EQ Never

Grim1_sl said:

Make leveling not so important by including multiple horzontal progression paths(abilities, stats, unique items, crafting, LDoN's AA levels, faction, etc) that also improve your character. So that somebody who has ignored horizontal progression and raced to max level is gimped and easily outperformed by a lower level toon who has covered all the bases. This slows down leveling and creates a more dynamic leveling experience.

Separate the world into casual and hardcore play. The casual areas have fast travel (once discovered), easy gear, low death penalties, and other mo.

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Very good write up and I agree with most of your points, Grim1.

I think changing progression from vertical to horizontal is really the thing I am waiting for in a new MMO. What you are proposing is very much like EVE in a fantasy setting with a bit more focused design to allow for the normals and hardcore's to interact which is a good thing.

Draegan_sl said:

your posts hardly have any points to them because they're pretty damn nebulous.

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How is it nebulous? Instead of trying to recreate game elements, attempt to involve social ones. Make it rational to form groups which run into other groups, rather than form encounters which play out a script that is essentially a 3d plat-former that's a few generations behind. Build your game with the intent to smash people together, rather than seperating them and trying to highlight the game itself.

Like any good bit of magic, Draegan--the key is to take your eyes off the technical, and put it where your strength is. All MMO's have been working in the opposite direction. They've been pushing their audience toward the more technical aspects of their games, and sheltering them from the social. (Which was logical, up until a point--I explain below why higher accessibility increased audiences before.)

Here is your homework: Can you analyze why that was? What made the 90s better in terms of online RPGs? Was it the lack of the larger internet? Was it because the population playing was distilled to the point where almost everyone playing was similar (versus today where there are older folks, kids, and house wives that might never of heard of D&D and never knew that nice had more than 6 sides)? Was it because less people were playing? It wasn't just EQ that was like that, so EQ wasn't unique. Was it a lack of tools that made these games better? Was it perspective of a game world? Is it world design? Is it all of it? Why?

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Nothing in your post indicates that online RPG's were better. I sat with my friend while he played MUD's, though I didn't get into any of them myself. He instantly told me EQ and UO were leaps and bounds better. And yet, the current generation of people playing WoW, who played EQ, almost unequivocally state early WoW and EQ were better. If this was just nostalgia, I'd expect people to be pining for the days of text based games. But they aren't. They are pining for that razor balance between accessibility and deep inclusive ritual elements that games like UO, EQ and very early WoW gave them.

For your premise, or "homework" to be true, the above would need to be true as well. Which goes back to what I was saying. The answer isn't just with the inclusion of RPG elements. There are areas of accessibility and ease of use that are important as well. The problem is, while that accessibility has grown, it's eliminated some of the core RPG elements--and it didn't have to, at least not to the level it did. The "perfect" game will be able to marry these two things in a broad balance.

How?(Which should have been your question.)...Again, it's going to take rational reasons for investment. That's not a single answer. I know, that sucks..but what makes someone rational is unfortunately not something you distill down into a single product. It's a host of things. And your game should attempt to emulate them all, with as much clarity as possible. This means striking balances. Like learning to balance the need for the player to have his time not wasted (Instances), while also creating a lure for him to clash in a socially valuable way with other players (Strong options to do community dungeons).

The problem is, for many years, the social end of this genre was essentially handled by simply being online (Hence your MUD's attracting people). And as accessibility increased (GUI interface, Technology, Instancing ect) the population skyrocketed. So going back to my point in the first part of my post, the developers associated higher accessibility with greater market share (Which was logical). And so the developers quickly began campaigns believing all that was needed was the online element of social interaction, combined with high access=success. Unfortunately that quest for access eventually began to reduce social requirements--why?Because social interaction is time intensive, especially in a medium with as few information pathways as this (Which you pointed out in your earlier posts---In order to get our points across here, we have to work harder.)

However, that crusade to increase accessibility has come too far--there needs to be a Renaissance in terms of exploiting the social medium of these games. Because accessibility has grown, the social sphere must now grow too or else the game becomes sterile and unattached. Developers can NOT just rely on the fact that these games are online to be the totality of their "social work", especially when every system in the game further segregates the populations. Now, that does NOT mean accessibility needs to drop. Does there need to be a looking for dungeon system? Sure. Of course, if you only have 20 minutes to play, you should be able to hope in and play. By WHY isn't there are big reward for those who trek out to the dungeon itself, spend the time to crawl through it and bring home some actual rewards? And by actual rewards, I mean things which can actually affect the world, so that the dungeon itself gains notoriety and acclaim--Like again, if all the gear was full trade.

Make it RATIONAL for people to invest more, and you'll have a small number who will. This number will attract attention from the social group, and will teach them things. You'll essentially form your first ritual inclusions just by putting 'treasure" out there to be gotten off the beaten path.

