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

popsicledeath_sl said:

First person.

That one mechanic alone was huge. People bitch about not being able to see the ass of their mangina fantasy, but seriously, the reason people want third-person is because it's easier. Not better. Easier. I played an ugly ass Ogre around the time the feasible scroll-back third person view hit EQ. I didn't want to stare at my character's ass, but I sure as hell used that limited third-person view because of it's advantages.

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OK perhaps you are correct, but I spent a lot of time designing my toon's outfit and I wanna admire it while I am slaughtering mobs. Oh I like to see how awesome I look on my mount too. Most of the games I play let you scroll into first person.
A dungeon designed for first person with forced first person could be interesting though. Yes.
I suppose this could be a reason why FIRST PERSON shooters are so popular. I remember palms sweating in that wolfenstein game "SHIT! NAZI!" and Doom where all you saw was that phallic rocket launcher (my fave).

But in an MMO, I would totally not feel connected to my character if I couldn't see her. I think all first person, all the time would create that arcade feeling you mentioned before. You die and oh well, put in two more quarters and let's keep rolling.

On the subject of dungeons, I am a fan of entrance requirements. If you're gonna make the dungeons scale with level or whatever, I kinda like being required to complete a quest for entrance or get flagged or whatever.

TragedyAnn_sl said:

OK perhaps you are correct, but I spent a lot of time designing my toon's outfit and I wanna admire it while I am slaughtering mobs. Oh I like to see how awesome I look on my mount too. Most of the games I play let you scroll into first person.
A dungeon designed for first person with forced first person could be interesting though. Yes.
I suppose this could be a reason why FIRST PERSON shooters are so popular. I remember palms sweating in that wolfenstein game "SHIT! NAZI!" and Doom where all you saw was that phallic rocket launcher (my fave).

But in an MMO, I would totally not feel connected to my character if I couldn't see her. I think all first person, all the time would create that arcade feeling you mentioned before. You die and oh well, put in two more quarters and let's keep rolling.

On the subject of dungeons, I am a fan of entrance requirements. If you're gonna make the dungeons scale with level or whatever, I kinda like being required to complete a quest for entrance or get flagged or whatever.

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Females.....where it is literally possible to spend 2.5 hours in character creation..................

There are some first person games which let you hold a key and it rotates the view around your character externally, so you can see your gear. But you can't actually play like that, it's just to admire yourself, then you go back to first person and keep playing.

Merlin_sl said:

Females.....where it is literally possible to spend 2.5 hours in character creation..................

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And I have and do!! haha
I seem to remember when I first played VG I was able to customize my character a LOT more than later on. Maybe I'm on crack, but I remember being able to control details down to breast size.
My favorite part of Quake when I first played THAT game was designing my skin and being awed by the idea that other players could see MY skin.
But I realize I represent a very small minority.

I would think you're a very small minority but shitty MMOs with third person view and ...breast sliders keep getting pumped out. Meanwhile immersive 1st person games in general are getting hard to find.

You know back in the day when the cool kids played that one game we would actually log out, or just admire our pimp character on our next log in to the char select screen and that worked out well enough for most of us.

"Back in the day" you had one style of whichever armour your character class wore with tints slapped on top. Hardly the same.

Gnomedolf_sl said:

Back in the day.....when we had to level our toons up hill, both ways.

We're like grumpy old men, sitting at the bar, drinking our whiskey sours, and longing for the good ol' days. Days that are long gone.

EQ is the best gaming experience I have ever had. I love it. But, I just don't see anyone making a new game with those types of mechanics. Brad may be the only one who could, but would he want to?

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Up hill, in Kithicor forest, at night.

Oh the good ole days for when your last words of your character would be "Hail a Festering Hag"...

Mahes_sl said:

Oh the good ole days for when your last words of your character would be "Hail, Sirran the Lunatic"...

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Fixed

JordanJax_sl said:

The leveling curve became a complete joke after they sped it up and i'm almost positive this was pre-launch.

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Not Sigil. In Feb 2007 they actually reduced xp from 3/4 dots because they were giving too much XP versus what was the expected curve. It was SOE that completely fucked the curve up and made it so you always outleveled content.

Another reason why SOE should never be trusted with MMOs anymore.

With respect to other discussions.

-Quest Hubs aren't necessiariily bad. Original late beta to pre-SOE VG had hubs for every area, but there was no "direction" no "golden path" hubs. You wandered around found an area you thought was cool and you could do the quests there or just look for Boss mobs to kill for loot.

It's one reason why VG was so close to my ideal game. There was enough direction for people who wanted it (and for when you were in a mood to quest yourself) but you were also rewarded for just dungeon crawling w/o any quest in mind. Then the XP for quests got increased, the XP curve got reduced and it became like late Vanilla WoW - no point in dungeon questing below level 40 or so as you'll get good enough stuff from quests to tide you over until you can look for end-game heroics and legendaries.

