EQ Never

Vitality

Vitality

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Rescorla_sl said:
Instead of grinding to 50 as fast as you could in Cyrodil public dungeons, you should have tried the private group dungeons. They are actually well designed and challenging if you run them with the appropriate level group. From a PVE perspective, running dungeon crawls with a group should be one of the core focuses of MMOs. If your dungeon crawl experience is fun, challenging and rewarding, then players, especially the casuals, will want to continue running them. If EQNext has a good dungeon crawl experience then it will probably be very successful.

I played SWTOR a lot and their multiplayer experience is no different than most WoW clones with the exception they give the group Light side/ Dark side votes in some flashpoints. What were you referring to when you said SWTOR got it right?
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We did the dungeons day one, for the skill point, then never set foot in there again because it was rewardless and quite frankly completely meaningless to repeat.

Swtor comment was in reference to the sharable and majority story arc vote in both dungeons and open world quest sharing. Voice acting was well done, Cutscenes were watchable.

IMO: The best story experience a game can deliver is by providing the means for a player to tell his own story, IE: the battle of Titty Rock, or some of the stories Tuco tells. It doesn't have to be all narrated and shit in game. Some of us don't want to pay a subscription to a game that justifies a pve experience as "Hey watch this movie, then tell others this is great PVE"

Some of us want to tell stories of Glory. Others are too lazy to find their own stories, so they want game devs to serve it up on a plate.

(pretty much the sandbox vs themepark argument)

Edit: my last rescorla bite in this thread.
 
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Rescorla_sl

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Vitality_sl said:
We did the dungeons day one, for the skill point, then never set foot in there again because it was rewardless and quite frankly completely meaningless to repeat.

Swtor comment was in reference to the sharable and majority story arc vote in both dungeons and open world quest sharing. Voice acting was well done, Cutscenes were watchable.

IMO: The best story experience a game can deliver is by providing the means for a player to tell his own story, IE: the battle of Titty Rock, or some of the stories Tuco tells. It doesn't have to be all narrated and shit in game. Some of us don't want to pay a subscription to a game that justifies a pve experience as "Hey watch this movie, then tell others this is great PVE"

Some of us want to tell stories of Glory. Others are too lazy to find their own stories, so they want game devs to serve it up on a plate.

(pretty much the sandbox vs themepark argument)

Edit: my last rescorla bite in this thread.
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The topic of discussion of the post I quoted was immersive story telling in MMOs. Your complaints about TESO don't have anything to do with that. What you said did reinforce exactly what I said about the new generation of players who don't give a crap about immersive storytelling. The dungeons were nothing but a source of 1 skill point for you. The fact that they can be fun and challenging don't matter to you. The point I made is that players like you are becoming more and more the norm so spending a lot of development resources on new innovative technology like Storybricks is completely wasted.
 
Utnayan

Utnayan

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Rescorla_sl said:
I personally like MMOs that try to create an immersive, story telling experience but I'm beginning to wonder if any future MMOs will bother with spending the time and resources to do it right. Too many players don't give a crap about the story, the lore etc that they click thru quests to get to the level cap as fast as possible. Many prefer to skip it all outright and grind to level up. The complex AI programming required to make something like Storybricks work well is wasted on players like that.
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Disagree. SWTOR's story and the Warcraft's ongoing saga of the Lich King (Spanning two separate games and expansions for both) proves otherwise. For me, TESO's story was about as uninspired and lifeless as a story could really get. Adding monotone voice acting and really bad cut scenes aren't going to help. Obviously there are many other variables in my opinion, not limited to bugs, poor performance, ability delay, weapon delay, poor itemization, and a want to play the AvA, the most touted feature of the game. Two separate games when you compare and contract. SWTOR marketed storylines. TESO marketed RvR.

For what it is worth, SWTOR may have been fairly similar to WoW with some changes to overland phasing and group story good guy/bad guy interaction, but I still remember the class stories of Sith Inquisitor, Sith Warrior, Agent, and Jedi Knight. Some were intricately entwined. As much as I hated the side questing, some of the planet stories were also well written. SWTOR also had good rewards during flashpoints and itemization throughout the game when doing heroic 2 and 4 content. And those stoies within the flashpoints were well done as well and cohesive with the rest of the world experience and overtone of the game. If people make the story actually worth it, people will play through it. And while it is true alot of people spacebarred the side questing in SWTOR, most did not when it came to the class storyline for that particular class.