That specific enough for you? What games need today is a world that works, combined with game systems that provide methods to be involved. Right now, all we really have are game systems which attempt to facilitate our involvement--but all they show are these shitty, small "sub-games" that are far worse than any single player game. I teleport to my raid...I teleport to fight people in a gulch....I teleport to do my dailies. I'm essentially playing a bunch of mini-games and not one thing is attaching me to the world. The accessibility options group me, they divy out my loot, they make sure I have points to buy things. I didn't make one actual decision to "go adventure", all I did was do small pattern recognition games in my mini-games (PvPbot01 attacks, I press 1+2 to counter.)

You destroyed the world...And you didn't need to. You can make an accessible game that is less sheltered and more involved.

To your second point: Yes, people rage when their shit gets ruined, it can happen with anything. My greater point is that most people view gaming as transient. If you can find out what made the above successful, then you can create a way you're connected to your character. I just see that as incredibly difficult and I have a few ideas on how you can do it, but it's a vaunting task in today's internet of transient gamers and 100s of different ways to spend your time. If you can get people to follow a community of a game for 10+ years, then you have a success on your hands much like EQ did and WOW currently still has.

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People view gaming as transient because everything the developers do reinforces that notion. Every new piece of content resets gear in WoW, for example. You are literally no better off staying in the game, than you are taking a break and simply regearing in the normal modes when new content is released. If you want to combat transience, shine a light on stability. I've expressed a few ways to do that.

Draegan_sl said:

Where I disagree is in penalties. This borderland content should be the "end game" whatever that is. If we're taking the EQ approach to gear, then a full gear loss is too harsh. I'm a believer in losing time as a penalty rather than anything else.

However, let's discuss death penalty as it relates to combat and character durability. I'm of the opinion that the more durable your character, the more harsh your death penalties can be. If a character can die easily like old WOW where if they snag an add or two it's auto death. Then you can't have a harsh death penalty. However if a character is much more durable where a hard fight leads to a stalemate rather than a death, you can have a harsher penalty. Build combat and character development where death is more rare then you will have something more interesting I think.

Assuming a character is not going up against a super tough bad guy, then a character shouldn't be able to get two shot or run over by a few normal mobs. If you get over run, then you should have ample opportunity to run away (unless you run into like 30 mobs like a dope).

If you want death to mean something, make it more rare on average. Average out player skill across a large player base, how many times does a person die in Rift, WoW or any other game? If you can create a system that reduces player death in half then you're on to something.

A side-affect of a system like this is that combat would most like be more strategic than twitch. I don't know how that combat system would work though, but I'd start somewhere with traditional FF games.

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The Borderlands wouldn't be the only endgame content. It would just be the most harsh, and potentially the most rewarding. There would be plenty of endgame content in the core areas that are easy to travel to and do not have harsh death penalties. This would be content much like we have already in other mmo's. Raids and group content that give substantial rewards for participation. Just not instanced, more dynamic and not so scripted.

All mmo endgames should have more content than the intitial game leveling experience, not less like most mmos have now. There should be lots of choices for max level players in easy core areas or the harsh borderlands. The problem with modern mmos is that they funnel everyone into a small area at the endgame, while the rest of the game becomes a forgotten bywater never to be used again. Most of the mmo content developed is bypassed. It's a huge waste of dev resources and frankly I'm surprised that mmo devs haven't been intelligent enough to fix the issue.

GW2 is a perfect example of this idiotic need devs have to funnel every max level player into a small space. FOTM and WvW is the current endgame for GW2.. that's it. What a f'king fiasco. They spent all that time and money making all of these great systems that could have created endgame content everywhere in the game, and then they forced everyone at max level to stand with their thumbs up their bums in Lion's Arch begging for a FoTM group. I can't believe how clueless the ANET devs were in doing that. They showed so much promise and then just destroyed the game in one fell swoop. Their only saving grace at this point is WvW. Unfortunately, the WvW isn't as deep or as involving as was advertised. It's good, but not enough to keep most of us interested. ANET says they are going to fix these huge mistakes, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Using GW2's deleveling systems the way they should be used allows all zones at every level to become potential endgame content. The trick is putting unique rewards in these areas to entice people to show up. So you have endgame content in the core safe areas for raids, groups and solo players. Enough content so that heading into the Borderlands is unnecessary if you don't want to take the risk. "Easy to get", everything you asked for is right there.



As for the actual penalties in the Borderlands I wouldn't change them much from the original EQ's. It worked in EQ, and it would work here. As long as the players are warned before hand in BOLD TYPE (DANGER! DANGER! WILL ROBINSON!) of the risks they are about to take when they enter the borderlands, then its' up to them to make the choice and live (or die) with the consequences.

I was thinking of including a sliding scale of loss depending on how far out you were, but that isn't strictly necessary. Although one zone of all or nothing would be cool. There was a zone in EQ that had very harsh penalties beyond the norm. Forgot the name. But something like that but with more substantial rewards for participation.

The Borderlands are strictly for the people willing to take the risks of the harsh penalties EQ1 had. If you don't want do deal with it, you don't have to. Again the trick is making sure there is a reason to go. And that again requires unique rewards that are enticing enough to get people to risk losing their corpse, gear and levels.

