Maybe. I think EQ would be much easier if one started as an Iksar Shaman almost two years after release versus a Human rogue, with no SOW, regen, or newer Ro items. Shaman were beasts. I agree the game wasn't difficult due to mechanics, but tougher due to the need for caution and attention to detail. Especially compared to later MMOs which were more about hand holding and streamlining the level experience with very little danger and built for casuals.
EQ Never
- Thread starter Convo
- Start date
I disagree completely. LFD did NOT in fact stop stop the open world from being populated, in fact, I would counter that it populated the world even more so. I have played WoW pretty much its entire lifecyle and have seen all the changes come and go.
Prior to LFD, everyone was clustered up into a city somewhere anyways looking for group. You could spend anywhere from 1 min, to 1 hour, looking for group in a city depending on if you were a tank / healer...or long as hell as dps. This entire time you are sitting in the city. Now that you can que from anywhere, you have people questing, gathering, etc...all while waiting for the dungeon to pop. Before LFD, this didnt exsist.
I know people dont like LFD, but Im all for it. If you werent a tank or healer, then your experience was like this.
/1 Warlock LFG
/1 Warlock LFG
/1 Warlock LFG
.....45 mins pass.
/tell Warlock come to XXX
....5 - 10 mins to get to zone
/p HiYAZ All!! Glad to be here!!
....5 mins no one says a word
/g Im ready, all set here
/g Tank is afk
....10 mins elapse
/g Healer...my child has herpes, got to run!! TaTA for NowZ!
/g Tank...fuck it, Im a tank, ill get instant group. Byz GuYZ!
....
/hearthstone
.....
/1 Warlock LFG
/1 Warlock LFG!!
The main problem is that there is no reason whatsoever to be out in the open world unless you are gathering.
You want exp? You do dungeon
You want loot? You do dungeon
You want points? You do dungeon
You want Ilvl? You do dungeon
You want progression? You do dungeon
If you want to pick flowers? Open world
If you want to mine nodes? Open world
If you want to do meaning less quest? Open world
If you want loot to be nothing but vendor loot? Open world
If you want to troll chat and sit in city? Open World
Khane
Got something right about marriage
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See I wouldn't call any of that difficult. Hoping an invis spell doesn't fade doesn't make the game hard. It makes it exciting, but it doesn't make it hard. You're casting a spell and then running. You're talking about random events you have no control over so there is no skill involved. Hoping someone else doesn't train a zone to your raid... all of these things are out of your control as the player so I don't see how you could call that hard. It's all luck (or not inviting dimwits to your raid).
And the penalties for failure in EQ (needing to find a rez) didn't make it harder either, just more tedious (and again, more exciting as you were running through a dangerous area). If you want to talk about danger then yes, EQ was far more dangerous than its predecessors because it was built around group play, not solo play. It made the world more exciting to adventure through, but only because you had to run through zones that were way higher level than you were as you were moving to the next level appropriate area. Games don't do that anymore, they lead you on a linear path.
Then why was the main concern of Blizzards for MOP to get people back out in the world again, hence the dailies? People ran around the open world with LFD when they were leveling, but at cap they were either doing dailies or still sitting in town. At least in my experience in WOTLK.
1. death penalties and the like aren't about difficulty. they're elements that are conducive to creating an effective fantasy world.
2. "difficulty" has several definitions and if your argument is that eq wasn't difficult then i'll tell you every mmo since has been child's play
3. eq's combat may have been simple, but having more abilities at your disposal doesn't make a game more challenging. modern mmos use the same dull hotbar combat, only you're hitting more buttons. hitting buttons for the sake of hitting buttons isn't fun.
2. "difficulty" has several definitions and if your argument is that eq wasn't difficult then i'll tell you every mmo since has been child's play
3. eq's combat may have been simple, but having more abilities at your disposal doesn't make a game more challenging. modern mmos use the same dull hotbar combat, only you're hitting more buttons. hitting buttons for the sake of hitting buttons isn't fun.
Because there is not one reason to be in the open world anymore at all. Have you played MoP? Majority of the dailies all funnel into the same corner of 1 zone so you have 30 people trying to kill 15 mobs or something where the spawn isnt big enough for 2 people, much less 30. Any sort of progression in WoW is through dungeons only. Ton of people hate dailies and dont even bother with them. Aside from gathering, I cant think of any reason whatsoever to ever NOT be in a dungeon.