Anyway, with regards to EQ Next I agree with your assessment that there should be less instant gratification with itemization and make items themselves share distinct looks that get other player's attention. The byproduct of a 1st person only game where you could see players up close, I may add. It may be time to revert back to forced 1st person MMORPG's to make that happen.
 
Vitality

Vitality

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I agree with going back to the roots of items having real value primarily based on rarity. ARPGs like Path of Exile do it right with high value uniques and rng rare items/player customizable statistics on gear.

Unsure if there's much room in an MMO for that though. GW2 Kind of did this, but everything was very standardized, balanced into boringness.

Idk how the general public today would take seeing a +5 stam pair of boots and having people tell them that they're best in slot or whatever.

On your point of item recognition in game, it reminded me of the time when I was 14 and saw the first guy in bronze armor in n freeport, I sent him a tell "Man you look cool".

I'm not sure we can get back to that in this day and age ut.
 
Utnayan

Utnayan

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Vitality_sl said:
On your point of item recognition in game, it reminded me of the time when I was 14 and saw the first guy in bronze armor in n freeport, I sent him a tell "Man you look cool".

I'm not sure we can get back to that in this day and age ut.
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Very true. Different time, different opening of an ERA, different business model, and we didn't have the plethora of art styles and assets we see now in most all games. Plus with the market changing to making money off cosmetics a lot of the time, the cool factor of how a player looks may often just point to that person blowing 9.99 in an online cash shop.
 
Vitality

Vitality

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Utnayan_sl said:
Very true. Different time, different opening of an ERA, different business model, and we didn't have the plethora of art styles and assets we see now in most all games. Plus with the market changing to making money off cosmetics a lot of the time, the cool factor of how a player looks may often just point to that person blowing 9.99 in an online cash shop.
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Yeah, although I've spent my fair share on League skins and Path spell particle modifiers.

I wouldn't mind being able to design my own fireball spell in EQN, I think player gen content is the next step, as long as people don't shoot flaming dicks for fireballs.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Yeah also in terms of EQ gear, have to remember it was pretty early in the 3D era and the game looked pretty alright at the time(not amazing but still pretty decent), so the impact of different looking gear was bigger because of that I'd say. Personally not a big fan of linking cosmetics to power level though and much prefer games with wardrobe/skin swap type of mechanics, where you can wear what you find appealing to you. That's why linking cosmetics to cash shop is fine for me. Having unique rare skins on legendary item/epic quests rewars/whatever is great though, but it should be rare enough that it pops compared to other cosmetics/normal gear.
 
zzeris

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Rescorla,

I'd love to see harder content but players are notoriously lazy and stupid. We can use Dark Souls over and over as an example while never seeing it in MMOs. GW2 tried something different and it was too hard on people. WoW didn't change it's grouping mechanics just on a whim. I hope people are ready for hard content but I'm not holding my breath or putting any bets down.

I want rare drops just because I want to see the player economy thrive. I could care less about epeen though. Cool designs are always welcome but I don't ever want to see the same environment as EQ. They mentioned giving different reward systems based off what the players want to do in Landmark. I really like that idea.

On to stories, I don't really like MMO storylines too much. The environments really don't lend themselves out to heroic stories and I prefer them to just focus on making a world. I don't want to be one of thousands of unique snowflakes saving the world. Just give out some solid area based quests, solid AI, and a world that can somewhat make sense. I like the thought of there being only one Xenthas the Red Dragon and needing maybe hundreds of players in one scripted event kill him off. After killing Arthas off almost a dozen times, etc, etc ,etc I'd rather stick to single player RPGs for my save the world stories. Captain Planet may have saved the world every week on Saturday mornings but leave that to the 80s.

I also am much more interested in the AI of Storybricks than the story-lines honestly. Can they pull off a different approach? Will I really see Orc migrations? Are 'Boss' mobs truly unique? If I wipe out this orc colony, what infestation will take it's place? Screw little stories and different quests. I want to see world dynamics. Will this happen? Probably not but I like their thoughts right now.
 