Besides the obvious resource rewards that can be placed in the borderlands is the monetary reward that can happen. As and example: in EQ1, our guild was an expansion ahead of every other guild on the server. We saw and finished the content a couple months before anyone else. One of the rewards for this was having access to drops in zones nobody else could get to. And we all got pretty rich because of it. The same concept can be put into the borderland zones. Those first people willing to risk it all that succeed will have control over resouces (gear, spells, crafting resources, etc, etc) that nobody else will have. And they will get rich.

And if you make those first players develop the area with a settlement, etc to access those resources, then they will open up the area for the less adventurous who come after. Eventually, they will lose their monopoly just because they owned it for so long and the danger slowly disapears. The resources are not so rare and the cost comes down for everyone. Then SoE puts out an expansion and the process starts over again. Slowly building interconnected cities in areas that were once very harsh, but now opened up by those people willing to risk it all.

And that is why those harsh systems have to be in place. It isn't for everyone. You can't please everyone, so don't try. Yes some people will whine and complain that little Johnny can't have it all with the click of a button. Tough.

Lithose_sl said:

How is it nebulous? Instead of trying to recreate game elements, attempt to involve social ones. Make it rational to form groups which run into other groups, rather than form encounters which play out a script that is essentially a 3d plat-former that's a few generations behind. Build your game with the intent to smash people together, rather than seperating them and trying to highlight the game itself.

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Nothing in your post indicates that online RPG's were better. I sat with my friend while he played MUD's, though I didn't get into any of them myself. He instantly told me EQ and UO were leaps and bounds better. And yet, the current generation of people playing WoW, who played EQ, almost unequivocally state early WoW and EQ were better. If this was just nostalgia, I'd expect people to be pining for the days of text based games. But they aren't. They are pining for that razor balance between accessibility and deep inclusive ritual elements that games like UO, EQ and very early WoW gave them.

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Social elements are game elements. And we're all armchair developers here so instead of espousing on game philosophy and how everyone should get a long and make a game where everyone loves each other, let's actually discuss theory on actual gameplay and the design of a game that reaches the goals you think game should shoot for. Your point about a bit of magic is a little weird, you should be more specific honestly.

When I pointed out MUDs I was pointing out that I loved them. When all the EQ heroes in this thread look back and wax poetic about the good old days, I do the same for MUDs. My point is that there is always something before what you consider the pinnacle of gameplay. People that are playing GW2 and Rift pine for the days of oldschool WOW when raiding progression meant something and completely ignore EQ. And that 14 year old kid playing GW2 probably never heard of EQ and WOW is too old. I can also tell you that there are many more people out there that have played both EQ and WOW to some fashion, really love WOW right now and how it's better now. Games have their top in place in peoples lives. Many neckbearding eq back in the day was great, but a lot of people would never go back to that. People say that all the time here almost every day.

I don't know what you mean by ritual elements. Maybe it has something to do with puberty and losing your virginity?

The rest of your post is very eloquent and overly verbose. Why not just tell me that you have observed that: As a player's ability to participate in more activities increased, their time for social interaction decreased. Now you have a point in such that a player might stop communicating with players around them with their keyboard, he is still interacting with other players around them.

Make it RATIONAL for people to invest more, and you'll have a small number who will. This number will attract attention from the social group, and will teach them things. You'll essentially form your first ritual inclusions just by putting 'treasure" out there to be gotten off the beaten path.

That specific enough for you?

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No, that's pretty much the opposite of specific. Actually I have no fucking idea what these means. Are you saying that you are going to design a "cave" somewhere that isn't marked and is guarded by a big bad guy that players have to get together to beat and then they get a reward? Or something to that effect? So essentially, a hidden named mob or a hidden open world dungeon that is probably hidden for the first two weeks of closed beta? Speak to me in real life terms and we can figure out how to make your dreams come true with actual game elements. Because no matter how lofty your magic is, you still need a coder to code it, an artist to animate it, and a network engineer to support it.

As far as your comment about teleporting everywhere and instances like WOW has it. I agree. It's shit design and lazy which is why I stopped with WOTLK. Then with regards to transient behavior, how would you design a game additions for a game that is 2 years old? 4? 8? I agree that there should be ways to design horizontal growth and sustain older achievements as relevant. The challenge is to figure out how to do it. It's easy to recognize the problem, it's more interesting to solve it.

If you would like to discuss ways to solve gear inflation or gear resets, or ways to create a better immersive world, we can have that discussion as well. Me and Grim are having one right now.

Draegan_sl said:

Social elements are game elements. And we're all armchair developers here so instead of espousing on game philosophy and how everyone should get a long and make a game where everyone loves each other, let's actually discuss theory on actual gameplay and the design of a game that reaches the goals you think game should shoot for. Your point about a bit of magic is a little weird, you should be more specific honestly.

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The bit of magic was referring to misdirection. I know you're a fairly bright guy, don't be purposely obtuse with me. After reading the other few pages, you essentially agree with me--you just don't want to admit it yet. As for "specifics", this is NOT a specific issue. It's very much a "game direction." You can't plop a community dungeon into a modern game and have it be successful, I don't know how many times I need to say that.

