Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

I just never do crafting of any sort. That's what I have guildies for. Let them burn through all their gold leveling that shit up. Lol

... said:

You lads excited to do consignment?

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It just doesn’t feel right!

GuardianX said:

I'm dyin, I know it's gunna be actioned on by gm's but it would be SO funny if people were "trying to deliver food and water" to "camps in the field" just using it as a premise to train people.

Or basically a "mafia hit" style train system. "Hey i'll buy food and water from you, just deliver it to my buddy at the X camp"

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Are you sure you know what consignment is

GuardianX said:

I'm dyin, I know it's gunna be actioned on by gm's but it would be SO funny if people were "trying to deliver food and water" to "camps in the field" just using it as a premise to train people.

Or basically a "mafia hit" style train system. "Hey i'll buy food and water from you, just deliver it to my buddy at the X camp"

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‘Muffin delivery!!’

It sounds cool for the EC Tunnel types, and they definitely do exist.

They really want an EC Tunnel style system to emerge and I’m definitely rooting for them there. I wonder if it’s realistic these days, but i guess we’ll find out!

I did that shit to gear my Warrior alt in Velious. Went to the Dwarf castle at level 5 and offered to make change/provide food and water for the folks killing there in exchange for rotting loot. Had a full set of the plate pretty quick.

gauze said:

But its also to be said, I don't need my gameplay to be belt to ass the entire time.. I'd rather have smaller things to do if I cannot allocate chunks of time. I'd much rather classes, specs, builds, or xp spots be dad friendly than weighing down the rest of the game to fit; but I absolutely agree that the loop has to be worth the squeeze for it to even matter. Personally hated they added summoning stones to WoW, but loved that Warlocks could summon. I also know a lot of dads, while not all MMO players, easily put in 4-6 hrs a couple nights a week on things like League, CS, Tarkov, Arc, Deadlock ect.. and while its quicker dopamine hits, they're more or less doing the same loop on repeat. If the loops is good, the problem fades.

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I think that you're treating accessibility and world scale as though they're inherently in conflict, and I'm not convinced that's true.

For example, throughout your post, you keep returning to this idea that a recall mechanic makes the world smaller. Maybe. But that's only true if the primary thing making the world feel large is the amount of time required to move through it. And that's where I fundamentally disagree. A world feels "large" because it's interesting, dangerous, varied, and worth exploring (Elden Ring is literally the Gold Standard here IMO - that game has a form of "quick travel", yet still feels large and dangerous as hell). A world that relies primarily on travel friction to feel large is often compensating for a lack of meaningful engagement. This is actually one of the biggest lessons the MMO genre has learned over the last twenty years.

A two-hour walk from Greater Faydark to Qeynos isn't content. A thirty-minute boat ride isn't content. Running back and forth between the same locations for the hundredth time isn't content. Those are logistical costs being imposed on the player. Sometimes they're worthwhile. Sometimes they're not. But they're not inherently valuable simply because they consume time. That's why I keep coming back to the underlying "gameplay loop".

You mention beast hunting, treasure maps, expeditions, crafting economies, player caravans, resource logistics, faction systems, religious choices, and alternative progression paths. Those are all things I actually want. In fact, I'd argue those are exactly the kinds of systems that should be making the world feel large. Not the inability to get home. And that's the thing I think a lot of "EQ-inspired" projects get backwards.

They spend enormous effort preserving the friction that surrounded the old experiences while often neglecting the systems that actually created those experiences. The reason people remember old MMOs isn't because they spent forty-five minutes running somewhere. It's because something happened when they got there. The dungeon crawl, the boss kill, the social interaction, the "discovery", the guild meetup, the GM event, the dangerous pull, etc. The travel was merely the "tax" paid to reach the content.

And I think that's where a lot of modern MMO players push back. Not because they want everything instantly, every reward "handed" to them, nor because they want every piece of content accessible on day one. But because they increasingly recognize the difference between challenge and logistics.

A difficult dungeon is content. Acquiring rare materials is content. Building a reputation with a faction is content. Learning a difficult encounter is content. Organizing a successful group is content. Taking longer to get there isn't automatically content. And this ties into something we've discussed repeatedly in these MMO conversations - I think the future of the genre is moving away from extreme endgame exclusivity and time-gated prestige systems altogether.

The hardcore poopsocking, batphone raid culture, and "only 2% of players will ever see this" philosophy is slowly going the way of the dodo. Not because difficult content shouldn't exist, but because developers are realizing that spending enormous resources building content for an ultra-hardcore minority isn't a particularly sustainable model. The games that are succeeding are increasingly focused on creating compelling gameplay loops that a much larger portion of the playerbase can engage with.

