, diplomacy, etc...all ancillary and nowhere near make or break. Adventuring....there's the meat, the potatoes, the plate, the silverware and the napkin. Have just one hole in the world, like VG did at release and EQ2 still has 10 years later, and you lose a chunk of your subscription base because...well...there are competitors out there whose stuff is working, is bigger and is already being played. PRotF is a niche game...and it will compete directly with Brad's earliest accomplishment - an already working, and so massive it is stupid, EQ1. We were talking about it last night, and EQ1 is still where you go to do your post-graduate MMO studies. It's the hardest, meanest, toughest MMO out there...and minus a few glitches here and there, it's working just fine and dandy. Nobody really much cares about tradeskills beyond jewelry and tailoring, which are both useful for...you guessed it...easier adventuring.
So if VR is going to dedicate what limited resources they have, please, please, please dedicate them all to proper, 100% working, glitch free ADVENTURING. All other priorities are secondary or rescinded. If you can do that and still have folks left over to placate the "must make 150,000 widgets to be able to make 300,000 bigger widgets" folks, then cool, develop the widget mechanic and placate those folks, but they are not the core playerbase of this game...the grinder adventurers and explorers are. It's that simple.
Venjenz said:
The first order of business is a working adventure sphere. Period.
Well said! I couldn't agree more!
Depends on what you mean by adventuring. Walking/running around glitch free making it feel correct is probably the biggest single aspect that needs to be prefect for launch, in my book. But that doesn't mean it's purely adventuring. Thats also crafting, harvesting, questing etc. Do you mean by aventuring that it's questing, use of abilities, melee combat, spell combat? Adventuring is the sphere of this game, but thats just it, thats a sphere, a very large incomposing aspect that includes a lot fo specific tasks or mechanics that must be just right.
Except that the EQ precedent was exact,y and, decidely, *NOT* this perfect 100% glitch-free game.
Making a perfect glitch free adventuring game is not the most important thing.
Making a world to live in (as opposed to a game to play) is the most important thing. EQ players endured and tolerated tons of glitches, and low end graphics and bugs galore. They did it because the immersive virtual world is what they came for.
A couple of almost four year old threads seeing the light of day today.
SWTOR was the closest MMO I have ever seen to perfect in terms of stability and lack of bugs.
The MMO playing aspects ....maybe not so good. Within reason better a great game with some bugs than a not-so-great game that is bug-free.
Even though the thread is four years old, the original post is great. I really like how adventuring - exploration, combat, survival, accomplishing goals - is contrasted with creating 10,000 widgets to make bigger widgets. Adventuring really is where all the vital organs are in an MMO-body. Nothing really new here, and it seems VR is designing everything in line with Venjenz's vijion - but cool to reiterate.
One thing to note...I've been online gaming since 1995 ..I have never yet seen a PERFECT bugless game (every time there is an expansion new bugs introduced..) If there is such a thing..the human or humans programming that game would have to be perfect, and that isn't gonna happen unless you are a Deity. :P Just wanted to mention that. lol Also we are allowed to NECRO old threads here..makes less work for Kilsin. ;)
Cana
It's impossible to make a bug free game. If anyone has taken any type of CS course in programming one of the first sayings you learn is when you fix a bug, two more are created. Can only hope that all the game breaking stuff is fixed and we can deal with the smaller annoying ones.
SWTOR did a wonderful job sn minimizing bugs - they had a huge budget. May have been the best MMO release ever. Their problems came with the multiplayer aspects - crafting was weak, the excellent story line was designed to be easy for a solo character, and at least at release there wasn't much to do at level-cap other than repeating the same thing over and over.