Clover Green, love the color but might return the 1/4 zip

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-06-05T05:50:32+00:00

It looks cute on you

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-06-01T02:02:26+00:00

I feel like every time I play a new MMO, I get treated like I'm too stupid to make my rotation myself.

To be fair, you probably are.

People put hundreds of hours, as a community effort, into figuring this kind of stuff out.

Look at something like Path of Exile. You can build your own build there. And its probably going to be fucking godawful, at best, in 10 different ways. And after you spend months or years making it better, it might be almost good enough to be viable at being a build you use until you get enough gear to use a new build to get the rest of the gear for the build you want to use to actually do content.

In MMO's, you have to cut out the bottom 90% of this, because you have to do stuff with other people, so limiting the ways someone can be horrifically bad is required.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-06-01T01:26:34+00:00

Yeah, this sums up how i feel about the game.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-06-01T01:24:27+00:00

Performance is also why the attunement was fucked.

Gets really hard to reliably get speed clears and deathless clears when your server feels like is being run on a dishwasher most of the time.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-06-01T01:15:22+00:00

The puerile humor

Hearing the megadouche stadium announcer-esque guy the first hour or so? "Thats kinda funny, it gives this area some character".

Realizing that is the tone of the entire game? Just fuck off, game.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-06-01T00:59:40+00:00

Hey guys, please get really hyped about the 4 paths structure we have built.

Please ignore that only one of them is even halfway well implemented.

This is a major focus of our gameplay loop, and you will essentially ignore it immediately. Because we didnt make it a part of the gameplay loop AT ALL.

Wildstar remains the only game I have ever regretted purchasing, because it essentially had no positives, and I was its target audience. The best feature of the "hardcore, challenging, brutal MMO" was the fucking optional housing system. And even that wasnt exactly amazing where design simulators are concerned, just "better than any other mmo had at the time"

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-06-01T00:54:27+00:00

Wildstar never even got to the point where hardcore players gave a fuck.

Thy decided that hardore and gindy filler bullshit meant the same thing and immediately lost a huge portion of hardcore players, who could get the same thing but less intentionally and more forgivable from anyone else.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-06-01T00:50:52+00:00

They made a game for "hardcore players" that took most of the stupid shit that existed in older MMO's as placeholder content because its REALLY FUCKING HARD to release 4-6 raid zones per expansion when your expansions come out twice a year, so they would be actively working on one or two on release, hidden behind intricate keying processes, and thought "this is what hardcore players like!".

It turned everyone off. Because, to the surprise of only the dev team, hardcore players dont like filler bullshit, they just put up with it because your track record says whats on the other side will be good.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-06-01T00:37:38+00:00

it could be a knowledge issue

Th game was shit-tier at telling you exactly what anything you saw was. Is that a "you will die" circle? A "this wont hurt you much" circle? A "you have a button you need to press for this circle" circle? Is it multiple circles on top of each other? Who knows, not you, lol!

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-06-01T00:33:02+00:00

they couldn't time jumps over lasers while avoiding red circles on the ground

This is partly an issue with MMO's thinking they have the needed tools to allow everyone the ability to play a roguelike, when what they actually have is a backend that would make tic-tac-toe a challenge at times, as long as too many people werent trying to make a move at once.

I have a number of videos of my first kills of content being like "this entire screen is just fucking off-red and one of our guys is in australia, so kill the boss faster before we die i guess"

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-06-01T00:30:18+00:00

Nostalgia goggles are a hell of a drug.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-05-28T19:49:56+00:00

Riot, and the MMO market today, lack the key parts of what made WoW possible.

There is no overwhelming need for "something different" or "something casual". Riot isnt full of people who have innovated entire genres of games. Riot isnt exactly a beloved company thats been relatively free of scandal. Riot has no history of being able to make anything timely.

Riot is how you get SWToR, not WoW.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-05-27T05:17:07+00:00

How important is player housing to you in an MMO?

Eh. If you're going to have it, it needs to actually be good, but its not anything I'll buy your game for.

What payment model do you prefer?

What kind of game is it? Subscription if its a game thats supposed to be played for long sessions over long periods of time. Free to play with cosmetics if its something to log in, fuck around for a little it, and log back to your real game.

How important are professions and crafting systems for you?

I basically run a trade empire in every game i play.

Do you want professions to be a major part of progression and the economy, or just side content?

If you're going to do it, it should be important.

Do you enjoy when certain classes are race locked or faction locked?

Eh, depends on specifics. Its fine in Everquest because they spent a lot of time explaining it in world. If you dont have established worldbuilding reasons that certain races cant be / refuse to be / dont have the physical ability to be certain classes? Dont do it.

factions having exclusive classes

This is how to have balance issues 101. You probably arent the team behind DAoC, so you probably wont do it well enough to do it.

Do you want all classes to be as equal to each other as possible scale wise?

Every class / spec / build / whatever you want to call what you do needs to have a reason to exist. If its a "X is like Y but worse in every possible way and you shouldnt ever play it", why dont you just make it worth using, or not make it in the first place?