TragedyAnn_sl said:

And I have and do!! haha
I seem to remember when I first played VG I was able to customize my character a LOT more than later on. Maybe I'm on crack, but I remember being able to control details down to breast size.
My favorite part of Quake when I first played THAT game was designing my skin and being awed by the idea that other players could see MY skin.
But I realize I represent a very small minority.

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Yep - but I think this is Sigil not SOE. In late Beta VG you could create truly gross and or demonic characters with the sliders. I think they limited this by release. Too bad - as you could make a really bad ass looking dark elf.

I recall from late beta that the XP curve was really perfect. XP gains were slow-ish and it forced you to have to explore and really see multiple areas in any given level range.

Given the size of Vanguard I really liked that... felt very immersive and the game just felt so full of content it was fantastic.

Then of course they raised xp rates and that cool benefit above was gone.

Most people just want to play a game they feel is worth playing. In the land of MMO's theres a lot of time devotion required, even WoW has a steep amount of time and tedious bullshit one must go through to play. When Rift first came out, people were all over that shit and it was a great game... til the negativity spread like wildfire.

Brad making a game period will give it the opportunity to be a game people will play, he just needs to not plant any seeds of negativity(nerfs and broken shit that shouldn't be there if you've already had say, 6 months of beta)

The formula is there, just do it, put some effort in and have a working path for people, they will give you all the time needed to add more content if their frothing at the mouth for it. (p99 for example, lol)

tad10_sl said:

Yep - but I think this is Sigil not SOE. In late Beta VG you could create truly gross and or demonic characters with the sliders. I think they limited this by release. Too bad - as you could make a really bad ass looking dark elf.

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The uglies were ugly, but it was an acceptable tradoff if you ask me. Vanguard is one of the only games that has progressively gotten worse/uglier characters models/creation during beta, and then remarkably after launch as well. There's a reason some of the best screenshots for the game that are even still used for marketing are from early on.

Then again, I also remember my computer taking a dumb every time a new character came into view.

Gnomedolf_sl said:

Back in the day.....when we had to level our toons up hill, both ways.

We're like grumpy old men, sitting at the bar, drinking our whiskey sours, and longing for the good ol' days. Days that are long gone.

EQ is the best gaming experience I have ever had. I love it. But, I just don't see anyone making a new game with those types of mechanics. Brad may be the only one who could, but would he want to?

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Someone will, someday.. Then we will see that complexity return... likely in droves. Take Skyrim for example it is certainly not WoW and with the sales it has had, you bet that MMOs and future RPGs will be more of an open world experience, or at least influenced by Skyrim.

Gnomedolf_sl said:

EQ is the best gaming experience I have ever had.

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ditto

Gnomedolf_sl said:

EQ is the best gaming experience I have ever had.

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Somewhat torn on that regard: yes for community, no for gameplay, yes for danger, no for complexity. I could go on forever.
My end judgement is that I played no MMO as of today that was perfect for me in all its aspects, I found some good ones here and some good ones there.

EQ, WoW, GW1, GW2, Rift, SWtoR and a bunch of other experiments were the games that shaped my MMO addiction over the years. Some are still doing it.
I love them all, even if I question some of their design decisions.

Bruman_sl said:

Even the die-hards that still raid in EQ to this day get upset when a new expansion (like the one that literally just came out) doesn't have upgrades.

People want their treadmill. /shrug. EQ's treadmill is still, generally speaking, better than say, WoW, where you get exponentially better during one expansion's content patches.

I don't think we'll get EQ-like equipment though, which I really wish we would. Simply because I hate spending the entire time leveling constantly replacing any and all gear. I understand there's downsides to that too, but I think there's a better solution than throwaway gear every 5 levels.

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I think more variation and options are better tbh. There shouldn't really be one "best in slot" item, there should be multiple depending on the situation. I think elemental resists should be brought back. Having people make different sets for different situations is always cool, and gives them something else to do other then just try to attain that "one" best item.

There's a lot that could be done in MMOs, to be honest. Why can't I go to a pub in the game world, and play a round of chess, or poker, or something, with another player? Just me and a few people sitting around playing other games while we don't feel like grouping or doing quests. You can even add prizes and what not, Grandmaster title for the highest ranked Chess player in game? That would be cool as hell.

I just feel like MMOs have been waaay overly stream lined. It's more game than it is fantasy world now.

tad10_sl said:

Not Sigil. In Feb 2007 they actually reduced xp from 3/4 dots because they were giving too much XP versus what was the expected curve. It was SOE that completely fucked the curve up and made it so you always outleveled content.

Another reason why SOE should never be trusted with MMOs anymore.

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That was the killer for me. Despite it's flaws VG was still a good game imo with a great fantasy world to explore. But when they made a joke of the exp. curve...that just killed it. Maybe they were already in desperation mode or something but to enable every player to move warp speed towards an end-game that didnt' exist was just baffling. That also had the impact of making any good item you picked up (prior to end game) essentially worthless since in a week or less it would be worthless to you.