It's possible they built the world first, the characters second, and have just thrown out the gameplay elements and started over with that. That's a whole fuckton of coding avoided - and frankly, if all the fill-in parts are already available, it doesn't surprise me at all that the game is expected to be ready by the end of the year.
Because the games are designed for the experience to truly begin at the maximum level. Of course, this is horrible, fucking ass-backwards-as-hell game design, but MMO's have rather consistently churned out leveling systems as little more than a way for the player to acclimate himself to the game (for the first four levels) and subsequently bore him or her into dropping a waterfall of tears (for the remaining y levels).Saladus_sl said:
Immersive worlds need to take a whole fuckload longer to work one's way through - and the end should not be looked at as the second stepping stone to really starting the game, but as the final, end-all finish line like it was during EQ. You played, you were enamored by those who were 50/60/whatever, but it didn't make you feel bad about yourself, or that you were missing out on anything. You continued on with the experience and enjoyed the game along the way, and when you finally got to the end, you were treated with the idea that there still was actually more to do.
Itemization is a big part of the new mentality - items are so much better at the end level than at any other time that, if you aren't at the endgame, it makes your character seem like a larger, more shapely version of dogshit. Items used to be just as important as level stature. They have to matter again, and they have to be upgraded at a snail's pace (remember when the Crafted questline, which occurred mostly in the 20's-30's, was pretty much good up until the mid-40's?) so that people are allowed to care about even the smallest upgrades. The concept of no drop also needs to be eradicated except for rare instances where it adds something to the item - a huge part of the immersion is not having arbitrary dumbfuck game rules like not being able to trade an item.
That's where the same tired, regurgitated, closed-minded development comes into play. Everything should offer something of everything. That's the entire concept behind a sandbox, since a sandbox world is, by nature, player-driven. Therefore, anything can be conceivably offered by anyone at any time - it's just a matter of the restraints that developers place on what players can offer other players.
Most of my hope for EQN does not come from my belief that the developers will create an amazing game; it's in their acknowledgement that there are plenty of people out there - plenty of the audience itself - who can create an amazing game, so long as the developers supply a sufficient backdrop for the players.
Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Good points, but I still enjoyed the excitement of EQ way more than any mmo since. Needing skill doesn't make a game fun, it just means you have to practice muscle memory techniques... which as anyone who had ever taken piano lessons will tell you... is boring.
That's actually an excellent point. I was Gladiator in the first and second seasons of the arena, and I considered myself very, very good - when I won, there was a short, minor feeling of achievement, but more than anything, I just got angry and frustrated when I was beaten (fucking warrior-pally combos in the early days, man). The excitement, the immersion of EQ was never matched by WoW, even at WoW's peak, because the sense of real danger, of actual excitement was never truly evident in WoW. Sure, we wiped to Nagafen. Let's all run back to our corpses and start the fight over again, exactly as it was the first time around - all it ever equated to was a 10g loss. Sure, we got beaten in the arena. Let's queue up 3 more times to make up the points we dropped.
Nothing was ever risked during WoW and that diminished the feeling of accomplishment - the ultimate end reward - almost entirely.
Lithose
Buzzfeed Editor
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LFD didn't depopulate the open world. It only emphasized the spotlight Blizzard was showing on their mini-games. It's not quite the same thing, but it essentially turned something that was already a problem, into an even bigger one. And I don't think anyone is saying get rid of LFD.
What people are saying is that your first list should include community dungeons AND LFD instanced dungeons. And yes, it's perfectly possible to make both attractive (And without inflating loot.)
conceptualizing is fun, but the fact of the matter is developers can't do a whole lot to guarantee a game's longevity. narratives are nice and one of the reasons people love single-player games, but an mmo storyline isn't going to span weeks or months. developers don't have enough money to create enough content to keep people occupied until the next expansion rolls around. an mmo needs time sinks, it needs endgame content, and things need to be slowed down a bit.
oh, and LFD isn't necessary unless your server is a ghost town. claiming no one will play without these conveniences is nothing more than conjecture.
oh, and LFD isn't necessary unless your server is a ghost town. claiming no one will play without these conveniences is nothing more than conjecture.