Every facet of the game needs to support the other facets. Right now the main drive behind game design is to increase accessibility. And that drive is fairly logical considering that the major growth happened in this market during increases in accessibility. So, when accessibility increases--technology, world design, item design, all are designed with it in mind. New loot is available for tokens, the dungeons give tokens, the tokens are obtainable through the LFD--all these systems are designed with each other in mind. That's because the philosophy has been about participation--How do we actually get people into the game?This has been the driving question beyond just about every design change, and technology and system in the game.

My statements have been changing that to "how do we make people enjoy the world?"..The language is specific, but the cause is philosophical because it's not just ONE system. Your myopic attitude of "lets think of a single mechanic to fix all others!" is precisely the reason why we get huge piles of trash like SWTOR that focus ononegame area and neglect every other system. It can NOT be so myopic, it has to be broad an ambitious. We're talking a complete philosophy shift from the last 7 years of MMO design. (And I'm NOT saying abandon that design--I can't stress that enough. I'm saying it's too one dimensional and needs to be expanded before designing for accessibility can continue.)

When I pointed out MUDs I was pointing out that I loved them. When all the EQ heroes in this thread look back and wax poetic about the good old days, I do the same for MUDs. My point is that there is always something before what you consider the pinnacle of gameplay. People that are playing GW2 and Rift pine for the days of oldschool WOW when raiding progression meant something and completely ignore EQ. And that 14 year old kid playing GW2 probably never heard of EQ and WOW is too old. I can also tell you that there are many more people out there that have played both EQ and WOW to some fashion, really love WOW right now and how it's better now. Games have their top in place in peoples lives. Many neckbearding eq back in the day was great, but a lot of people would never go back to that. People say that all the time here almost every day.

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I still play with about 15 people from TBC WoW days, who started in TBC WoW, who literally broke their cherries there. They were hardcore raiders--and now are playing games like Rift and GW2. Not a SINGLE one of them talk about TBC WoW with the same fervor hat anyone who has played EQ talks about it.I'm sorry, the more you push this off as simple nostalgia, the more out of touch you look. Literally dozens of people here are telling you this.

BUT...You are right in that NO ONE is going to go back to pushing 10+ hours a day camping (That kind of talk IS nostalgia). But where you're wrong is believing the elements that drove that kind of behavior, and the behavior itself are not separable. (To a degree they are intertwined but not completely)

I'll say this again..even though it's exhausting at this point. At one time, the best way to increase market share was to increase accessibility. The fastest way to do that was to put systems in place which completely replaced old, more social systems (Instances, Quest leveling, Solo content for example.)..From that point development time was spent on making those systems work, in order to streamline the most important aspect behind game growth--so OTHER systems were put in place to accommodate their use. (BoE is an example)...Eventually the entire development plan was centered around how to get as many people into the game as possible.

This has the unfortunate side effect of not marrying old stand by's, like community with instancing--but instead replacing them. The key to a new game will be marrying them together--going back, and taking what was eliminated and including that in new designs with high accessibility.

I don't know what you mean by ritual elements. Maybe it has something to do with puberty and losing your virginity?

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Social rituals? David ?mile Durkheim. The "father" of sociology, in essence terminology you would know if you even understood the very surface of the concepts you were attempting to discuss? I find it ironic that you attempted to take a jab at me and inadvertently displayed your completely lack of information on the subject. But hey, I love irony. How about we take this down to the really cliche level and you can say "I dun told that smart guy if his socilocially wasn't dun good enough for Jesus and americi, it's not good enough for me!"

The rest of your post is very eloquent and overly verbose. Why not just tell me that you have observed that:As a player's ability to participate in more activities increased, their time for social interaction decreased.Now you have a point in such that a player might stop communicating with players around them with their keyboard, he is still interacting with other players around them.

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Because that's not the essence of what I'm saying at all. Reallyat all.But after reading above, I'm not really surprised. I'm thinking now the critical thinking I'm discussing is just simply out of your depth. (I'll fully respond in the next part.)

No, that's pretty much the opposite of specific. Actually I have no fucking idea what these means. Are you saying that you are going to design a "cave" somewhere that isn't marked and is guarded by a big bad guy that players have to get together to beat and then they get a reward? Or something to that effect? So essentially, a hidden named mob or a hidden open world dungeon that is probably hidden for the first two weeks of closed beta? Speak to me in real life terms and we can figure out how to make your dreams come true with actual game elements. Because no matter how lofty your magic is, you still need a coder to code it, an artist to animate it, and a network engineer to support it.

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Ugh. Wow. I actually KNOW that I write well, Draeg. So, I'm pretty damn sure the problem isn't on my end. But let me hold your hand, combine the posts and really go in depth. (If I'm kind of annoyed. It's because I've been nothing but cordial to you--and you're becoming insulting as you continue to lose this argument and move farther from your depth. I'd rather have a discussion, but I can just go and flame the fuck out of you like everyone else, if you want.)

