Quote: Original post by mittens

Quote: Original post by Pirate_Lord
I have no problem with people flaming me, Mr. Moderator, let them fire away. You are, of course, free too as well...

Marc Michalik (A.K.A. Pirate_Lord)
Lost Art Studios -- www.piratedawn.com

Are you honestly so arrogant that you've taken nothing from this thread whatsoever?

People flame you because you deserve it. Every single reply here is, in my mind, giving you well-deserved criticism. You're lucky if absolutely any of the replies here offer constructive criticism because your attitude and pretentiousness warrant nothing aside from LOLcat image after LOLcat image mocking your complete and utter enthrallment with your own self. For being a fifty/sixty-year-old designer in the industry, you show a remarkable amount of ignorance and an inverse amount of experience.

Now, as a moderator, I have been torn about whether or not to shut this thread down within a day after you originally posted it. You may seek help but the way you act and hold yourself on what, quite frankly, must be a very lonely pedestal is putting a dark mark on an otherwise respectable forum. Perhaps you may want to direct your next thread to this forum if, at some point, a decision is made regarding the longevity of this thread.

Quote: Original post by gwihlidal
As soon as I saw the initial arrogance and delusions of grandeur by the OP I didn't even bother to read anything in this thread. I don't normally get "upset" by reading forum threads, but this one in particular irked me.

This is what I got out of it about the OP:

* Doesn't have an open mind

* Is extremely arrogant (without even having the experience to back it up, I'm sorry, you don't, and it wouldn't be a bad thing except for the fact you think you're the best game designer in the world.)

* Put down other aspiring game designers in other threads with your negative and own personal faults in your own career and trying to say that's what the industry is like.

* Rather than taking everyone's criticism about his attitude and design document (200 is WAY too long) and improving himself, instead flames and lashes out at people. He seems to forget that his game (if it were ever produced) would be played by the same people telling him there are rough edges in the game. See the connection?

Yes, the game industry is very harsh at times, so if it no longer interests or drives you then that's fine, try something else in life. I've seen many friends do that. However if you wish to continue on, you really need to up your positivity and attitude and that's what will allow you to succeed. Not a massive 200 page design document that most people wouldn't read if you were being positive, let alone highly negative.

Anyways, enough from me.

~Graham

Quote: Original post by PaulCesar
Sooo.... I read it.

It's not bad. I've read game design documents before. circa 1999 it would be extremely innovative, but impossible to produce. Now most of the ideas in it have already been done in some shape or form, mind you, not all in one place as you have here. It could be a very fun game, but it would also (and I don't believe you could argue this point) very expensive to produce.

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Some of the features you list, such as your modding system, are unfeasible from a TECHNICAL perspective at this point in time. Particularly on consoles (which you said your game would be geared towards). Have you taken into account streaming data costs, bandwidth allocations, etc? These are things you have to take into account on a MMO of any scale.

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Ive seen less of them nowadays, but about 3-4 years ago there were posts on gamedev about 3 times a week with someone wanting to produce a game that "lives and breaths" on its own. With little to no restriction on players. Player run content is great, but there are A SHIT LOAD of technical pitfalls. In addition the cost of producing the game, the hardware requirements for both the servers and the players running it (particular bandwidth) would be a major issue. Are you really going to expect all your players to have a personal T1 line? Mind you, in 3-4 years... we are heading that route.

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Your game would be very appealing to game DESIGNERS, which makes sense why you think it would take off so well. Bear in mind that the mass market, your target demographic, might not find it quite as enjoyable because they are NOT designer oriented.

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That being said, you are RIGHT in the aspect that what you have here makes most other online games appear as a massively single player game. Your not a programmer as you admitted yourself, so I don't think you have reached the stark realism that what you are endeavoring may actually STILL be technically unfeasible though, at least with huge amounts of money and requirements. Games are , unfortunately, about money. Costs of development aside, it would be difficult to make this game profitable from a purely operational standpoint for at least another 5-10 years I think.

Quote: Original post by shou4577
Pirate Lord,

I have decided to accept your challenge of reading the design document. Obviously I will not be able to read the document in it's entirety in a single sitting, and so I will simply review each bit that I have read as I have read it.

The reason that I am doing this is mostly because of your immense hype. You seem to be very confident that if I read this, I will be completely stunned and left in awe of what you have discovered. I feel that, despite your arrogance (and yes, it is arrogance), you may have something worth reading. You did, after all, find it to be worth writing.

I will be writing both on the document itself, as I perceive it, and aspects of gameplay which I find good/bad/impossible. I don't claim to be an excellent writer, but that won't stop me from voicing my opinion (and it should be taken as such).

