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

popsicledeath_sl said:

OMG, I was just thinking really hard about something: what if my personal experiences in a game aren't necessarily true for everyone and aren't even how things were in that game when it was designed initially. So, like, what if the game BECAME a spam-fest zerg-roll, so that's all I can ever say about it, and I'm not experienced or smart enough to see the game initial design wasn't like that at all, and that initial design is what people are referring to when talking about the.... wait, hear me out, I think I'm onto something.... when talking about the design of an upcoming project, what if people are referring to the initial design of a prior project the person making the new project was involved in, and those people are referring to that initial design because it was the portion of the old project the new projects main designer was a part of during design....? Nah, no fucking way. Hai gais, I was thinking, have you ever thought that WoW is like McDonald's!?

I was just thinking. A game like WoW has, what, 5 man groups? And WoW is like the most obviously WoW clone out there! So, any new game with 5 man groups will obviously be bad... so a new game should have 4 man groups, right?! That would make the content designed for 5 man groups harder, because 4 is one less, and all content is designed for 5 man groups and the only way to make content harder is not to make content harder, but to reduce the number of players in a group! I was just thinking.

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popsicledeath_sl said:

I'd love for all those survival mechanics to be in! And doors! And doors to outhouses! And if you don't take your character for a shit every day your character gets slowed down and cranky. And then sometimes you have to sit out of fights, which cripples the 4-man group, because your character has the shits. Talk about immersion! Everyone will love the game, and at the same time hate how unreliable your character is and it'll be a huge confusing mess for people who want a game they wouldn't actually enjoy playing!

Oh, and there should be illness, too, so if your character catches a bad virus they won't be able to log in for a few weeks. Sorry, guys, I haven't been logging in because my character was sick. Hey, it's no problem, it's just so immersive we were glad our 4 man group couldn't keep progressing!

There's a very fine line between aesthetic flavor being added to a game, and having it become tedious. Actually, no, it's a really broad line. Anything that makes you log into the game and then have to spend time getting ready to spend time getting ready to play the game means you're not playing the game. If the game becomes as much about preparing to play the game, it will suck. So, log in, prepare to play by talking to friends about grouping or running to a group, then play. Not, log in, prepare to play by checking your food, prepare to play by sleeping off your tired meter, prepare to play by waiting out weather patterns, etc, and THEN prepare to play by organizing and running to a group, and THEN finally getting to actually play. No thanks. The more steps you create between logging in and actually playing, the more it sucks.

I used to hate in EQ having to wait on people because they had to run to town to bank to exchange their money to lighter currency and buy food. It didn't make it feel more like a world, but less like a game I was actually getting to play as I waited for fuckers to finish their chores.

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popsicledeath_sl said:

A lot of the EQ nostalgia is due to the nature of the game, it's timing, etc, guilds/groups were forced to admit members we didn't really like or want to invite. Such members were asocial fuckwads and mistook others 'needing' them in the group/guild for 'wanting' them. While the rest of us had problem members to deal with as a necessary evil, in their minds these players had finally made friends!

So, 15 years later, they want a game that forces as much grouping and dependency and downtime as possible, because they subconsciously know it's the only way others will want (errr, be willing) to play with them and they'll have made friends once again.

Because for all the bullshit about how EQ made player reputations matter, there were a few examples of players getting blackballed, but far more instances of putting up with some asshole or idiot because you needed their character and they were at least smart enough to re-roll for the 3rd time to a class that was needed.

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