How did they get this game so right?

[Naethyn]

Monsters & Memories is hitting all the right notes.

[Rygar]

Love the game for sure. Do wish more worthwhile quests were implemented. Didn't like that kunark vastly increased melee dps weapon ratios. Melee too overpowered in late game/grouping, needed balance.

Would have liked to see more curse weapons, such as great ratios but they can proc 500dd on you, dispell buffs, etc.


Never liked that all weapon types were equal. Would have been great if certain creatures were affected more by blunt weapons but had additional mitigation to slash/pierce. Would have been big opportunity to favor non lazy melee who swapped during fights.

[Jimjam]

Playing PQ the pets absolutely blow melee and wizards out the water (though I’m not sure how close to classic the pq/takp interaction of pets and NOCs actually is). I can kinda see why VI improved weapons, but I agree the jump feels too much.


I vaguely remember blunts being better against skeletons … was that an old dnd thing? Does modern dnd still have that kind of thing.

[aussenseiter]

Originally Posted by Jimjam [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I vaguely remember blunts being better against skeletons … was that an old dnd thing? Does modern dnd still have that kind of thing.

To answer your question, this is from the Baldur's Gate EE manual, which I think is 3rd edition, and the retro EE sequels are 3.5 edition.

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[Evia]

daoc had the system with blunt, pierce, slash all getting + or - bonuses vs certain armor types. it was one of the bright spots of the game as well as melee attack abilities! coming from eq's 'auto-attack for 60 lvls' it was refreshing. although i dont think daoc aged as well as eq did.

[aussenseiter]

On rolemaster that's called AvD and you can electrocute plate armor wearers easily.

[aussenseiter]

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[maxtorps]

Originally Posted by Tushy_master [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It had to be luck right? Or was Brad a genius?

They were basically just ripping of DnD and MUDs. But so many other mmorpgs sucked ass.

They had a passion for the game that wasn't unduly affected by the efforts of marketing to wring every last drop of money from customers until later. So you had no microtransactions, no pay to win, no easy paths (so called QoL) to attract a wider, perhaps more needy audience.

Instead, you had a rich variety of landscapes, mobs and lore. An emphasis on the social aspect of the game by introducing slowdown points so that players could genuinely make friends.

[knottyb0y]

Originally Posted by maxtorps [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

They had a passion for the game that wasn't unduly affected by the efforts of marketing to wring every last drop of money from customers until later. So you had no microtransactions, no pay to win, no easy paths (so called QoL) to attract a wider, perhaps more needy audience.

Instead, you had a rich variety of landscapes, mobs and lore. An emphasis on the social aspect of the game by introducing slowdown points so that players could genuinely make friends.

This!

You can tell EQ was a passion project. Still, even back then the subscription model proved to be VERY lucrative. I often miss the days of no micro transactions in games.

[Jimjam]

There was recently some 25th anniversary stuff out about Valve / Halflife, contemporary to EverQuest. I wondered how similar the design and development process was. Another game of similar vintage was Pocket Monsters / Pokémon which seemed to have a similar development workflow to Halflife.

These games had these huge well thought out worlds in which games happened with a focus put on fun and the psychology of the game. Were they just of that era? I don’t know, but there just seemed to be so much scope and magic in the games of the late 90s.