Lithose
Buzzfeed Editor
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There are multiple ways to measure difficulty. This narrow definition of difficulty is precisely why WoW raids have been funneled into ball-smashing difficult and "easy" modes. The breadth of difficulty can go from pattern recognition/response (Which WoW is FAR harder than EQ at), to long term planning and organization--which is the kind of difficulty EQ had.
And guess what? They both cause you the exact same penalty. Time. If you lose in the short term "skill" game that is WoW currently, you need to re-do the encounter. This costs time. If you lost in the "long term" planning that was EQ (Not positioning right, not clearing trash efficiently, not CCing properly), you also lost, time (That's essentially what exp loss is, just time).
So what's the difference between the two above difficulties? Well, with the skill difficulty (Current WoW) the only thing that can reduce the penalty is individual pattern reaction skills. In essence, each gamer is on their own to pull their weight. If they can't do it, you get an endless repetition of failures until it's done right.
However..In EQ's type of difficulty (And in part Vanilla WoW, as early raids followed this formula)...The raid leaders, or the "core group" of "hardcore" players could use social manipulation (IE giving orders) to further increase efficiency--since the types of patterns needing to be responded to were so broad, easy to discern and "slow" (Not as much scripting). For example, the giants in MC--their only gimmick was tons of HP and needing to be killed with one another. It was something a single player could direct a dozen players to do. So, even though both penalties are the same, the "long term" difficulty of EQ allows the difficulty to be "diffused" amongst the stronger players. And in some cases allows the time intensity to be born by players with more time. (Flasks? Not saying it's a good mechanic, but this essentially allowed a few players to increase the power of everyone else.) And this "need" for two different groups of players, create a pretty powerful social dynamic. Hence why the difficulty is an exploitation of the "social" sphere.
But make no mistake. The type of difficulty in EQ was different, yes. BUT it was difficulty. Chess is difficult for different reasons than Dance Dance Revolution--but they are both difficult.
Seananigans
Honorary Shit-PhD
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He wasn't implying the errands were homosexual. He said faggot errands because the errands are faggoty.
Now quit being a faggot, and suck that dick.
Seananigans
Honorary Shit-PhD
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Except Blizzard specifically went the way of the retard in their progression of WoW with regard to LFG tools, and LFD is not to be praised for creating more player/world interaction. Had the game shipped with a real LFG UI tool that DID NOT do everything for you, but DID in fact give you the tools to get a group made yourself, you wouldn't be saying something like this. If you were around for all of WoW, then surely you remember the rickshaw/retard rocks (the first incarnation/function of them). Blizzard are not a shining example of how to create a proper LFG system. They dug their heels in like fucktards and eventually said "fuck it, we'll just do it for you" and created LFD.
Except something they clearly don't understand, is you don't want to try to straddle the fence or whatever. They started on one end of the MMO paradigm, and over the course of these 8 years have shifted completely to their current side of casual mini-game lobby. But despite that, in MoP they seem to be wanting to take a couple of systems back in the other direction from whence they came. You can't do that. You need to pick a style and commit. Everything in MoP that I've encountered that is more old-school minded (like the ilvl requirements stratified for heroic/LFR1/LFR2 etc, requiring progression), has had me saying "goddammit you fucktards!" WoW has transformed, and I no longer hold any illusions about it being anything but the casual mini-game lobby it is. So I'm here in MoP, encountering ideas that mesh with my old-school MMORPG mentality, but I don't want to see them in WoW anymore. Because WoW has transformed into WoW2, and they no longer have any place here.
So yeah, that was a long-winded stream-of-consciousness way of saying that trying to inject player/world interaction via dailies (or required gear progression in heroic 5mans/LFR of all places) is fucking stupid. It doesn't matter anymore, embrace your mini-game lobby and move on. And fuck dailies.
Well that's the issue. It's why I would probably enjoy open world dungeons these days.
Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
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EQ could be easy or challenging (not saying "hard" here because of the tail-chasing argument on this page). You could do 40-60 in SolB and then Karnors and never visit another zone, oblivious to any challenge you couldnt zone. You could also do it at levels or in zones that were challenging. Maybe I was lucky because I moved to newly released server early in my EQ time, but when I leveled in Sebilis at 45 and maybe a few dozen players on the server even kad keys, it was challenging. It was different at 60 AEing the place down for AA, but using that as a reason to claim the zone had no challenge is stupid. Any content you have advanced through is easy, duh. Thats like claiming AoW was easy and lol at the newbs that needed to charm tank him.
