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Comments
Have you gotten into the game yet, Alex?
Don't know what your problems with the account verification worth considering mine verified immediately. <-<
Yeah, I'm in.
The Dragon Den combat gameplay is pretty good. There's a little niggle with some attack range kind of stuff, like if you're too close to an enemy your attack doesn't connect, but your attacks tend to take you forward, so combos are self-limiting. On the other hand, it's all pretty user-friendly and the abilities are neat. Not particularly unique (at least yet), but using these in a real-time context makes all the difference.
For instance, the warrior starts with three pretty basic special attacks. One's a forward rush with an attached attack, one's a local, forward area-of-effect kind of deal with a charge up, and the last is a (slightly) ranged attack that hits targets in a line multiple times. So the class has an emphasis on forward momentum, working best on entry into combat and maintaining offensive pressure.
I also love elbow-dropping the fuck out of goblins when I knock them down. Fuck you, goblins. Here is my elbow.
And the Archer's main deal is keeping enemies away from them. I've got the basic arrow shot, a charged arrow shot, and I recently got a Multi-Arrow shot that is for spraying multiply enemies.
It seems the Archer can sink points into skills focusing on shooting, and kicking. I have the basic Spin Kick move, which I love. And I recently got the ability to jump kick.
I'm looking forward to seeing what the Acrobat can do.
Also, I don't know what Nova was talking about with the areas being to repetitious. I've been to four instance areas at this point, and they were all pretty different.
Not the areas, the paths themselves. They're linear paths with no room to do much of anything.
I do remember one which was alright, but I can't remember which one it was. It had like, ruins in the middle of it or something, and I had to work the obstacles into my attacks. That was cool.
The rest of them sucked ass, though.
Yeah, I honestly don't understand your complaint. -shrug-
I basically just think it's not the best design decision for them to have everything take place in linear paths rather than a more open world.
Well, I still think it's "open", it's just that a lot of areas are instanced so that only your party can be there. Phantasy Star does something similar.
I think it was a necessary design choice to go with the real-time combat. If everything was open world, and every was attacking all these monsters all over the place, there would be obvious problems.
But I understand why your complaint now.
If it was open, you wouldn't be constricted to predefined paths. :P
The heavy instancing does help a lot with keeping the real-time combat going. I'm only level 4 so I have no idea if the general game paths open up more, but I don't feel particularly restricted. In any case, it seems as though the game designers chose to focus on delivering real-time combat in an MMO context and so far the game has delivered on that nicely. I can live with more restrained dungeons if it means that the general gameplay is more open.
Well, the thing is, it's not like it's impossible to combine instancing and open worlds. And it's not like you can't have open areas inside instances, rather than linear paths through the instances.
And having an open world rather than a path can even help with open combat, as it allows tactical considerations- "Alright, Archer, you go in and attack the goblins behind the troll, Mage and Warrior here will stick to the front and keep the troll's attention on us."
You can already do that. The environments aren't so small and confined that you can't develop strategies.
They kind of are. Playing as a Mage with an Archer buddy helping, enemies had a tendency to spot you if you try to sneak around them, because the areas are too small for you to be able to move out of their sight/aggressive range. That's the way they developed encounters
Perhaps they've made the paths wider since I played; I don't know. I doubt they significantly changed their instancing since I played, however.
None of which addresses the whole "You can still have an open world with instancing where necessary" thing anyway, but whatevs.
Then you develop strategies that take into account enemy aggression. /shrug
I suppose one of the issues with the whole open world with instancing thing, in this case, is that you could still only have enemies in instances due to the real time combat. So those large areas and worlds wouldn't have much population or threat, because combat has to be contained to areas that only a few players will exist within at any moment. When you only have five or so players running about an area, making those areas really large would be a waste.
But the major point here is that you couldn't have significant amounts of combat in non-instanced areas, and instanced areas that are really large would probably run counter to the tight focus on real-time combat. Especially since Dragon Den has so many dungeons (or seems as though it will). I'm near my third dungeon at level 4, so it's not like there's a content issue.
There is, apparently, one very large instance area. But most of them are smaller.
That's bull. There are heaps of games that do an overworld with heaps of enemies quite well. Real-time combat doesn't preclude respawning of enemies, at all.
Let's see about an example of a game that has instancing with an open world. Or, rather, two; we have World of Warcraft, and we have Runescape.
World of Warcraft is probably the example of an MMO with an open world and instanced areas. There are plenty of things to do in the open world- skills harvesting, fighting specific groups of enemies, exploration, etc- and then, when it wants to, it adds in instanced dungeons and raids, which limit the numbers of enemies and players to specific amounts.
This works very well for being able to build a cohesive world- everything is actually there and connected- and actually giving players room to maneuver.
Their instances, however, suck, so let's talk about a game that does instancing better; Runescape.