A

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SOE posted there live stream on the line up page looks like everything but the 'Tech of EQ Next" and more importantly the "Classes of EQ Next" are not being live streamed. Anyone going to SOE live willing to give us "live tweet" style updates of the panels?
 
T

Tide27_sl

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Rescorla_sl said:
Instead of grinding to 50 as fast as you could in Cyrodil public dungeons, you should have tried the private group dungeons. They are actually well designed and challenging if you run them with the appropriate level group. From a PVE perspective, running dungeon crawls with a group should be one of the core focuses of MMOs. If your dungeon crawl experience is fun, challenging and rewarding, then players, especially the casuals, will want to continue running them. If EQNext has a good dungeon crawl experience then it will probably be very successful.

I played SWTOR a lot and their multiplayer experience is no different than most WoW clones with the exception they give the group Light side/ Dark side votes in some flashpoints. What were you referring to when you said SWTOR got it right?
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You are correct in assuming Vitality did in fact grind in Cyrodil from the moment he could get in and then repeatedly invited AE classes into the group for fast leveling.

What Vitality is conveniently leaving out is the fact he did grind to 50 without leaving Cyrodil and THEN went back and did the story dungeons when he was max level...at which point he is correct in stating that nothing dropped worthwhile for him and it was "just a skillpoint" dungeon. The fact he is stating he did the dungeons day 1 is a slight exaggeration, more like within the first week....he was one of the first to level cap and then went back and redid the old content for skill points.
 
Vitality

Vitality

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I most definitely wasn't one of the first to level cap, my group and I definitely took a break from the grind and did dungeons from time to time (when we were within level range to knock out all three zones)

The reason for this was that the initial quest turn in for that level tier's dungeon grouping was nearly a levels worth of xp for completing all three of them.

I know good pve content when I see it. ESO was not something I saw as good pve content and most definitely should be used (a majority of the time) as a negative comparison for the purposes of this thread.

Edit: Further more, was only in cyrodiill til roughly level 30, at which point grinding +3 clvl mobs in overworld zones was faster (by about 20 mintues per level) if you've gotten your information second hand I don't blame you. I've posted plenty of write-ups on the usual spot outlining this.
 
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Rescorla_sl

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Utnayan_sl said:
Disagree. SWTOR's story and the Warcraft's ongoing saga of the Lich King (Spanning two separate games and expansions for both) proves otherwise. For me, TESO's story was about as uninspired and lifeless as a story could really get. Adding monotone voice acting and really bad cut scenes aren't going to help. Obviously there are many other variables in my opinion, not limited to bugs, poor performance, ability delay, weapon delay, poor itemization, and a want to play the AvA, the most touted feature of the game. Two separate games when you compare and contract. SWTOR marketed storylines. TESO marketed RvR.

For what it is worth, SWTOR may have been fairly similar to WoW with some changes to overland phasing and group story good guy/bad guy interaction, but I still remember the class stories of Sith Inquisitor, Sith Warrior, Agent, and Jedi Knight. Some were intricately entwined. As much as I hated the side questing, some of the planet stories were also well written. SWTOR also had good rewards during flashpoints and itemization throughout the game when doing heroic 2 and 4 content. And those stoies within the flashpoints were well done as well and cohesive with the rest of the world experience and overtone of the game. If people make the story actually worth it, people will play through it. And while it is true alot of people spacebarred the side questing in SWTOR, most did not when it came to the class storyline for that particular class.
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The fundamental core of the storytelling experience in SWTOR and TESO is identical. You are the singular hero of the story. The ONLY difference between the two games from a storytelling perspective is that with SWTOR, your personal story is 100% unique to the class you play so it is significantly more enjoyable to roll up an alt versus TESO where the main story is always the same and thus repetitive after you do it once.

In regards to the non-class/main story quest chains, the design of each game is identical as well. In SWTOR each planet had a long quest chain that told a story for that planet while in TESO each zone had a long quest chain to tell the story for that zone. The side quests in each planet/zone were loosely connected to the main storyline for the planet/zone.

For any MMO that makes the player the singular hero of the story, both SWTOR and TESO serve as good examples of how to design the storytelling experience.

In regards to EQNext, it sounds to me that Storybricks is more an evolution of GW2s hearts system versus the SWTOR/TESO quest model.
 