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So let me begin:

The first thing that I read is the summary presented on your website. Overall, it is a decent summary. After reading it, I am not immediately hooked, but there are some bits that draw my attention.

How exactly to you plan to have a game which incorporates no NPCs or quests? I know that many gamers (myself included) play video games largely due to the immersive storylines. Certainly not all games are subject to this constraint, but without NPCs or quests, I think that you will be hard-pressed to provide any more story than backstory (and overall, I'd rather just read a book than backstory).

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How feasible is it to have the world be entirely player-updated? You're counting on a very large population of knowledgeable gamers to make this work. What happens if you don't get that player base? I think that player-modded content is great, and can really add to a game, but if a game were actually dependent on it, I don't think that that game would succeed.

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Both of these features seem really neat at a glance, but I don't see how they can be (realistically) possible. If you count on players to create your storyline, your storyline will stink. Any game with a large enough player base to pull this off is bound to have plenty of Grievers to screw it up. Do you plan on policing the world with moderators to keep the storyline going? Similarly with player-modded (or created) content. It can work, but it's unlikely that many players will be skilled enough and willing enough to create your world for you. These are just my thoughts.

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The idea of little kids being able to "blast away" in the same environment as adult gamers having a truly deep gaming experience is enticing. If such a thing is possible, it would be a great attraction. I think that this balance would be extremely difficult to achieve, but I'm counting on you laying this out further in the actual design document.

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Speaking of which: The Design document

Firstly, there is the backstory. It's decent. You spend a lot of time naming things, like ship models, without any apparent purpose. I might be interested in the ship models from a "what kills best?" perspective, but I really don't care that the Germans invented it in 2112 (and do you really think that the same countries will exist and be world/galaxy powers will be the same in 150+ years?). I'm not sure how, but your backstory manages to be both too long and too short (Note: this is proper usage of the word "too"). For example, in a document such as this, it really isn't important to me that we colonized Mars in such-and-such a year, then discovered wormholes in such-and-such a year, then colonized such-and-such in blah blah blah. All I care about (if anything) in this design document is this: Citizens are good guys, Pirates steal stuff. Maybe one paragraph for this document. The rest of your backstory is too shallow to add anything, and just makes your design document extra long (Another note: I will be focusing on the parts of your design document that you can cut, since the general consensus is that it is far too long. This does not necessarily mean that these bits and pieces should be left out altogether; on the contrary, I believe that they have a place in more specific documentation related to the game, but outside of this document.).

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Overview of Play

This part is again too lengthly. You include the information that the game will be played on both the PC and the Xbox more than once, and it really isn't relevant here. In fact, very little of this section deals with play at all. You talk about the game board, alignments, and the "Full" game and "Alternate Zones." Then you make reference to many games that this game is sort of like, but different.

This reference to other games, on the whole, detracts from your design document. Firstly, a reader who is not familiar with all of these games (I believe this describes most everyone) will not get all of the facts. Instead of saying "The combat system is like Asteroids" (which, for the record, you do not say), you might say that "the combat system is based on simultaneously avoiding obstacles and also attempting to shoot things with projectiles, etc." You may want to word it better than that, but you get the idea. The other reason that this detracts from your document is that all of your hype is based on this being a brand new idea from which all future ideas will steal ideas. If you point out yourself that all of your brand new ideas are based on classic games, that's sort of shooting yourself in the foot. Note that I am not passing judgment on whether or not your ideas are original, I am simply stating the effect of the devices you have used.

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Other than these, this section is good. It is (mostly) brief, and just gives a broad overview. The only thing that I would elaborate on is this: what exactly is a star system? Does it work like a city? Is there space between systems, or is the world just a series of room-like star systems connected by doors? Is a star system big or small, in the context of the game? You give no clues as to what these systems are, but they play a big part in your explanations of other things.

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Multiplayer Modes and Server Based Zones

These sections can (and should) be omitted altogether. The sections immediately following them relay the same information, but with more depth and in a context that makes sense.

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Alternate Zones and Full Game

Here is my first real qualm with your game design ideas. Why are these part of the same game? The Alternate Zones sound like they are completely disconnected from the Full Game except in terms of combat (I have to assume since you have so far not described combat at all). So why make this one massive game? I think that this is definitely something to consider deeply, as it would make putting together a team to develop this (even though you claim that it is not your objective) much more possible. These mini-games sound earnestly fun. Notice that I said fun, not ground-breaking. I'm sure you realize that there is nothing about Free-for-all, Capture-the-flag, King-of-the-hill, or Dueling that is revolutionary to the gameplay world. These (and almost every conceivable reincarnation of them) have proven to be classic, fun, games for years.