A community dungeon. This would be a dungeon that is a mirror of the same dungeon you would find within an instance. (As explained in my first post to you). This dungeon would be different in the way it's mobs, place holders and experience work. It would also have specialized loot, and the loot would be intrinsic to the world, rather than the character. What does intrinsic to the world mean: It means loot which comes from this dungeon will enter the world market either right away, or after the character has worn it. It's not BoE. This is different from a BoP item which will be created and destroyed based on a single character and will not affect the world beyond the character itself.

Community dungeons present a few problems. Why would they be used if instanced versions are available? What about botting and the effects on the economy? Are two main points. Let me focus on the first part, since this post will already be way too long as is. The lure of the dungeon would be that it has high experience (We'd need a revamped "broad" leveling system--you've discussed this already) and hasuniqueloot (Just a few pieces, maybe one per "boss")andthe rest of it's loot, while a mirror of the instance version, is fully trad-able (Allowing the player to wear it, sell it or even twink with it--we want these items to have thebroadest possible use.)

This type of loot--which will enter the world and stay there, creates information networks (These are NOT the social bonds I'm talking about, so cut that shit about screaming auctions)--because it breaks the usual pattern of procurement. (Remember when I noted about your coffee vendor not being there? Unique patterns usually force query. This is important because it's how we link the dungeon to our player. You can also create this link by strong visual information--like huge shoulders.)..The player will ascertain, either through in game social links OR through a website (More likely) where to get this item OR where to farm items like this (And he will do so because of its broad appeal as either a market item, to sell or being used personally). The player now has a strong impetus to visit the dungeon. This is where the developer needs to plan things out very well. And every system within the game has to be built to support THIS kind of community builder--just as every system now is built to support instances/short interval play.

And by EVERY system, I mean everything from loot, to PvP. Even to character equipment. (Having a few slots dedicated to "non soul powered!" items or some other RPey bullshit, which essentially reserves them as slots for this purpose). Your game has to be built to be accessible to the masses (With instant access mini games, easy raids, and even PvP) but has to have mechanics in order to create a "core" group which will ritualize the more difficult aspects of your game (Uneven gear based PvP, Community dungeons with risks and other high stakes PvE.)

And what doesritualizemean?It means enjoining a core group (Judges, Ministers, Football players--would be examples of core figures in the real world) with a larger social group (Jury/Observers/Public, Church goers, Fans would be the larger social group) together in a way that lets them operate with a need for each other, without impinging on their duties. No one is going to ask a fan to jump in there and play football, yet he spends money on the sport year after year. THIS is what developers need to capture.

What does THIS meanin the game? Well, the community dungeon serves to form the core group. Hardcore players will be there first. But there aren't enough of them to fill out any MMO--I'm not a hardcore player, and I know a vast majority of this board, despite pining for the old days, are not hardcore players. However, with high reward, high risk (Relatively), high time investment--you will draw this crowd. The trick is, as a developer, is to create content that needs bodies but does NOT produce fail scenarios based around those bodies.

What does THAT mean? Let me give you an example--It means that a core group COULD handle the dungeon with say 3 people. But their efficiency would be awful, and thefailure rate would be high(This is important, the inverse relationship of failure to number of people). However, as more people are added (Say up to 6), this failure rate goes down, and the efficiency rate goes up. This is unlike WoW, in that adding a bad player does very little to improve the efficiency rate because the boss/encounter was designed with a fully efficient group and thanks to random mechanics a bad player could cause a boss failure by himself. In the community dungeon, your design should be more about making difficult mechanics for core players (Like needing one good interrupter) but easy for the social group (Casual) by simply requiring they be there to add DPS/Healing/Buffs (Whatever, in essence, enough good players make the group--bad players just add efficiency).

And that's just the start, Draeg. In order to accomplish this EVERY level of the game needs to be designed with core+casual in mind, and enjoining those two in order to marry high access players and higher content players together. Everything from boss targeting, to scripting, to loot, to availability of dungeons. It IS very much a philosophy--it is NOT a single silver bullet mechanic. You have to go in with the mindset that you want a hardcore crowd, and you want them to use your casual crowd and you want them BOTH to need each other. You NEED to build a world where they can do that, not a game where they can enjoy it separately.

Grim1_sl said:

The Borderlands wouldn't be the only endgame content. It would just be the most harsh, and potentially the most rewarding. There would be plenty of endgame content in the core areas that are easy to travel to and do not have harsh death penalties. This would be content much like we have already in other mmo's. Raids and group content that give substantial rewards for participation. Just not instanced, more dynamic and not so scripted.

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Precisely. And you make these areas accessible by designing them with the need for both skilled players/organizers (Hardcore) and bodies for efficiency (Casual) You can tie the other aspects of your game together with these kinds of areas. The irony is, in a lot of ways, vanilla WoW and TBC got this right. It allowed for far worse "raiders" to experience content, WITHOUT having to flip a switch that was the symbolic equivellent of putting on a dunce cap. (And, as a side effect, make your content wear out a TON faster.) But rather than improve this dynamic, they decided to make 2 separate systems (Normal and Hard). In essence. The main deterrence to WoW's "hard" content now is difficulty. Which forces swaths of players to hit the easy switch and burn through content in the derp mode.