W

Wuyley_sl

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Rescorla_sl said:
A few design philosophies from EQ1 I would like to see resurrected in EQNext

1. Grouping dynamic that requires teamwork and smart gameplay. I want dungeon crawls that require a tank, sometimes an offtank, a healer, a crowd controller (mezzes, roots, charms etc) and DPSers who know how to control aggro. If you blow the pull or fail at crowd control, your healer dies fast. AOE DPS abilities would be in the game but no AOE taunts, thus making it very risky. I want mobs that flee when they get low in health and aggro other packs of mobs. Fights against trash mob pulls in dungeons need to last about the same amount of time it took to kill mobs in EQ1.

2. I want loot drops and quest rewards to be rare so that when you do get a new item, it is a significant upgrade and will last you a long time. Bosses need to have a common drop and a rare drop that serves as a huge incentive to run dungeons several times. The loot system WoW created that gives out small, incremental upgrades every level needs to go away. Loot graphics also need to be unique. If I am wielding a Short Sword of the Ykesha, other players will easily know what it is.
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Dandai

Dandai

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a_skeleton_02_sl said:
SOE posted there live stream on the line up page looks like everything but the 'Tech of EQ Next" and more importantly the "Classes of EQ Next" are not being live streamed. Anyone going to SOE live willing to give us "live tweet" style updates of the panels?
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Last year Tad did it. They did eventually release recordings of all the EQN panels; they just didn't livestream them. I don't remember how long after SOE Live concluded that the videos were put on YouTube, but I seem to recall days, not weeks.
 
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Rescorla_sl

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Utnayan_sl said:
Anyway, with regards to EQ Next I agree with your assessment that there should be less instant gratification with itemization and make items themselves share distinct looks that get other player's attention. The byproduct of a 1st person only game where you could see players up close, I may add. It may be time to revert back to forced 1st person MMORPG's to make that happen.
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To expound on the loot system further, EQ1s loot system was IMO the best of any MMO ever made because acquiring the loot was usually a memorable experience. I stopped playing EQ1 when WoW came out. I didn't play it again until several years later when SoD expansion came out. When I looked at the gear I was wearing, I could remember how and when I acquired it.

WoW and it's clones made acquiring gear less memorable because gearing up was significantly a lot easier and quicker. When I got to level cap in SWTOR, I had purple quality raid gear in every slot within two weeks.

TESO's big mistake when it comes to itemization is that they caved in to the hardcore crafters. ZOS official design philosophy on gear is that crafted gear will always be best in slot. All it takes to have legendary/gold gear is enough gold to buy the upgrade mats. Nothing memorable at all with that system.
 
Utnayan

Utnayan

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/\/\ Totally agree on your last point. Problem is how that can be changed with a new/streamlined microtransaction online store revenue which capitalizes on unique cosmetics to generate said revenue.

Rescorla_sl said:
The fundamental core of the storytelling experience in SWTOR and TESO is identical. You are the singular hero of the story. The ONLY difference between the two games from a storytelling perspective is that with SWTOR, your personal story is 100% unique to the class you play so it is significantly more enjoyable to roll up an alt versus TESO where the main story is always the same and thus repetitive after you do it once.

In regards to the non-class/main story quest chains, the design of each game is identical as well. In SWTOR each planet had a long quest chain that told a story for that planet while in TESO each zone had a long quest chain to tell the story for that zone. The side quests in each planet/zone were loosely connected to the main storyline for the planet/zone.

For any MMO that makes the player the singular hero of the story, both SWTOR and TESO serve as good examples of how to design the storytelling experience.
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From a technical point of view, you could definitely equate zones in TESO to planets in SWTOR. And from a class perspective, I agree. Subjectively, the stories were way more engaging for me in SWTOR and had more depth, plot twists, and fun factor due to the good/light choices and the NPC reactions which would spark different narratives. Was that in TESO? I frankly do not remember, because I never went back to try any different answers. But the way SWTOR did that gave the character you were playing more of a personality, and with that, the NPC's also therefore had more personality. (And funny reactions to your dialogue tree options)

