Jason D. Anderson interview

Wow.... I'm pretty impressed. It's weird that this is the best Fallout-related news in months. And it's even weirder that I'm actually looking forward to the development of an MMO (not much of a fan, though to be fair my only two experiences have been approximately two hour sessions with Everquest and WoW....maybe there are better ones out there. Preferably Mac compatible.)
 
Ironically, the best news are that Interplay makes a Fallout MMO - who would expect that?

I wonder if they can really do something that would be a better RPG than most of MMOs...
 
I'd just like to give a shout out to Haerve Cain, who with a single hire took his Fallout MMO idea from laughing stock amongst the entire video game industry to huge anticipation amongst the most hardcore of FO fans. They're more optimistic about FOOL in your hands than F3 in Bethesda's.

Somehow, fucker, you pulled it off. You got popular support back before even the tiniest detail of your MMO is known.

Here's to you, you bastard.

:clap:
 
I wonder what their approach to Fallout fansites is going to be considering the Herve-hatred around here.
 
pnutz said:
I'd just like to give a shout out to Haerve Cain, who with a single hire took his Fallout MMO idea from laughing stock amongst the entire video game industry to huge anticipation amongst the most hardcore of FO fans. They're more optimistic about FOOL in your hands than F3 in Bethesda's.

Somehow, fucker, you pulled it off. You got popular support back before even the tiniest detail of your MMO is known.

Here's to you, you bastard.

:clap:
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Could it be because of the continuing disappointment in Fallout 3?

Fallout MMO might be fun but I have my doubts that it would, or could, be any different. Is anyone even sure that the MMO they are talking about is Fallout?
 
From what I know; albeit that's not much, Jason D. is about the best person Interplay could ever hope to get.

I'll be surprised if this project gets past the blue sky phase, but if it does, wow, killer news....
 
pnutz said:
I'd just like to give a shout out to Haerve Cain, who with a single hire took his Fallout MMO idea from laughing stock amongst the entire video game industry to huge anticipation amongst the most hardcore of FO fans. They're more optimistic about FOOL in your hands than F3 in Bethesda's.
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Hey hey! Not so fast! FOOL is still FOOL, it's not a huge anticipation, but you're right to say FO fans are more optimistic about it than they are about FOE. It's easy enough: they have *an* original developer.
 
It still misses Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Chris Taylor. I don't believe that a really good Fallout game can be created without the original leads.
 
And Scotty.

Wasn't scott everts also of much importance to Fallout?
 
Scott Everts was a technical designer. You're probably thinking of Scott Campbell. The people responsible for original game design were Scott Campbell, Tim Cain, Chris Taylor, Jason Anderson, Leon Boyarsky and Jason Taylor. Jason Taylor is probably the most forgotten one of the bunch.
 
Ausir said:
Scott Everts was a technical designer. You're probably thinking of Scott Campbell. The people responsible for original game design were Scott Campbell, Tim Cain, Chris Taylor, Jason Anderson, Leon Boyarsky and Jason Taylor. Jason Taylor is probably the most forgotten one of the bunch.
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I stand corrected, I think. Yeah, I think it's campbell, but Everts' name came to mind first. Maybe he was referred to in some interview or something?
 
I Wonder if he asked to be paid up front, or have the money put into an escrow account.
 
Ausir said:
Scott Everts was a technical designer. You're probably thinking of Scott Campbell. The people responsible for original game design were Scott Campbell, Tim Cain, Chris Taylor, Jason Anderson, Leon Boyarsky and Jason Taylor. Jason Taylor is probably the most forgotten one of the bunch.
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I wonder what Jason Taylor was responsible for...
 
Black said:
The real pain is that MMOs don't really offer any kind of choices and consequences, making SHIT out of RPG.
In a crpg you can, let's say, destroy a city. How would you implement that in a MMO, where it has to affect every single player?"
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This could be done easily with the use of instances. Did you make the choice to bomb out the city? Well you load instance A. Did you save the city? Instance B. It would mean having a different level/area for each major choice however and that would be time consuming, pretty much double or triple the work.

But you are right, only a few games have tried the persistent world, world effecting choice and consequence, and none of them have done it in a way more then a handful of people could enjoy. It would be hard to make something in this way that players of all skill level could enjoy, near impossible really.

I have much respect for Jason Anderson, and I think he will try to make a great MMO. Who knows maybe he will, I know I won't judge the game just because I hate interplay. But I would much rather he got to work on that Turn based tactical game he said he would love to do:) We have tons of mmos and no turn based games not on a console or from indie devlopers.
 
Ausir said:
I wonder what their approach to Fallout fansites is going to be considering the Herve-hatred around here.
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I've been in contact with Herve before, and me and Jason are good 'nuff.

Still, if we want a workable relationship I doubt Herve will appreciate reading death threats in any thread discussing the MMO. But they seem to have tuned down now, anyway.

Yeah, I think it's campbell, but Everts' name came to mind first. Maybe he was referred to in some interview or something?
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Scott Everts was also a key designer. There's quite a bunch of guys outside of the 6 big game designers who were very important to Fallout's design, like Tramell Ray Isaac and Gary Platner who are responsible for a lot of the visual style, Jess Heinig who designed SPECIAL together with Tim Cain and Chris Taylor, Mark O'Green who is rumoured to be responsible for some of the more brilliant NPCs, etc. etc.
 
I think the core storytelling methods used in current MMOs could be improved on. A lot of the concepts of the worlds I've visited feel very convoluted to me. When you have a couple thousand quests that are given out sporadically, it is very hard to keep the story together. The story can easily get lost in the noise produced by the designers attempting to be creative with their quests. And this can make the world lack cohesion.
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How can this be achieved without falling into a linear pathway game ?

I am wondering, Interplay purchased a licence to make a fallout mmo(g) does this mean that the game will have to pass for approval from the Fallout owners before they can lunch the game? If so, what is the point of making the game if some higher authority (Zenimax) says "no" to this and that.
 
just a few things i would love to see in an MMO.

every damage class having their output damage normalized with bonuses and penalties for utility.

if you have a straight dps class, they should be highest.

if they can perform any kind of CC, then they should be slightly lower the more types of CC or utility they provide.

healing should all be normalized over time, just by different methods. i would say something akin to EQ2 but rather than 3 seperate types of healers with different heal types, 3 different healer types with 2 types of heals each along with direct heals.

if you allow for aggro dropping abilities on dps classes, then they should be like 25% more hate than a tank can generate to force them to use them. and then involve penalties to useing the de-aggro abilities like halve your aggro to all nearby targets but unable to attack for 5/10s... something like that.

there should be horribly linear quests and there should be horribly dynamic quests.

say there is a quest. a guy wants you to go to another town and retreive an item. some examples of how to solve that problem.

1) a rogue could sneak into it, assassinate the guy, steal the item, sneak out, turn in quest.

2) a warrior could walk through the front door in a blood bath to retreive it.

3) a mage could put them to sleep and walk in.

4) an archer could kill the sentries and snipe his way in slowly and carefully kill people.

5) a healer could convince some nearby npc to help them through ( maybe guildwars style ) or else retreive it for them.

6) do a quest or 2 for that town to get into their good graces and then under guise of friendship get next to it and steal it.


make the quest objects linear and simple, but leave the mechanics of completing the quest up to the player.


implement medium difficulty repeatable kill task quests that people can do. this is one thing i think a lot of MMO designers leave out. rather than making a few horribly complex and rewarding quests and then some repeatables, it feels more like a chore to me.

i would like it a lot if there was the pure slogging it out and solo grinding you can do along with some complex quests to do with groups if you need or want to with excellent rewards.
 
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