Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

tad10_sl said:

This is always going to happen in any system. Again look at MTG - which is a classic leveless game (and which is an inspiration for EQN so that's why it is relevant to a discussion on MMO). I agree with Hachima that people chase items (as well as levels), so even if EQN was perfectly flat (one tier) they would still have to have something like a total gear reset which likely means either completely redoing content or adding in new content with a new expansion. Because, if they don't people are going to get bored and leave.

The trick is to make the leveling content last as long as possible. If you avoid gear resets as mentioned then high-end content can be used through multiple expansions. Wasn't some Velious content still being farmed during PoP by non-uber/FnF guilds? That's three expansions worth of content (or at least high-end content) being used simultaneously.

Click to expand...

In PoP, the rift between raider and casual with the flat item curve became a HUGE problem. Shitty players could barely finish their Povalor trials / BoT keys. Around the release of LoY, they eventually let everyone into everything short of solrotower / elem planes / time. Lots of casual players quit in PoP because they had been doing velious for 2-3 years (not good enough for ssra, no vt keys, no arc key for sseru, etc.). In PoP they took away even most of the 5 manning areas on top of allowing the flagged players to sell items to non flagged players--giving raiders money just for being raiders. Lots left. When GoD came out and the casuals had literally abysmal sea to use (Because even in time gear, the Tacvi trials were pretty tough) EQ hemorrhaged subs, WoW beta came out and the game has been twitching lifelessly for ten years since.

Flat item progressions seem like a good idea at first--even to WoW players who cried about their gear being replaced by the time they got to Nagrand, but when their server died and they had to reroll somewhere else to raid with someone else, they appreciated being able to re-gear their new character / alt without having to go through 4 raid tiers to do it.

Armchair dev mode on:

Id like to see a different leveling type:
Starting at EQ level 5 (so few hours of learning the ropes) you need to gring out say 10 AA points and spend them before exp gets relocated to filling the exp bar for level 6. Top Level say 20 or 25.
Lots of pros here:
-People stay longer in the same level range
-Actual levels mean more (what was the difference of a level 25 and 26 wiz in EQ? None)
-People would gain Spells/Abilities every level instead of every 4 or 9
-Every Level you had a reason to head beack to your home town to learn the new stuff, way to socialize along with the gating droods/wizzzies
-People could differentiate their characters early on via AAs
-No/Less essential AAs to catch up once you rech max level on your next character, since you bolstered up on essintial AAs allready.
-No outleveling your actual dungeon in a matter of days (or hours).

Hachima_sl said:

Not really. Gear is the carrot people chase. A gear reset means there is a new carrot to chase for every gear slot. Most people play the game to chase the carrot.

Click to expand...

It is, but the effects of expansion obsolescence were and are pretty damn severe, especially with how WoW went on to make each tier obsolete the last with fast avenues to catch up to the current tier. Their intent, of course, was not to have new players bogged down in different sections of the game and enjoy each new iteration of the game as a new game in and of itself. And while that makes each expansion/patch pretty compelling, it also makes the gulf between content more profound AND it forces you to take measures that invalidate old content--even if guilds are still actively doing it and having fun (Like making new tokens or easy quest rewards simply better than said content).

The fact is, NOT having obsolescence also has benefits (And yes, negatives too). I'm not so sure if the benefits Blizzard went after with their design (Quick draws to the new expansion) were worth the anemic world they created by making it so only the freshest part of it is useful or alive. Think about the effect it has on people that the best way to progress is to farm an easy version of one instance, and then do a version that is EXACTLY the same with the loot from the mirror version.

Don't you think it was a more compelling world when you farmed different content to build your character up to the newer content? Players worked across a lot of tiers to achieve the goal of slowly making the current one easier--rather than putting in all the time into that one tier, and burning out on it before you did it for the 5th time.

As I said though, yeah, this system has problems--spreading your player base out is never good for a game, or requiring a back log of gear acquisition can make it hard to rejoin the game. But are those things caused by having a flatter gear system? Or are they caused by the proliferation of no-drop items making it impossible to buy gear of a suitable level to rejoin a tier appropriate for you OR to even find people in the tiers you need to work on (Because tiers are abandon in an obsolescence based system). Or is it caused by small group content in the new expansions not being tuned properly for more casual players and therefor not having an alternate avenue for "stop gap gear"? I think it was a combination of a lot of factors, and Blizzard's answer was full on nuclear, to wipe out gear with every tier.