If you made select areas of content difficult based off of punitive measures in terms of efficiency, then you can lower the difficulty and grant more access, while still retaining the overall "difficulty". (Efficiency in this term might mean losing the boss to another guild. Having to start back from the start to clear. Ect ect). In this way, you don't need an easy mode--you've added difficulty not by requiring more skill from players, but by requiring them to work together better.

And that's the key Draeg. It's not about returning to the glory days. It's about adding another source of difficulty, in order to prompt social interaction. And this source can be added WITHOUT taking away most of the advances the genre has made. It just takes some reworking to put a third avenue in there.

why don't we just let players adapt to certain obstacles instead of segregating the population?

Lithose you verbose motherfucker. You'll have to wait until tomorrow for me to have to read your latest novel. Suffice to say you talk in grandiose terms and ideas and I'm trying to actually drag them into reality and how gamer chew the shit out of content and abuse the fuck out of it. You need to combine your lofty ideals with that of cold hard numbers.

edit: fuck it I read it, it's a little pretentious and ego-filled but I can dig it. The only thing that's really pertinent and worth expanding on is the last two paragraphs. The rest was you showing off your knowledge of defining rituals in the sociological sense of common human bonds. How long have you been waiting to type "David ?mile Durkheim. The "father" of sociology" with all the proper inflections on this board.

Look I appreciate the effort, and anytime you make a game you have to understand the environment you working in. But in the end you just need to make a fun game. The rest comes with it. But before you make a game you have to set some rules. Just like a good parent, you don't let your kid have the whole bag of jellybeans at once. In the case of WOW, they let you have every thing and it made a game that was once a little bit serious into an arcade game.

When creating a game you have to find the sweet spot in your design so when players lose to your difficult content they don't feel like the developers kicked them in the balls with fuckstupid ideas.

As to your last two paragraphs, that is what I've been calling for, as you have already mentioned. You need to create content without any hard restrictions to create the illusion of freedom but design it well enough so that it provides a challenge to a few and a fun time to the many. Without the rest of the parameters of the video game, it's difficult to really get into what kind of content that could be. But it's a start.

Lithose_sl said:

And that's the key Draeg. It's not about returning to the glory days. It's about adding another source of difficulty, in order to prompt social interaction. And this source can be added WITHOUT taking away most of the advances the genre has made. It just takes some reworking to put a third avenue in there.

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And that sir, is what I've been saying. I have never been against difficulty or challenge. You just need to create enough tools for players to get together without having them to work at getting together. See: WAR, RIFT and GW2. Then you can pepper the game with uber challenge for the guilds and the uber organized.

Just next time, define what you mean by social prompt so we can further the conversation.

i think you guys are reading (and writing) far too fucking much into this. it's not really a hard concept: make a game that is challenging yet fun, and people will play it. you don't need to go all "john nash" on this thread and break down the basics of human interaction. the crux of the issue seems to be that earlier games like EQ and vanilla WoW did a lot to encourage grouping and social interactions and just about every new MMO, including the last few expansions for WoW, have done the exact opposite. i think most people here are just advocating for EQ next to go back to its MMO roots when it comes to trying to encourage people to be more social again, and the best way to do this is by having classes that are more dependent on each other. does that mean going back to the holy trinity? maybe. if someone can find a better solution that doesn't involve every class being completely homogenized then i haven't heard it.

This'll echo some of what Draegan's said, but what the hell...

If developers want to bring back the social element to MMOs, they need to remove the barriers that keep players from being social. The greatest barrier, as GW2 had figured out, is the game telling you "you can't interact with others unless you're prepared to commit yourself to formally grouping with them". Sometimes you just don't want to commit yourself to a set agenda for your playtime, or have your playing be subject to the whims of others, which makes grouping somewhat impractical; however, MMOs feel the strange need to make the social element this overly artificial binary thing, where you can either be social inexactlythe way the developers intend, or you can go off and be alone, with no middle ground. GW2 finally removed this barrier by removing penalties and restrictions for playing with others who you aren't grouped with, and honestly, that needs to become a standard in the industry.

And I know, some will bring up the fact that these players rarely do much in the way of communicating with each other in these ungrouped interactions, and that's completely true. However,they are playing together;they are playing together while "soloing," something even EQ1 didn't have. Sure, the ideal would be for players to be both playing together and communicating, but this is still a big step forward from what the genre has been previously, and I feel it needs to be part of the foundation in future MMOs when trying to create social systems; if you let players approach the social element on their own terms, they will be social.

Of course, this leaves us with the question of how to bring in the communication aspect to this system of emergent sociability? I'm frankly not entirely sure. The thing that first comes to mind is making public events, and the like, more complex, so that they require a degree of strategizing and coordination, which would at least get players talking about how to approach an encounter, if nothing else. For communication beyond that, I think we may need to consider the possibility of looking at places beyond combat to really get people to start talking with each other. I never played SWG, but I vaguely recall reading that they had some sort of system that encouraged players to spend some downtime hanging around in cantinas, and that this led to social interaction. I'm not saying that mechanic needs to be copied, but perhaps something along those general lines.

grouping in gw2 versus grouping in eq is like going to the grocery store versus shooting the shit with your friends in your apartment. i find it hard to believe that grouping in fucking mmos has become such a bone of contention. just blow up the genre.