In regards to EQNext, it sounds to me that Storybricks is more an evolution of GW2s hearts system versus the SWTOR/TESO quest model.
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I think, on paper, it is trying to be a combination of both. Procedurally generated story content which will have the same impact of storyline that SWTOR had in it's class stories but with real world reactions to the NPC's actions, basically taking the player almost out of the equation until the decisions are made. The issue that I think remains to be seen is how they plan to implement the quest tree conversations, if the system will be "canned" independent variable responses or can be in the control of the developer, in which case there is full developer control over the storylines within the scope of the entire world, or they will have options for generic/hand crafted. If they have options, I envision storybricks having handcrafted variables for only certain segments of the game, while 90% of it will be using generic templates across the world in place of placing random NPC's all over in a repeatable emote pool routine call. Due to the fact they will want to use the tool to throw in content on the cheap. If an dev house/publisher backs full 100% handcrafted story mechanisms within storybricks and the Storybricks AI director manages the outcomes based on player interaction, it will be sweet. Again, I am very jaded. So I see the former for cost control and not using the tool for the potential of interactive world building it is trying to solve. Leaving very generic/random side quests that mean nothing in the end to the scope of the world other than it will trigger another independent outcome within a map, with no reason as to why. Leaving the experience ultimately unsatisfying.
 
Quaid

Quaid

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My ideal:

No levels
No classes
Armor gives defensive stats (ac) only
Weapon type determines basic combat style (dual wield, bow etc)and combat damage.
All abilities are attached to jewelry & relic slots obtained through crafting and adventuring.
All items have slots for something very similar to materia obtained through adventuring.
 
R

Rescorla_sl

shitlord
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zzeris_sl said:
Rescorla,

I'd love to see harder content but players are notoriously lazy and stupid. We can use Dark Souls over and over as an example while never seeing it in MMOs. GW2 tried something different and it was too hard on people. WoW didn't change it's grouping mechanics just on a whim. I hope people are ready for hard content but I'm not holding my breath or putting any bets down.

I want rare drops just because I want to see the player economy thrive. I could care less about epeen though. Cool designs are always welcome but I don't ever want to see the same environment as EQ. They mentioned giving different reward systems based off what the players want to do in Landmark. I really like that idea.

On to stories, I don't really like MMO storylines too much. The environments really don't lend themselves out to heroic stories and I prefer them to just focus on making a world. I don't want to be one of thousands of unique snowflakes saving the world. Just give out some solid area based quests, solid AI, and a world that can somewhat make sense. I like the thought of there being only one Xenthas the Red Dragon and needing maybe hundreds of players in one scripted event kill him off. After killing Arthas off almost a dozen times, etc, etc ,etc I'd rather stick to single player RPGs for my save the world stories. Captain Planet may have saved the world every week on Saturday mornings but leave that to the 80s.

I also am much more interested in the AI of Storybricks than the story-lines honestly. Can they pull off a different approach? Will I really see Orc migrations? Are 'Boss' mobs truly unique? If I wipe out this orc colony, what infestation will take it's place? Screw little stories and different quests. I want to see world dynamics. Will this happen? Probably not but I like their thoughts right now.
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I get what you are saying. I guess all these meta discussions about EQNext will all boil down to what target audience SOE is going after.

I popped my MMO cherry on EQ1 the week it was released and played it regularly for over 6 years until WoW was released. A LOT of longtime EQ1 players just like me jumped ship to WOW as well. While my overall opinion of EQ1 was positive, there were some pretty significant negatives with the design of EQ1. Blizzard seized on those negatives, designed WoW to go the exact opposite direction, and ended up with a significantly more successful game. Of all the MMOs I have played, vanilla WoW still remains my overall favorite.

What I hope to see with EQNext is a combination of all the positives from EQ1 and the positives of vanilla WoW into the same game. Easier said than done which I guess is why there have been no MMOs who have been successfully able to pull it off.
 
Vitality

Vitality

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Quaid_sl said:
My ideal:

No levels
No classes
Armor gives defensive stats (ac) only
Weapon type determines basic combat style (dual wield, bow etc)and combat damage.
All abilities are attached to jewelry & relic slots obtained through crafting and adventuring.
All items have slots for something very similar to materia obtained through adventuring.
Click to expand...
Basically Path of Exile minus levels.

I'd play it.
 
Lenas

Lenas

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Quaid_sl said:
My ideal...
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My expectation of what EQN will end up as, having followed dev talks since they first announced, is something very similar to this. Combat style and abilities will be determined by the weapon you choose to use, and each piece of your gear will be customizable / upgradable.
 
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