I'm not sure if gear inflation was the correct answer--I think it was a solution to a problem that wasn't really understood. And it ended up causing a lot more problems because it didn't address some of those core issues. (Going into that would involve talking about no-drop and other systems that I think had a big effect on the game--it's all connected and the current use of inflation seems like it was a broad sword where a scalpel should have been the tool used.)

Draegan_sl said:

Kickstarter games are about innovation. Because if they don't do something different or don't bring something new to the table, they will never get funded (unless there are some deep pocketed Brad fans out there).

Click to expand...

Mmm not from my own experience.
90% of the projects I backed on kickstarter was basically a reincarnation of old school games. (well all video games projects that I backed I mean).
Sierra/LucasArts style Adventure Games, Isometric Turn Based RPGs, Eye of the Beholder kind of Dungeon Crawlers, Old school TCGs... every single project was about bringing back an old school game that we, the players, want to experience again. With absolutely no innovation added.

Dyvim_sl said:

Armchair dev mode on:

Id like to see a different leveling type:
Starting at EQ level 5 (so few hours of learning the ropes) you need to gring out say 10 AA points and spend them before exp gets relocated to filling the exp bar for level 6. Top Level say 20 or 25.
Lots of pros here:
-People stay longer in the same level range
-Actual levels mean more (what was the difference of a level 25 and 26 wiz in EQ? None)
-People would gain Spells/Abilities every level instead of every 4 or 9
-Every Level you had a reason to head beack to your home town to learn the new stuff, way to socialize along with the gating droods/wizzzies
-People could differentiate their characters early on via AAs
-No/Less essential AAs to catch up once you rech max level on your next character, since you bolstered up on essintial AAs allready.
-No outleveling your actual dungeon in a matter of days (or hours).

Click to expand...

I like this. I think it's a nice way to combine AAs with Leveling and it leads to theorycrafting which Draegen wants (what AAs is the optimal build for a leveling X, yada yada yada), while preventing the 'I done fucked up' issue someone was saying. So you didn't do the optimal, Run 3 AA at level 3. Well, you can get it at level 4 or 5. Or whenever you realize you really need it.

@Heallun is that a problem with flat itemization or because PoP was so Raid focused? I think I've always admitted that I'm not a huge raider and I have always much preferred doing group content. Isn't the solution to ensure that there are always some group dungeons with useful items so that the non-raiders have something to do besides sulk when raiders are walking around in top-end gear?

tad10_sl said:

I like this. I think it's a nice way to combine AAs with Leveling and it leads to theorycrafting which Draegen wants (what AAs is the optimal build for a leveling X, yada yada yada), while preventing the 'I done fucked up' issue someone was saying. So you didn't do the optimal, Run 3 AA at level 3. Well, you can get it at level 4 or 5. Or whenever you realize you really need it.

@Heallun is that a problem with flat itemization or because PoP was so Raid focused? I think I've always admitted that I'm not a huge raider and I have always much preferred doing group content. Isn't the solution to ensure that there are always some group dungeons with useful items so that the non-raiders have something to do besides sulk when raiders are walking around in top-end gear?

Click to expand...

It was mostly, Tad. And the flagging system really fucking up the amount of content added. Nothing wrong with flat itemization in a group based game, but when you go to raiding (which for many people simply does not happen due to time commitments, skill, etc.) you effectively put a block on that player. By PoP the slightly above average player had their 65 spells and ornate molds. Even with LDON additions, a half-upgraded charm and whatever else they could find, these people got fucking -destroyed- in GoD because the expansion's 5 man content was tuned for raiders.Probably the bigger issue overall--don't gate any group content from group players and don't tune the group content of the next expansion to the raiding of the previous.

