Well, now what?
- Thread starter kitsune
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you may very well be retarded. YOU MEAN PEOPLE WHO WERE FAMILIAR WITH A GAME WERE ABLE TO ADVANCE FASTER? SAY IT ISN'T SO.
and your assessment of the mmo community is a joke.
fanaskin
Well known agitator
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the main thingsthat seperates EQ that I noticed is the slow pace of combat, this allowed you to talk and think during combat, it really does change everything when you are allowed to look away from the screen for a second.
I noticed the same thing lanning chivalry a midevil combat game, then the lan switched to battlefield 3, in chivalry there was alot of smack talking, joking, and talking in the lan because the pace of combat was slow enough to allow it, in battlefield 3 it demanded so much of your attention the lan fell silent and ultimatly was less enjoyable because nobody could really break their concentration or risk death at any moment.
I noticed the same thing lanning chivalry a midevil combat game, then the lan switched to battlefield 3, in chivalry there was alot of smack talking, joking, and talking in the lan because the pace of combat was slow enough to allow it, in battlefield 3 it demanded so much of your attention the lan fell silent and ultimatly was less enjoyable because nobody could really break their concentration or risk death at any moment.
I know the genre better than anyone. The only ignorant one is you for not seeing EQ's obvious depth. Your posts are also always totally retarded and totally on the offensive which says to me that you are frustrated by your retardation.
Only like 1% of people ever did quests, nobody cares.
Nobody ever said otherwise.
It's just personal preference. I would ask, what do you even want to progress on to? If all you care about is raiding with 40 other douchebags then why not just make a game that is all about raiding, have a server browser and jump straight in. You don't need big expensive virtual worlds for stuff like that. The whole point of EQ was that it was a world you had to survive in or rage quit. You sound like the rage quit type. I was more interested in figuring out how to beat it.
Only a dumb fucking 12 year old would even think like that. I am guessing your first game was WoW? It was EQ that invented all that stuff. There were warriors and clerics and wizards long before EQ, but EQ was the game which made people organize everything in to such strict archetypes and roles. EQ created the players who demanded a tank / dps / CC, and you are just some little johnny come lately who thinks he is special because he knows this stuff 13 years later. Congrats captain hindsight.
No actually it wouldn't. The average modern MMO player would die at level 1 and not know where his corpse is because there's no map, then they would fucking whine about it in chat and rage quit calling the game gay. I see people like that all the time in Vanguard, and Vanguard is a pussy's game compared to the original EQ.
No and like that stupid little Popsicle kid, I doubt you even played EQ until about 2008 or something. So it's no wonder you don't understand it in context.
Wrong, I am playing EQ right now, it's great. Give Popsicle his personality back, you stole it from him.
What?
Pancreas
Vyemm Raider
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Like it was stated earlier, early EQ had very basic combat mechanics, but the margins for error were smaller than today's games. And when you failed, which was sure to happen, it took much longer to pick up the pieces. That makes things more difficult as a whole.
Every group was essentially like riding a wave. Things were smooth as silk so long as you could stay on top of them. However if you started to fall behind on spawns or got trained, or let a runner slip away, or had a mezz break, or any number of other things happen, things could crash quick and probably would end up in a wipe. And once you wiped you were at a disadvantage from when you started and needed to pull in extra resources just to get back to 0.
On top of that you were getting less information in a harder to process format than modern MMO's. There were no threat meters or centralized UI's in the early EQ I played. Information was sparse. You were running around and using intuition some of the time to make the right decisions.
Also communication between players was limited. I never used a ventrillo or teamspeak server in EARLY EQ. Macros were helpful in supplementing the poor combat text, but you usually didn't have people shouting orders mid fight to much effect. A lot of it was careful planning before the pull, then execution.
Modern MMo's have broken down many of the information barriers, with UI's giving extremely detailed information on player performance and MOB behavior. And there are tools which allow players to shift tactics on the fly and respond much more quickly.
And the biggest factor which erodes the difficulty of the modern MMO is recovery time from failure. You can have an entire raid back up and ready for the next attempt in minutes. If it takes more than 10 minutes to get your raid ready again then either you took a piss break or it's time to start calling people lazy ass holes. Because you can get in dozens of attempts in a short period of time, even if the actions per minute and reflex skill required to pass an encounter are higher, the overall chances a group will never pass an encounter is greatly reduced. You will simply learn the encounter quicker and be much less likely to give up in frustration.
And that in a way is it's own kind of tedium. Repetition. EQ had plenty of it for sure, but modern mmo's with their reduced recovery and completion times heap repetition on the players heads to try and prolong the life of content.
So EQ had time to complete being lengthy, Modern mmo's have number of completions being numerous. Both can be tedious.
Every group was essentially like riding a wave. Things were smooth as silk so long as you could stay on top of them. However if you started to fall behind on spawns or got trained, or let a runner slip away, or had a mezz break, or any number of other things happen, things could crash quick and probably would end up in a wipe. And once you wiped you were at a disadvantage from when you started and needed to pull in extra resources just to get back to 0.
On top of that you were getting less information in a harder to process format than modern MMO's. There were no threat meters or centralized UI's in the early EQ I played. Information was sparse. You were running around and using intuition some of the time to make the right decisions.