I don't really think it is all that complicated to design a good MMO. Call me naive but you only need a few things:

1. Distinct classes with their strengths and weaknesses that are interdependent on each other- That should cover the need for players to group together to accomplish things. That doesn't prohibit the ability to solo by various classes. All classes can solo but some will be naturally better than others due to their role and skill set. People need to get over that. Having to specs kinda alleviates this for classes like healers and tanks but there should be MASSIVE reductions in your ability to tank and heal to increase your DPS.
2. Game play the supports the need for all the roles they create- There is nothing worse that being a class and be totally useless. Especially at end game.
3. Wide open seamless world with non instanced dungeons- again, if your goal is to get players to interact, let them come out of their mcdungeons and interact. Realistically, you can have things like instancing and phasing for quest content, but it should be kept minimal except for raiding (I will explain below)
4. Multiple races and starting areas with class restrictions and factions that matter- Not every class should be able to be every race. It usually doesn't fit the lore, especially in Norrath. You could maybe get around this with a complex faction system that required a lot of work for say, a barbarian to befriend the erudites and learn to be a necromancer or mage. Or a gnome to get faction with the ogres and learn to be a warrior. Speaking of factions, they should matter. RP folks love this stuff and it makes you more conscious of who and what you kill and has real in game consequences to your character.
5. Slow the pace of the game down- Allow for some tactical combat and not ADD whack-a-mole style combat. I know its controversial but add-ons should NOT be allowed. The UI should be flexible enough to be rearranged, but everyone should have the same tools available to play and that's the baseline. You shouldn't be able to get 5 levels a night. It should take awhile to get to max level for the majority of the population. No matter what, there will always be those guys who don't sleep, take shifts on one character just to get max as soon as possible. Then they sit there bored waiting for the rest of the people. We shouldn't be maxing out characters and clearing all the content that took 5 years to make in 3 months. This includes slower traveling. One guild should never be able to monopolize all contested content in a game on one server. If a mob is up on 2 diff continent or places, they need to decide what target they want. Time shouldn't permit them to get both.
6. End game raid mobs needed to progress should all be instanced- Here is the caveat for instancing. I know a lot of people claim to like to compete over contested mobs, but what usually happens is 1-2 guilds lock down all the contested mobs and the rest of the server is locked out from that content. I am not a EQ1 vet but I understand you had flagging and keying on various mobs to access zones. EQOA had a system similar to that to access PoT. A couple of guilds literally permacamped the key mobs to stop other guilds progress. That should never happen. ANYTIME YOU GIVE ANOTHER PLAYER A WAY TO BLOCK ANOTHERS PROGRESSION, THEY WILL! Devs need to learn that lesson well. There can be contested mobs in game, but if the content is necessary to progress, instance that shit!
7. Grouping tools that work from day 1- If you are gonna make a group-centric game, then give players tools to form said groups. No cross server groups. People on your own server. Build community. Know who the asshats and ninja looters are. Know who the awesome players are. Make a person's rep matter again.
8. Lastly, loot that matters- I tired of the gear treadmill. Not caring about an item for more than 1-2 level. I want better loot that lasts longer. If that means not having massive stat inflation over time, so be it. I realize the "Scepter of Uber Gnoll Bashing" I got at level 20 cant last forever, but it shouldn't be worthless by level 25. But some though and good itemization in the game. Lesser loot has lesser graphics. Uber loot should look uber! But with the cash stores, I fear that may no longer be the case.

So that was more than a few things but with that framework, you could create a solid game that will maintain good numbers and sell a bunch. And before anyone accuses me of EQ1 nostalgia or rose colored glasses, I am not an EQ1 vet. I played EQOA and EQ2 and they lacked some of the features I listed. But you know its sad when a discontinued old game like EQOA does more things right than most modern games.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/1...Es_Smedley.php

What he's really itching to play, though, is the one game he can't talk much about: EverQuest Next.

SOE has been dropping hints about the game for a while now, but Smedley says to expect a much bigger reveal this year.

"There are times you know something and you're bursting to talk about it - and that is the case here," he says. "We're betting the company's future on this game. ... The last EverQuest game launched in 2005. We've blown up two design ideas over the last four years because they were too 'me too.' It wasn't enough of a change. We settled on a design that, when we looked at it, everyone in the room thought we were crazy. We gave it a week and came back, and we all said 'yeah, we're still crazy, but we can't get the idea out of our heads. ... It's going to be the world's largest sandbox game."

EverQuest Next was a black box project for years - and it was only last month that Smedley and the team showed it to the EverQuest and EverQuest 2 teams. Smedley says he was so nervous the night before the presentation that he couldn't sleep - but that both teams received it enthusiastically.

Players will have to wait a bit longer to try it themselves, but maybe not as long as you'd expect. "Players will get their hands on an actual release version of what we're doing late [this] year - and I don't mean a beta," says Smedley.

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Making combat fun first should be their #1 priority with this game. It won't be though, because it's SOE .