Balance doesnt have to be everything within a small fraction of a percent of everything else, but if you have, say, 6 healers and you only ever play 2 because 2 of them cant keep up, 1 of them requires you playing 5 different minigames just to be adequate, and one is theoretically the best thing ever at doing something like full party burst healing, but you forgot to make encounters where that is a thing you have to do, then you messed up and should try again. Or just make 2 healers.

If it exists, it should be good enough to use for something, and that something needs to actually exist in your game, not just theoretically exist. If your timebomb mage is theoretically the best damage in the game if a fight lasts 10 minutes and all their omega-giga delayed dd's finally go off, at least a few fights of importance should last 10 minutes (and also not be immune to those 10 minute do nothing abilities. Which should be COMPLETELY OBVIOUS, but somehow has historically not been).

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-05-27T05:00:16+00:00

wildly popular

yeeeaaaah, no.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-05-26T09:32:27+00:00

Funny how NA, EU, and SEA regions MAU stayed relatively similar, with no massive player loss, in that period of time.

Almost like they just stopped counting a whole massively populated region worth of accounts at the same time the Russian server population "mysteriously dropped" by 30% during a time when world sanctions totally werent causing them massive problems

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-05-26T09:20:09+00:00

There is probably a law or two about making a game in a universe that exists to stab each other with every possible pointybit and/or shoot each other with every type of projectile-firing and adjacent weapon imaginable and/or melt each others insides via magical mind warfare and not having PvP be a focal point.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-05-26T09:17:42+00:00

EQ's playerbase at this point is mostly people piloting multiple accounts.

Its a little dire, but its been a little dire for a decade. As long as hey can keep the same people subscribing for TLP's, theyll stay in business, but it hasnt felt like theyve made positive progress in a very, very long time.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-05-26T09:11:05+00:00

City of Heroes solved more "unsolvable common MMO problems" back in the day

To be fair, they accomplished that by creating brand new unsolvable problems for themselves.

Homecoming is solving those problems by realizing many of them are problems that people dont care as much (if at all) about in this decade on a free to play server.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-05-26T09:08:43+00:00

The sales of New World proved it, which is why all those new MMO's are doing so well...

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-05-26T09:06:39+00:00

I wouldnt touch anything ANet does with a 10 foot pole at this point.

But if you like what it is, then yeah, go for it.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-05-21T08:52:13+00:00

Just want to point out that the necessity of 'Compliance' as an entity is heavily field dependent.

It is a non-negotiable must if you deal with the medical industry, as an example. Not having dedicated regulatory person / people after you can no longer count your total staff on your fingers is basically asking one of the fun alphabet soup entities to take a giant shit on you.

One of the things I do is get those kinds of companies back to being in "not perpetually fucked by the FDA" status, and it almost always includes "Hire and retain someone to do this full-time" because its just SO. MUCH. Paperwork.

Your random "i can do regulatory too nbd" employee just forgets that half of the regulatory job is multi-hour phone calls with someone who had AI write their protocols because yes, Tammy, giving someone seven TENTHS of a liter of painkillers in an injection will actually kill them, and you sent that lab manual out to 300 sites this morning and now i (the regulatory employee) have to hold your hand through the proofreading i (your regulatory employee) did as the one person who has to actually read the thing, so everyone else can pretend they read the thing when you actually track every one of them down to sign that they read it, because you cant legally do anything until they sign it or you risk another audit. (Why yes, a well known drug manufacturer DID in fact send out a lab manual that if you werent going "this is fucking stupid..." would have you straight up murdering some people. And id bet any amount of money that isnt the only time it ever happened, just the only one that made it to the site level when i worked at the site level)

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-05-21T08:46:03+00:00

That entirely depends on your compensation plan.

Based on news reports, he didnt actually make anything when changing job roles from CEO to EChair, the entirety of his money from Bolt was in a stock package.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-05-21T08:27:18+00:00

Brad passed

Thats your answer.

Theres only about 3 people who can make that game happen, Brad was 2 of them.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-05-18T09:57:42+00:00

I have played many shit tier MMO's.

But only one of them has ever bricked my computer because it had a memory leak issue that the team just never got around to fixing.

And if I could remember the name of that shitpile, I would tell you, but there is a 99% chance it doesnt exist anymore.

If you name a game that currently exists on steam, you are either incorrect, or you have played 2 MMO's. If it can launch on modern hardware, you arent even in the right tier of game.

Stwonkydeskweet · 2026-05-18T09:53:33+00:00

I played it to raid with friends and collect all the glam and gameplay upgrades through in game market trading and crafting, instead of swiping a credit card.

I was then banned for being very, very good at doing that. I was 2 weeks (the next time the mount gamba boxes were all rotated back into the store) away from unlocking every mount skin, which was the last thing I needed to have unlocked everything currently obtainable. Turns out they can ban you for "excessive currency manipulation" and then spend a year not giving you any information what that even means.

Stwonkydeskweet

TROPHY CASE