To add something relevant to this post, I very much hope EQN doesnt have levels or anything you can use as a similar measuring stick. If its different enough for the whole "put on blinders and race to endgame" attitude to fall flat on its face then maybe people will start to do content because it might be fun, but right now everything is about the fastest way to level to cap and at the cap its about the fastest badges to maxed gear. You're no longer viewing content as fun, all those mobs are just delaying you from the max stats.
And I agree with the point about quests being far removed from the meaning in modern games. The whole daily stuff, all the fetch and deliver and kill 15 gnolls tasks should be just that, tasks or errands that you dont need to pick up but just complete on the side (if you even add things like that to the game). Kinda like GW2 hearts. On the other hand if you label something as a quest it better be interesting and challenging. EQ1 Epics, the original Onyxia quest (whole key chain and the dragon itself as a finale), The story behind advancing through PoP (if anyone ever bothered to learn about it, most didnt care at that point), taking the ring to mount doom, those kinda things. WoW did that pretty good at times but drowned it under quest overflow. The human story line of of Onyxia's medding was foreshadowed very early for example, but every fetch me bear asses quest having as much text to it meant no special attention was paid to the better quest lines in the game, by most players anyway.
To add something relevant to this post, I very much hope EQN doesnt have levels or anything you can use as a similar measuring stick. If its different enough for the whole "put on blinders and race to endgame" attitude to fall flat on its face then maybe people will start to do content because it might be fun, but right now everything is about the fastest way to level to cap and at the cap its about the fastest badges to maxed gear. You're no longer viewing content as fun, all those mobs are just delaying you from the max stats.
And I agree with the point about quests being far removed from the meaning in modern games. The whole daily stuff, all the fetch and deliver and kill 15 gnolls tasks should be just that, tasks or errands that you dont need to pick up but just complete on the side (if you even add things like that to the game). Kinda like GW2 hearts. On the other hand if you label something as a quest it better be interesting and challenging. EQ1 Epics, the original Onyxia quest (whole key chain and the dragon itself as a finale), The story behind advancing through PoP (if anyone ever bothered to learn about it, most didnt care at that point), taking the ring to mount doom, those kinda things. WoW did that pretty good at times but drowned it under quest overflow. The human story line of of Onyxia's medding was foreshadowed very early for example, but every fetch me bear asses quest having as much text to it meant no special attention was paid to the better quest lines in the game, by most players anyway.
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Dailies are just terrible. That's about when I started to get turned off by Rift.
EQN has an unique opportunity to make some serious cool content if the world is destructible. Just take the mining tradeskill for instance.. Imagine if players were to mine into the side of a mountain for resources. The mine would grow and grow until there were no longer any resources to gather. Once players abandon the mine it would slowly become populated by mobs turning the mine into a dungeon.
I also want things similar to Kithicor forest. Where going into it at night is just down right crazy. Maybe the trees at the center of the forest at night harvest a higher yield or a rare piece of wood. Or a castle dungeon that is difficult during the day but becomes haunted at night making it even more difficult. Forcing players to be wary of what time of day it is when entering. Wasn't mistmore castle like that? These little subtle things just add up throughout the game.
EQN has an unique opportunity to make some serious cool content if the world is destructible. Just take the mining tradeskill for instance.. Imagine if players were to mine into the side of a mountain for resources. The mine would grow and grow until there were no longer any resources to gather. Once players abandon the mine it would slowly become populated by mobs turning the mine into a dungeon.
I also want things similar to Kithicor forest. Where going into it at night is just down right crazy. Maybe the trees at the center of the forest at night harvest a higher yield or a rare piece of wood. Or a castle dungeon that is difficult during the day but becomes haunted at night making it even more difficult. Forcing players to be wary of what time of day it is when entering. Wasn't mistmore castle like that? These little subtle things just add up throughout the game.
It is amazing that the theorycrafting just ran right over this coy little release data declaration or whatever Smedley is trying to say.
Sounds like the days of racing to finish Everquest expansions are officially dead and over. It even seems like a he's talking about a PvP game, at least to me, though that is hard to believe from this franchise.