Runescape is an odd example, because it seems to have partial instancing. While you are doing quests, you are technically still there on the overworld in some areas, but other players can't see you and other enemies. There are areas that you can only enter while on the quests, there are bosses that only spawn while you are on the quest and only you can fight, and so on.
In many of those instances, you are partially phased out of the main world and into a new one, where you can interact with the world around you but other players can't see you. A good example of this is in Stolen Hearts, where you run around on the roofs of Al Kharid and other players can't see you or Ozan.
Similarly, other times, you are transported to new areas specifically for certain fights- the fight with Delrith at the end of Demon Slayer comes to mind, where you are phased to an instance so nobody else can interfere with your fight.
And yet other times, the quests just take place in the overworld and people are free to help you wherever you want.
All you'd need to do is have unimportant enemies respawn, and have significant encounters- such as dungeon runs- take place in instances.
@DYRE:
A: That's part of the appeal. See Exhibit A: The AS7-D Atlas.
B: There's also non-ugly mechs. See Exhibit B: The Timber Wolf (Mad Cat).
Well yeah I know it's basically just a stylistic thing, even if that's not really how I phrased it before... But anyway it's just that that sort of mech design doesn't really appeal to me as much as... the Gundam-ier kind, I guess.
That said, it also really doesn't matter as much to me as I implied before either, and really any kind of mechs are pretty cool. In fact, I actually might try out Mechwarrior Online at some point.
I would be totally willing to give MWO a chance if the damn thing ran on my computer, but it doesn't.
Also, free games you should all play:
Complexitivity (Kongregate Game and a good arcade-ish title. Also a Ludum Dare entrant, meaning the entire thing was made in three days)
SkullFace (also a Kongregame, cool platformer that is hard without being frustrating)
Qbeh (first person puzzler, a bit like Portal, has a tiny bit of implied story. Really short, but really really pretty)
Perspective (odd platformer game that plays with perspective a lot and switches between 2d and 3d, really hard to describe accurately.)
ActionFist! (run-n'-gunner that plays like a mix between Contra and Outland. Made entirely by one guy and has native controller support among some other neat features. Kinda hard for me, personally, though.)
Nova, the central issue here is that real-time combat takes more resources to process than the timer-based combat that's usual to MMOs. This is why something like Dragon Den requires more instancing, to the extent that it places every example of combat (at least so far) within an instance. A game like Dragon Den currently can't have large, non-instanced, combat intensive areas because it would drain server resources too much.
A lot of other MMOs can do what they do because they use the resource-light, timer-based combat systems that limit the negative effects of latency. A real-time combat system requires tighter latency control, which means that combat has to be focused into areas with less players. So you can have geographically large instances with lots of monsters, but you still can't have a whole lot of players in there at once. And that arguably defeats the purpose of geographical size in an MMO, where a part of the point is to simply encounter other people doing their thing.
This isn't just about design, but about system and server resources. Any MMO that wants to use real-time combat has to narrow its focus to take those things into account, and I think Dragon Den largely made the right decision in sacrificing geographical vastness for a more immediate gameplay experience.
There's games out there that run entire continents on a single server, man. The Elder Scrolls MMO, for instance, is going to feature massive megaservers where where tens to hundreds of thousands of people are online at once, while also having real-time combat.
If that game can do it, I can't accept that as a reason for this game not to do it.
Not every company has the same ability to buy the server resources needed for that.
Insisting that every game should is somewhere along the lines of insisting every game should have triple a graphics.
This game is free to play and no doubt ran and continues to run on a lower budget. Asking Dragon Den to run large, open instances with lots of players (for free, no less) is like asking... well, I don't know. It's already a ludicrous demand, because the developers don't have the financial power of Bethesda behind them. And that demand for a specific kind of content is a major factor holding MMOs back in any case, which is why MMOs tend to lack diversity.
It's much, much better than Dragon Den runs with smaller instances, with encounters, content, pacing and budget designed for what it can deliver given its goals. This allows it to be a bit different from a lot of other MMOs out there in the way the player overcomes obstacles and interacts with the environment, and I think that's a really good thing.
Anyway, if recent history has taught us anything, it's that smaller MMOs on lower budgets tend to bring in a greater return and maintain community stability better. Every MMO on the market today that's tried to one-up WoW, perhaps barring the Guild Wars games, has eventually led to disappointment. The Secret World, The Old Republic, Age of Conan, many more -- all games that looked like strong contenders but couldn't keep up largely through economic factors. With the flourishing indie development scene and the increasingly homogeneous AAA development context, I'm confident that smaller titles that beat out their own path are going to be leaders in game design as we move into the next era of gaming.