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Still, you manage to bungle them (sorry, that was downright mean). Capture-the-flag (Flag Zone) seems absolutely impossible. 100+ guys split into teams of 8. This means that if you have a flag (just one of the 20 needed), there are 12 teams (~96 players) all trying to kill you. If your team actually manages to collect all 20 flags simultaneously, which I sincerely doubt is possible under these conditions, they will be outnumbered 12:1. Keeping all 8 team members alive for 3 whole minutes under these conditions seems impossibly difficult. The only way that this would be feasible would be if the combat were very slow, and the map very large. Games of this sort would be long and boring at best, and I would stay away from that.

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Another note, you keep referring to spaces of the cargo hold available, which I assume to be some sort of limited inventory. Before you start telling me about how much cargo space such-and-such flag takes up, please tell me what that space is exactly. How much do you have in the first place? Is this even a real issue? Does having a full cargo hold impair your ship in some way? What way? There are a lot of questions that go along with this. They are implicit, but nonetheless there. A good way around this might be to say "The goal is to hold on to the flag for 3 minutes, but your ship moves slower and cannot shoot while it is holding the flag." That's short, to the point, and conveys all of the necessary information without a bazillion new terms. These terms would be great to incorporate into gameplay, they would certainly add some realism, but keep them out of this design book unless they are really really necessary. You do a decent job of this in the Rabbit Chase Zone section, but even there you go too far in depth about the individual stats. I don't even know what stats the ships have yet, or what scales those stats are on, so what do I care that having the flag gives me a +3 speed bonus? That could be a lot, that could be a little. Speed might not even be important for all I know.

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The only zone which I really like is the Rabbit Chase Zone. This seems like it could be fair, since you become super outnumbered but uber-powerful. Pretty cool, but what are the teams for again?

And again, stop telling me that this is like Subspace's this or Galactic Ultima-battle 12's (What, you've never heard of it?) that. Tell me how it is unique without telling me how it is the same.

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And this is where I think I'll wrap it up for now. 12 pages and I'm not exactly excited for more. In fact, I have very little idea as to how this game works (or how it involves Pirates). I don't know what the combat system is like, other than that ships destroy ships (right?). Brass tacks: Uh, get down to brass tacks (but don't use antiquated colloquialisms like "brass tacks"). Tell me what I need to know, and tell me now.

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All in all, I wrote far too much, and I'm sure that most of it reads poorly (I'm not going through all of that again). I hope nobody bothered to read this except for the intended audience (Pirate Lord).

On another note, I plan on continuing my review when I have more time. If anyone is opposed to this, or if anyone would like to hear my opinion, just let me know. My aim is not to offend, but to help (ok, maybe a little bit to have a laugh at someone's expense), and if I am not helping, then I'm just taking up space with my wall of text.
- Brian

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I am intentionally not revealing past things I have done... hoping that some will go looking for "ammunition" to use against me and instead find only impressive game related things. Since you are threatening to shut down the thread, I will tell you that I have design credit on a computer game from a major publisher. I have worked in the industry before as a designer. I also have assistant design credit on one of the most popular board games of all time. I am not the "nobody" that you are assuming I am.

Quote: Original post by Pirate_Lord
And finally, for all the flamers who are still concinved I've been saying things that I never actually said... You know, the way to really make me look foolish would be to pick my game apart and use it to show what an arrogant moron that I am. Wah wah wah.

Quote: Original post by Pirate_Lord
Odd that nobody is willing to take this obvious action.

Quote: Original post by Pirate_Lord
Apparently most of you think that you can just flame me into submission without addressing the actual issue at all. Blah blah, incorrect use of the word "too" for the millionth time, blah blah.

• Nobody
• Wants
• To
• Work
• With
• A
• Total
• Dick

Quote: Original post by Pirate_Lord

Quote: Original post by gwihlidal
...Is extremely arrogant (without even having the experience to back it up, I'm sorry, you don't, and it wouldn't be a bad thing except for the fact you think you're the best game designer in the world.)

...

Rather than taking everyone's criticism about his attitude and design document (200 is WAY too long) and improving himself, instead flames and lashes out at people. He seems to forget that his game (if it were ever produced) would be played by the same people telling him there are rough edges in the game.

I have a very open mind. Pretty much everything everyone in this thread has aid, and every piece of advice offered, I had heard 10-15 years ago. I know these things already.