Heallun_sl said:

In PoP, the rift between raider and casual with the flat item curve became a HUGE problem. Shitty players could barely finish their Povalor trials / BoT keys. Around the release of LoY, they eventually let everyone into everything short of solrotower / elem planes / time. Lots of casual players quit in PoP because they had been doing velious for 2-3 years (not good enough for ssra, no vt keys, no arc key for sseru, etc.). In PoP they took away even most of the 5 manning areas on top of allowing the flagged players to sell items to non flagged players--giving raiders money just for being raiders. Lots left. When GoD came out and the casuals had literally abysmal sea to use (Because even in time gear, the Tacvi trials were pretty tough) EQ hemorrhaged subs, WoW beta came out and the game has been twitching lifelessly for ten years since.

Flat item progressions seem like a good idea at first--even to WoW players who cried about their gear being replaced by the time they got to Nagrand, but when their server died and they had to reroll somewhere else to raid with someone else, they appreciated being able to re-gear their new character / alt without having to go through 4 raid tiers to do it.

Click to expand...

There was a great deal wrong with EQ at the time outside of gear--attributing the sub hemorrhage is pretty disingenuous. People went through multiple expansions where small group/casual content did not keep up with the gear curve, at all, and then got plopped into a raid expansion that was inflated as though everyone had been raiding for years.

No one is saying EQ's overall design was pristine--they are saying that certain elements got thrown out that maybe shouldn't have been. One of those being flat gear--flat gear didn't deserve to be trashed because the designaroundit was a shit pile. You can't just look at the gear curve in a game like EQ, which had horrible balance, anemic group content, poor gear balance, poor gear scaling and say---yep, it was this one system which made it suck. Did it? Or did all those systems come together to form a huge gulf?

Anyway, you're not wrong in your assessment of the problems but I don't think it was the flat gear that caused it. EQ had a serious Monty Haul (Campaign version) problem from Velious on--and a severe myopic vision beyond raiding. I would say those two things attributed more toward splitting the player base than the gear system--the gear system was just the actual physical symptom/symbol when it all came to a head.

Edit: Bleh saw your reply to Tad, hah, I think we agree. There were huge issues with how group content was done vs how out of control and "monty haul" raid content had become.

Lithose_sl said:

There was a great deal wrong with EQ at the time outside of gear--attributing the sub hemorrhage is pretty disingenuous. People went through multiple expansions where small group/casual content did not keep up with the gear curve, at all, and then got plopped into a raid expansion that was inflated as though everyone had been raiding for years.

No one is saying EQ's overall design was pristine--they are saying that certain elements got thrown out that maybe shouldn't have been. One of those being flat gear--flat gear didn't deserve to be trashed because the designaroundit was a shit pile. You can't just look at the gear curve in a game like EQ, which had horrible balance, anemic group content, poor gear balance, poor gear scaling and say---yep, it was this one system which made it suck. Did it? Or did all those systems come together to form a huge gulf?

Anyway, you're not wrong in your assessment of the problems but I don't think it was the flat gear that caused it. EQ had a serious Monty Haul (Campaign version) problem from Velious on--and a severe myopic vision beyond raiding. I would say those two things attributed more toward splitting the player base than the gear system--the gear system was just the actual physical symptom/symbol when it all came to a head.

Edit: Bleh saw your reply to Tad, hah, I think we agree. There were huge issues with how group content was done vs how out of control and "monty haul" raid content had become.

Click to expand...

y'know, i've read the monty hall problem explanations for years and I still don't get it. I really try. I just reread it and realized that the game show host opens one of the doors and then asks you to switch. makes more sense now.

And yeah, it really was SOE's absolute disdain for the non raider in the PoP through GoD era. WoW had this problem toward the end of TBC as well and got a resurgence of casual players in WOTLK through easier dungeons, more consistent gearing options (justice/valor) and finally the LFD. I just want one game that isn't chasing this casual audience primarily, though. Just one!

Just make vanguard 3 ( yet smaller of course ) with a bit less "wow" flavor and a bit more "eq" flavor and we win.

shabushabu_sl said:

Just make vanguard 3 ( yet smaller of course ) with a bit less "wow" flavor and a bit more "eq" flavor and we win.

Click to expand...

:| I liked everything content wise from Vanguard. Classes good, areas good, my flying reinde----okay, maybe they went a little off reservation on the downfall. But the technical aspects absolutely murdered the game. Chunking, falling through world, crashes, low frames.