And this is why I'm currently enjoying Dragon Den. I'm not an MMO gamer, but I love the idea. What I don't like is the huge range of restrictions and standards built into the MMO genre that hold it back from further progression, largely courtesy of their cost and the success of WoW. I'd really like to get into a very organic game that lets me interact with a multitude of other players in different contexts at any given moment, but if the cost is heavily restricted and standardised gameplay, then count me out. The core gameplay experience simply isn't there for me, and I know there are plenty of others that feel the same. Dragon Den doesn't fix all or even that many of these issues, but in taking the steps it did to implement tight, real-time combat, it invited players to take more direct control over one of the core parts of MMO engagement.
It's Nexon. They earn more than Bethesda does. Twice as much as Bethesda earned from Skyrim, annually, roundabouts. They have a metric fuckton more money than Bethesda has to make their MMO with.
Dragon's Nest (And it is called Dragon's Nest) is fundamentally similar to many other MMO's. Vindictus, Divine Souls, you name it. And it came after.
It doesn't offer any diversity, by any means.
And with games that cost less to make.
Real-time combat is a huge difference, because now the player solves combat geometrically and in relation to fine timings rather than relational timings and ability balances.
Nexon also publishes a range of other free to play MMOs and has to split its resources in ways Bethesda doesn't. And unlike Bethesda, there's a split between publisher and developer. In this case, it's Eyedentity Games that's responsible for Dragon Nest from a labour point of view.
You can't ask that a free to play MMO that shares publishing (and probably server) space between at least one other development studio have technical equivalence with Bethesda. Especially given that Bethesda don't having publishing and development conflicts - both things being run by the same group of people - and are going to charge a purchase fee (and monthly fee, I heard?) for their MMO. Not to mention that Bethesda already have a widely-known reputation as a development studio, own other studios, and have a proven record of successful sales.
Keep in mind that Dragon Nest started as a reasonably small-time Korean MMO and is the first game released by Eyedentity games. Even then, Nexon isn't even its universal publisher, with different releases in different regions being published by different companies. So Eyedentity games are answerable to a handful of different regional publishers. It's kind of insane, but the point is that there's absolutely no way they can collate their resources like Bethesda can, and any attempt to widen their server capacities and strengths would have to be approved in various regions by various publishers, all of whom are footing various bills.
For a game no-one actually has to pay for in order to play.
What's instancing?
It's the MMO equivalent of hiring a booth at a club. You and your party exist in that instance independent of other players. Other players can access the same game content as you, but they get their own instance of it.
Oh that's what you mean. Okay never mind my question. I just was skimming and saw this term that looked unfamiliar.
And the planned TES has the same.
Nope. Eyedentity worked with Shanda to make it. (For those of you who don't know, Shanda published and operates games such as Dungeons and Dragons Online, MapleStory, Ragnarok Online, and AION. Those are some of the really big games in the MMO market.)
They threw their resources at the game- that is, they threw money at it. (Shanda grosses over five and a half billion dollars per year, with a net income of over $600 million a year.)
Dragon's Nest had a lot of money behind it, and the people hosting it and publishing it have a lot of money behind them. Easily enough to afford the operating costs of megaservers and such.
This is all to say, of course, that Bethesda simply lacks the resources behind it that Dragon's Nest had behind it. The developers of Dragon's Nest had more money behind it, they had more publishers willing to take the game, they had more employees (eyeDesign has somewhere between 200-500 employees, while Bethesda has less than 200, although there's no hard numbers for either), and so on, so forth.
So I don't buy that Bethesda has the resources to get together a bunch of megaservers for their TES MMO while eyeDesign/Shanda/Nexon didn't have the resources to get together a bunch of megaservers for Dragon's Nest.
(At the time, I think the numbers were a bit smaller- eyeDesign had a few fewer employees than Bethesda has now, and Shanda was pulling in around 3/4 of their total revenue- but the point stands; they still had more behind them than Bethesda does.)
Wasn't Dragon Den released in 2010, after starting development in 2007? That would mean that Shanda acquired Eyedentity Games just before Dragon Den was launched, and therefore wouldn't have contributed to its initial development cycle. But it seems to me as though Shanda's acquisition also made them able to take the role of regional publisher.
And that's the difference here. Eyedentity is subject to a lot of external influence that Bethesda aren't, since Bethesda can self-publish. When Bethesda makes money, that money goes to Bethesda and no-one else. When someone buys virtual goods in Dragon Den, that money is filtered through the region of purchase and that region's licenser/publisher before that cash finds Eyedentity itself. The difference here is that we've got what is a studio being compared against a studio/publisher combination, and one is always going to have greater internal consistency than the other. Bethesda simply don't have to answer to anyone creatively or financially except themselves.
As you mentioned, Shanda is responsible for the upkeep of other MMOs as well, so they can't throw all their resources into Dragon Den, even now. Neither can Nexon. I don't think any one of Dragon Den's publishers or licensers can put up megaservers for a free to play game when they have to support other MMOs. But Bethesda only have to support this one MMO without the hassle that comes from developer-publisher conflicts -- or the complexities that can arise from having different publishers in different regions.