EQ Never

Dragoon_sl said:

That's not as bad, but it is still a cheap way to cater to the little kids and fat/lazy neck-beards.

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Unfortunately I don't have the 8+ hours of free-time, every day, like I used to when I was 14. I definitely feel where you're coming from, because "world feel" is super important for any sandbox, especially one in Norrath. But, I think they can strike a reasonable balance between the two.

If the new Antonica is actually the size of Rhode Island, I think it's a little crazy to expect your playerbase to truck it all on foot.

Binding/gating is an absolute must these days. They'll definitely have mounts of all shapes and sizes. Wizard spires and druid rings are a staple to the IP, and Bard's (maybe rangers too?) will probably be the masters of foot travel. I think they can come up with a good system that melds all these together, without trivializing the expansiveness of the world.

Dragoon_sl said:

That is a lie, guaranteed. You are clouding your memories, search them harder.

I know you had fun traveling in Butcherblock Mountains and stumbling on a a high lvl creature that could 2 shot you.

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In this thread homies consider Corflunk a high level creature.

Dragoon, serious question, how much of your youth have you pissed away thinking like this?

If you are 27, I'm pretty concerned.

Dragoon_sl said:

That is a lie, guaranteed. You are clouding your memories, search them harder.

I know you had fun traveling in Butcherblock Mountains and stumbling on a a high lvl creature that could 2 shot you.

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No, it was always a fucking distraction while I was trying to get to where my friends were camping that night. Getting randomly killed by trash on my way usually only served to piss me off because now I needed to do a CR and have my buds wait an extra 20 minutes on top of travel time.

I just think there's a market now a days for an expansive non instanced some what competitive PVE game with asymetrical classes, punishing mechanics, cost of failure, tradeable gear. etc etc.

I don't know that sony wants to make it. I just hope some one does in the next decade.

EQ1 travel was pretty stupid, but I also don't understand the hardcore other side of it that seem to like the Skyrim style travel where distance and world layout are basically meaningless. Traveling to friends quickly can be handled in much better ways than just letting you warp around the world with waypoints every 10 feet like most modern MMOs. Shit like worldwide summons in WoW, or a system that lets any character type do that but with a consumable, are the best of both worlds imo.

Plus in a sandbox game with no levels you are not going to be bouncing around the world to specific dungeons twice a day, the content wherever you happen to be should always be somewhat relevant in that you can log in and just start playing for a half hour, it might not be ideal, you might be fighting tier 3 goblins cause they are nearby when if you had 2 hours instead you would go find some tier 4 dragonkin, but its also not like EQ1/WoW where if you were 55 and the zone was 35 you had to travel, there was no option to just play where you were.

..._sl said:

I just think there's a market now a days for an expansive non instanced some what competitive PVE game with asymetrical classes, punishing mechanics, cost of failure, tradeable gear. etc etc.

I don't know that sony wants to make it. I just hope some one does in the next decade.

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Sony made Planetside 2 in this light for the most part (pvp not pve), it's pretty successful aside from it's initial starting issues. They've said they're going to modularize some of these concepts into EQ:N which gives me a bit of hope for the title.

Forgelight etc. Tricky part is that PS2 has instant action and squad spawning fast travel. The draw back to using fast travel was semi-limited access to heavy equipment vehicles and aircraft.

So not sure what that means for EQ:N I'd imagine their Rally Calls or whatever will have a fast travel component of some kind.

Regardless, if they make EQ:N as big as just one of the continents in Planetside 2 similar fast travel will only serve to get you within a 5-10 minute walk of your desired objective. Forgelight is huge.

..._sl said:

I just think there's a market now a days for an expansive non instanced some what competitive PVE game with asymetrical classes, punishing mechanics, cost of failure, tradeable gear. etc etc.

I don't know that sony wants to make it. I just hope some one does in the next decade.

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i have good news for you! Someone is making that game RIGHT NOW!

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen - Landing Page

..._sl said:

I just think there's a market now a days for an expansive non instanced some what competitive PVE game with asymetrical classes, punishing mechanics, cost of failure, tradeable gear. etc etc.

I don't know that sony wants to make it. I just hope some one does in the next decade.

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I email GabeN monthly begging Valve to make the true heir to Everquest.

Dragoon_sl said:

I email GabeN monthly begging Valve to make the true heir to Everquest.

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I'm sure he'll get right on that, right after Episode 3.

Man this thread really is like that one Bill Murray movie. The travel/immersion conversationagain? I can't imagine AAA devs will ever go back to making people hoof 50 minutes across the continent now that the genies out of the bottle. Maybe some indie game will do it, but it's hard to imagine anyone else doing a game without ports/flying.

Tol_sl said:

Man this thread really is like that one Bill Murray movie. The travel/immersion conversationagain? I can't imagine AAA devs will ever go back to making people hoof 50 minutes across the continent now that the genies out of the bottle. Maybe some indie game will do it, but it's hard to imagine anyone else doing a game without ports/flying.

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Bill Murray the mmo? I'd play it.

Vitality_sl said:

Bill Murray the mmo? I'd play it.

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Every day bill tries to reach the end of the continent but wakes up at his spawn point to the same bard song playing in north freeport.

Shit, if they made an Oregon Trail MMO it would probably have Mormon Teleporter Pads.

I like fast travel, but I want it to fit the world. The griffons in WoW are perfect for everything except repeat tedium (repurposed as bathroom/snack breaks), but that's an MMO flaw that's hard to escape. Class restrictions on travel are lame, and so are things like PoK or the EQ2 bells. The latter two are basically just band-aids for a world that requires but doesn't provide smooth and timely transport from one place to another. At least the class restrictions fit the world, but they were incredibly inconvenient.

One of the coolest WoW travel experiences in classic was the tram from Ironforge to Stormwind. You can actually walk the entire thing, but it's pretty dull. Replacing that with a bell would be a shame. It's pretty timely and entirely seamless.

Little things like only getting rested xp (vitality) when logging off in an inn or major city are nice touches that can make you feel like you're actually a resident of the world. In EQ/EQ2 they treat it as just a game mechanic with no lore flavor. They do the same thing, but one of them draws me in.

Bethesda does fast travel pretty bad too since Oblivion (+Fallout/Skyrim), just open the map and click somewhere . Morrowind at least had a system presented to you as part of the world.

I want everyone else to be slow but myself to be really fast so that I can zip past them and be all, "later losers". Bards represent.

I prefer the need to travel to a place once to unlock the ability to get there quickly via port, griffin, however they do it. I think it is a happy medium. You get the sense of exploration but not the tedium of hoofing it every time. I have fond memories of my epic journey from Freeport to Qeynos at level 9 with 2 friends but it isn't something i would want to do every time I logged in to do a dungeon.

I think the biggest problem is that when you reach the point where it's routine, it becomes a chore. Everyone remembers their first Freeport-Qeynos run, but 3 years later you just groan at the thought. At some point you hit cap and the adventure is gone, and you just want to get from doing your casual activity on the west-side of the world to your friends group on the east-side without wasting 45 minutes because you just got home from work or whatever. Giving druids and wizards ports was an ok solution, but I'm sure we all remembered times when hunting one down felt like more work than just running.