That's why I don't really worry about whether everyone can eventually access something. I worry about whether the journey to that thing is actually enjoyable. Because if the gameplay loop is genuinely great, players will willingly spend thousands of hours engaging with it. If the gameplay loop isn't great, no amount of travel friction, logistical hurdles, or exclusivity is going to save it.

As you said yourself - if the loop is good, the problem fades. I think that's probably the most important sentence in your entire post.

Y’all are clowning on consignment and i just read the announcement… fucking awesome idea. Love it.

The way it’s structured has potential. If they get rep based pricing /vendoring differences significant enough there could be some fun shenanigans.

Quaid said:

Y’all are clowning on consignment and i just read the announcement… fucking awesome idea. Love it.

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As a standalone system, I hate it and think its retarded. When they implement player owned trader stalls then it could be good, depending on how that is implemented.

I absolutely hated trading in the EC tunnel and pretty much did solo/not-solo self found for almost all of my EQ playtime. The EQ trade bazaar interface that THJ had is the minimum I would be willing to interact with, if I were to play an MMO in this day and age.

Burns said:

As a standalone system, I hate it and think its retarded. When they implement player owned trader stalls then it could be good, depending on how that is implemented.

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Oh ya I'm operating under the assumption the system works in tandem with the stalls.

GuardianX said:

I think it's interesting but in the world of doordash and ubereats and the doorbell cam's we've seen of both I think it's a AMAZINGLY comical idea.

I can't wait to see the trains people do in the name of capitalism!

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Again I think either you or I misunderstand this consignment system.

You loot a Fungi Tunuc, but don’t wanna sit in EC for 3 days to sell it. You can “trade” it to ECSeller01 and give them a 5% commission to sell it for you. In theory you could do this now but the risk being scammed is super high, now with this system it is legitimized and money shows up in the bank.

Where does training someone to deliver food/water come in and why would the consignment system add to it? I guess you’re saying you could pay someone to train another guild and claim they were delivering food to them? But then wouldn’t the person being trained have to have been involved somehow?

I don't hate the idea. It does add an element of "social interaction" that you don't get by going the "simple" route and just adding an AH. But, it remains to be seen how it'll play out in practice.

GuardianX said:

The training part is mainly just a joke based on a concept of overzealous "traders" bringing things out or picking things up because people already train without the need of an excuse and because of the side-hustle mentality of generally not giving a fuck as long as you make your money.

I just assume you don't see much of the "Side Hustle" videos I see because for some reason it just tickled my funny bone imagining some half aware tweaker showing up at your camp trying to offer to "buy" all your drops on consignment, "accidentally" training you in the process.

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The "Use as an excuse" / "pay someone to train" part comes from the new system combined with the PNP system I just see as a possible conflict point in terms of CS reaction.

Are we going to see CS action over people trying to HONESTLY get out to camps in order to make money off a camp as they take on consignments?

Can I just put on a consignment bag and train people and then "Sorry I was trying to reach a camp because I was looking to get some gear to sell on consignment"?

I could see guilds saying "Hey, go put on a consignment bag and run to the haste belt camp" as mainly a way of getting a group off a camp they want in a way that might have LESS of a chance of their account being banned / suspended.

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Does that make more sense?

EDIT:

I dunno I guess I just Imagine you are at a camp and it's got tons of "You can have one on your person" type items, they are good items but your group is maxed out, so you pop into OOC and "Hey anyone come to X camp for a consignment item?" and the idea is that now someone is going to come to you for an item they will take elsewhere to sell so you can continue your camp but make some side money.

In my mind I'm thinking "Someone is going to train us".

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I guess I could imagine it but I don’t really think this system will cause much of a gameplay change tbh, mostly because you can already basically do it in game to a degree.

Like nowadays if I have a drop that I don’t want to deal with selling for a while I can just knock 10-15% off the price and sell it pretty quickly to some dude that spends all day in EC and wants to flip it for the market price. This system doesn’t seem much different it just doesn’t require that dude to have the capital themselves. I imagine now we’ll see “selling XYZ, no consignment offers” or you’ll get a few people spamming you to sell your items for 5-10% commission.

I don’t remember anyone running around Sebilis offering to buy stuff at a discount so they could go sell it in town, so I’m not sure I’d expect anyone to do it with consignment but I guess you could see poor noobs offering it to make some starter money