Ashes of Creation

mkopec said:

All im saying is there are different ways to balance classes other than DPS. I think its lazy game design that requires only DPS checks. I also think that normalizing everything within your game so everything is 95%-100% balanced leads to boring shit in the end.

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Neranja said:

It's only a challenge when you pair these two things together:

• limits in player count (e.g. group, raid, instance limits)
• dps checks and enrage timers

For example, in WoW dps checks and enrage timers really came up with Burning Crusade. Before that you just could bring more healers or tanks (e.g. Vaelsastrasz). 40 man raids in WoW Classic were a social experience, the 25 man versions were tuned for performance.

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Neranja said:

True, but how many of the more casual/social guilds raided the original Naxx?

Not many of those guilds could bring 40 people together willing to do the faction/gold for the Naxx key in the first place.

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Xexx said:

VG was flawed sure but still quite unique and enjoyable. To me current MMOs lack the community feel that older MMOs had and I kinda blame that on instancing and things like being able to queue with other realms.
In EQ, EQ2, and VQ(even if all aren’t currently huge hits) you more or less had to rely on what was on your server to function and it built a sense of community and I like that more than how games are now. Wow had that early on also when you had to find people for scholomance and strath. However WOW just doesn’t do it for me anymore beyond being the only option outside FF14 to play currently.

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Daidraco said:

I understand your view point on cross server instancing (LFD, LFR, etc.) But you think instancing by itself on a single server is bad? Can you explain that?

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Xexx said:

Yes, making things simple and dumbed down to require no effort of being a community is never good. In the end people don’t try to be social or hardly amiable, they queue, pew pew, and bounce. There is no sense of being part of anything other than a machine that allows everything to be done easily.

I miss having to form groups and be part of something to advance on your own server. Think back to Lguk, or ToV rotations, things you couldn’t do buy yourself and needed to form or break bonds to do. A ninja looter was known by all and couldn’t just queue up and be in another group. Sure some of this doesn’t apply to how games are currently but imo that’s the disconnect and also why I don’t feel any sense of giving a shit of what happens and who does what in current mmo. I raided with Slippery for some years in EQ2 and while it’s not a great example it was some of the most fun I had raiding in years.

Currently tactics, rotations, necessary support classes just don’t seem to matter as much. No I don’t really feel wow is that tactical compared to older raiding content in games.

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Daidraco said:

You're welcome to have your own opinion, but what you're describing is the LFD/LFR system that WoW Retail and several other lobby based games have. Instancing by itself actually creates and promotes far more community and encourages more players to socialize than a game without it. Its just when people think back to the games that didnt have instancing, they only remember the good times they had.

In-game or in real life, you dont create a community by limiting participants. LFD and instancing are not one and the same.

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Xexx said:

I grew up in EQ1, I slept at my PC for Lodizal and Stormfeather. I remember the hood and bad but shit being hard and needing to make real friends on your local server was the point.
Instancing to “me” ruins the community feel. How is removing instancing limiting participation? If it was up to me we’d still have trains to zone, and corpse runs.

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Srathor said:

Everquest was so damn bad. But god the potential. It had so much fun built into it from just the potential, monster AI on rails, exploits everywhere. Half unfinished, Broken shit all over the place. Cheesy unfun bugs and mechanics. (hell levels, Sight unseen aggro deathtouch chains)

But , fuck, what could have been. The sky was the fucking limit. 20 years later, still hoping.

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Daidraco said:

All you have to do is remind yourself how many concurrent online users each EQ server had, how many active accounts each server had and then.. boil that down into how many raid targets each era had, how many end-game dungeon camps each era had, the time commitment that varies wildly between the two and the amount of people both activities could hold at any one time.

If you think that those numbers, whatever they may be in your head, were what made a community... Then we just wont agree and theres no point in going back and forth. I get the sneaking suspicion you contribute quite a lot of fault to instancing when in reality, they are stand alone mechanics that you dislike or want back and can be in a game regardless of instancing's presence.

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Neranja said:

Okay, let me rephrase my original point: WoW had both raid content for the more social/casual crowd in MC, a mix inbetween for them to progress in BWL, and high end raid content in Naxx 40.

TBC did away with the former, and by reducing raid sizes to 25 a lot of raiding guilds (at every level) took that as an opportunity to "separate the wheat from the chaff". The first guild I was in during classic did this so blatantly along the "who can (literally) suck officer cock the best" lines, that most of the "high performers", including their main tank, fucked off in disgust to other guilds and even servers for TBC. Guild completely imploded before or after SSC. I don't really know as I was long gone by then.

So maybe I am a bit biased here.

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