Heallun_sl said:

And yeah, it really was SOE's absolute disdain for the non raider in the PoP through GoD era. WoW had this problem toward the end of TBC as well and got a resurgence of casual players in WOTLK through easier dungeons, more consistent gearing options (justice/valor) and finally the LFD. I just want one game that isn't chasing this casual audience primarily, though. Just one!

Click to expand...

Yeah, WoW, I feel, over corrected for the casual base. I think they made the right choice, they just went overboard with it. I wish they would have been more tempered in their approach--like I said above, it felt like they used a broad sword where a scalpel was needed. I can see why it happened--especially with how complex Blizzard makes fights? Making sure everyone is on the same page gear wise must be a requirement. But I think there was room in there to not make everything so linear. Even if it cost some complexity in the fights--but I happen to like MMO's where encounter difficulty/complexity is traded off more more strategic difficulty--like only being able to farm so many places per week and having to account for holes in gear drops vs guild roster vs tactics used in most fights ect (The TCG elements in MMO guilds heh--more social/planning difficulty.). But I know that's not for everyone.

tad10_sl said:

I like this. I think it's a nice way to combine AAs with Leveling and it leads to theorycrafting which Draegen wants (what AAs is the optimal build for a leveling X, yada yada yada), while preventing the 'I done fucked up' issue someone was saying. So you didn't do the optimal, Run 3 AA at level 3. Well, you can get it at level 4 or 5. Or whenever you realize you really need it.

@Heallun is that a problem with flat itemization or because PoP was so Raid focused? I think I've always admitted that I'm not a huge raider and I have always much preferred doing group content. Isn't the solution to ensure that there are always some group dungeons with useful items so that the non-raiders have something to do besides sulk when raiders are walking around in top-end gear?

Click to expand...

You can't say in one breath that making multiple difficulties for each tier takes too much dev effort and then in another say that they should make both a raid and a 5 man that are unique each tier, that shit just doesn't add up.

I dislike blizzards current model of raiding. My perfect model would be more like along the lines of having only Flex style raids of one difficulty with a player # range of 10-40, the difficulty slide should be set so that a 40 man raid has much more wiggle room and generally an easier raid compared to a 10m, similar to wows original heroic10 v heroic 25. Every raid zone should at some point start accumulating an ICC style buff to make it easier, with the buff getting larger as new raid zones are released. So like the ICC buff was 30% during ICC, during the next tier after that it should move up to x0%, and so on, eventually that content would become obsolete, but in general I would be happy if it was tuned so that fresh new players started raiding about 2 zones back from the current, so in wow classic terms you are raiding bwl as a newb when naxx is out and MC is mostly obsolete.

AA is similar to gear obsolescence, you have to handle it very carefully or you end up with a system that is so top heavy and daunting to new players they don't start up at all or you can't attract old players back because they know they have fallen hopelessly behind.

Personally I think that AA should take the form of modifiers on abilities, so as a kunark wizard you grind out the AA for sunstrike and upgrade your spell that way to say 5/5 power level, but when velious comes out sunstrike2 is the new balls out spell, your sunstrike 5/5 should be better than a sunstrike2 0/5 but sunstrike2 5/5 is better than yours, so new players don't have to ever grind up that old tier of AA but your old tier isnt instantly made obsolete with new releases either. Obviously subject to a whole lot of theorycraft about the length of time between spell releases, maybe new ones every xpac is too fast if you have xpacs every year or more like EQ.

AA is simply a mistake that should never happen again. Right along with things like six versions of the same raid and shared XP loss.

Kreugen killing my dreams of Mythical Heroic Ultimate raid tier.

edit: coming to ff14 in patch 2.3

Kreugen_sl said:

AA is simply a mistake that should never happen again. Right along with things like six versions of the same raid and shared XP loss.

Click to expand...

EQ2 AA was pretty good. Was a talent tree you earned separately from normal xp. EQ1 AA was grindy and got bloated quickly.

Heallun_sl said:

:| I liked everything content wise from Vanguard. Classes good, areas good, my flying reinde----okay, maybe they went a little off reservation on the downfall.But the technical aspects absolutely murdered the game. Chunking, falling through world, crashes, low frames.

Click to expand...

You sir nailed it... Of course my assumption was/is that Pantheon will "work".

I don't mind the EQ2 AA system but it's really bad for bloating an already extremely bloated ability system.