Flipmode_sl said:

I don't really think it is all that complicated to design a good MMO. Call me naive but you only need a few things:

1. Distinct classes with their strengths and weaknesses that are interdependent on each other-
2. Game play the supports the need for all the roles they create-
3. Wide open seamless world with non instanced dungeons-
4. Multiple races and starting areas with class restrictions and factions that matter-
5. Slow the pace of the game down-
6. End game raid mobs needed to progress should all be instanced
7. Grouping tools that work from day 1
8. Lastly, loot that matters-

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Your list essentially points right at Vanguard, you know. I'd rather have a game that went completely away from traditional EQ design myself, and I'm more interested in fresh dynamic content delivery and non repetitive gameplay then I am about rebuilding a Mcquaid-like vision of a game.

Draegan_sl said:

How long have you been waiting to type "David ?mile Durkheim. The "father" of sociology" with all the proper inflections on this board.

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Copied from Wikipedia, what can I say, I'm horrible with names. I was, however, fascinated with sociology--so essentially every spare credit I had was burned on it, and Durkheim is inescapable in the field. His concepts behind ritualistic behavior actually very succinctly explains a surprising amount of what attracts people to games. I'll stop short of being too verbose this time, but essentially the analysis he does of rituals can be applied very easily to old MMO design paradigms (It's actually uncanny). And part of the push for higher access eliminated some of those little elements.

Developers really need to step back and say "How do we get the hardcore crowd to bring along everyone else (Whether it's in groups, on raids or PvP)...." NOT "Lets design contentfor everyone." You want those different levels of players all interacting, that's how your world creates power structures and drama. Until they can add sex to games, this is essentially the sphere of social exploitation we're left with. Unfortunately the developers run from it at just about every turn, rather than embracing it as another avenue of game design. (Which, again--is logical on some levels..because social exploitation is usually heavily intertwined with higher time costs--but there are middle roads that were just completely missed in this race to make the best mini-games in a world that is WoW.)

Look I appreciate the effort, and anytime you make a game you have to understand the environment you working in. But in the end you just need to make a fun game. The rest comes with it. But before you make a game you have to set some rules. Just like a good parent, you don't let your kid have the whole bag of jellybeans at once. In the case of WOW, they let you have every thing and it made a game that was once a little bit serious into an arcade game.

When creating a game you have to find the sweet spot in your design so when players lose to your difficult content they don't feel like the developers kicked them in the balls with fuckstupid ideas.

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Yes, I can agree with this. Every aspect of your game has to be good--if you have a good social system, but fail to execute the game properly, your game will fail. If you have a good game, but fail to execute the technology properly, your game will fail. SWG is a great example of a promising social system, plagued by poor "game" mechanics and mediocre technology.

But the big emphasis here is that, many times, developers ignore viewing things from a social stand point. It's not considered part of game design at all, except for the interface. I doubt (Maybe I'm wrong) that Blizzard sits down and talks about how people will need to "network" in their game, beyond just saying "lets make our friend and social applications better!"--and then we get things like in game calendars and real ID...And while those aren't BAD...That's not the kind of "in world" exploitation of social design they need to think about. An example should be "how do I get someone to actually WANT to go to this dungeon, and not just LFD there?" ..Asking that question doesn't destroy LFD, it just adds to it.

It almost feels like they can't work beyond extremes. Anytime someone mentions actual dungeons, people freak out and say "ZOMG FORCED GROUPS!!" and if you say you don't need to force it, they say "THEN NO ONE WILL GO!"...Ugh, I just want to know where their balls went? What happened to having fun designing this stuff and seeing what people will like, rather than what your sample groups told you will be used.

Anyway. It's hard, because Blizzard is a fucking fantastic game design company. Really, even WoW is fun in small doses, still--and I find it the antithesis to what I enjoy about MMO's. It's a testament to Blizzard's ability to make fun games. I just wish the D&D nerds that surely work for Blizzard would bust out their table top set and remember a little bit about what it was like to set up anactual world--with the knowledge that you get to see how your friends react to said world. That is how they should be designing games.

etchazz_sl said:

i think you guys are reading (and writing) far too fucking much into this. it's not really a hard concept: make a game that is challenging yet fun, and people will play it. you don't need to go all "john nash" on this thread and break down the basics of human interaction. the crux of the issue seems to be that earlier games like EQ and vanilla WoW did a lot to encourage grouping and social interactions and just about every new MMO, including the last few expansions for WoW, have done the exact opposite. i think most people here are just advocating for EQ next to go back to its MMO roots when it comes to trying to encourage people to be more social again, and the best way to do this is by having classes that are more dependent on each other. does that mean going back to the holy trinity? maybe. if someone can find a better solution that doesn't involve every class being completely homogenized then i haven't heard it.

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I love how the old school class of EQ lovers are now incorporating Vanilla WOW into their "good ole days" message. It's interesting how the mythos grows to incorporate other things.

To your points though, we're exercising our brains as to how to create different elements of MMORPGS. You're just understating things and just saying "just make it social again" doesn't move the discussion further.