Also communication between players was limited. I never used a ventrillo or teamspeak server in EARLY EQ. Macros were helpful in supplementing the poor combat text, but you usually didn't have people shouting orders mid fight to much effect. A lot of it was careful planning before the pull, then execution.
Modern MMo's have broken down many of the information barriers, with UI's giving extremely detailed information on player performance and MOB behavior. And there are tools which allow players to shift tactics on the fly and respond much more quickly.
And the biggest factor which erodes the difficulty of the modern MMO is recovery time from failure. You can have an entire raid back up and ready for the next attempt in minutes. If it takes more than 10 minutes to get your raid ready again then either you took a piss break or it's time to start calling people lazy ass holes. Because you can get in dozens of attempts in a short period of time, even if the actions per minute and reflex skill required to pass an encounter are higher, the overall chances a group will never pass an encounter is greatly reduced. You will simply learn the encounter quicker and be much less likely to give up in frustration.
And that in a way is it's own kind of tedium. Repetition. EQ had plenty of it for sure, but modern mmo's with their reduced recovery and completion times heap repetition on the players heads to try and prolong the life of content.
So EQ had time to complete being lengthy, Modern mmo's have number of completions being numerous. Both can be tedious.
WoW, as of MoP.
It's shitty design and someone will get fired over it when subs tank again.
Tmac
Adventurer
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I'll bite.
1. This takes the strain off individual performance and gives the underachievers a share of the pie, if they share a guild tag with the overachievers. The individual who performs best will still be at the top of the chart, but his guild will also share in his glory and therefore the underachievers will also share in the glory.
2. If you want to focus on community, is it wise to cast all the spotlight on individuals? The system you describe sounds a lot like Call of Duty. There's not a game out there with less community, however, if you made it a hybrid that reflected a lot of the WoW raid leaderboards before Battle.net, where you could see how well each guild stacked up against each other on a server, I think it would help build more community.
The familiarity ladder would work like: Factions > Guilds > Individuals. Effectively giving people an additional outlet to show pride in, fight for, and trash talk. All the best lulz happen between guilds.
Take WoW's dungeon finder for example, how much better would it be if the dungeon finder tried to group you with the same people over and over again. Instead of grouping with randomplayerXY746 for dungeons, what if the dungeon finder prioritized people you'd completed dungeons with before. Basing the priority a player got on the success rate of your dungeon.
Complete DungeonA with PlayerZ 1x and he immediately has priority over other players in the dungeon finder you haven't completed a dungeon with. Complete DungeonA with PlayerZ twice and he now has a higher priority over players you've only completed 1 dungeon with. Essentially, you make it easier to get groups to do dungeons by increasing the pool, while prioritizing players you're familiar with. This way you can have your cake and eat it too; create content that is more easily accessible, while also creating a sense of familiarity with the community.
For example, FactionX is sucking it up on ServerA, so the top guild from FactionX goes to the other two factions to discuss a potential server transfer into ServerA/FactionX by GuildDooDoo on ServerB. The other two factions discuss the transfer and demand some sort of tribute in exchange for the approval of GuildDooDoo's server transfer.
If WoW had included higher level content alongside that in Duskwood/Westfall or at least created incentive for higher levels to travel there, I think it would've made for a much better experience for lower level players. Given, that if you have higher level players around lower level players, there's going to be griefing. The solution to this is merely to create incentives for other higher level players to prevent it. I think the corpse looting is a pretty good one.
Tackling is a cool feature if the lowbie gets caught regardless of the help he gets with tracking.
If the server is a success after another 3 months, maybe offer another one like it, or if it's a failure, try out another server. I think one of the weirdest parts of MMO's is that dev's never seem to listen to the community in situations like this. They either totally ignore cries for a new server or actually release another server, but then ignore the changes requested by the players.
OK. So, I dig the idea of having leaderboards. But, I would suggest that the leaderboards be based on guilds or at least emphasize the guild involved. The reason I say this is because I believe there's more benefit in giving a community street cred, rather than to individuals. Why?
1. This takes the strain off individual performance and gives the underachievers a share of the pie, if they share a guild tag with the overachievers. The individual who performs best will still be at the top of the chart, but his guild will also share in his glory and therefore the underachievers will also share in the glory.
2. If you want to focus on community, is it wise to cast all the spotlight on individuals? The system you describe sounds a lot like Call of Duty. There's not a game out there with less community, however, if you made it a hybrid that reflected a lot of the WoW raid leaderboards before Battle.net, where you could see how well each guild stacked up against each other on a server, I think it would help build more community.
The familiarity ladder would work like: Factions > Guilds > Individuals. Effectively giving people an additional outlet to show pride in, fight for, and trash talk. All the best lulz happen between guilds.
So, I agree that what makes MMO's great is the sense of community, but I don't think limiting the amount of people to 100 per server is the way to do it. I mean, think about how empty the server would be on off-peak hours. You need a high population to create the feeling of a living environment. Instead of minimizing server size, I think the answer is to figure out ways to funnel the 100 people you're referencing, into content together over the course of time. Inevitably, there's always people in MMO's who play the same way we do the only problem being that it's hard to find them and even once we find them, figuring out that we would enjoy playing together.Draegan_sl said:
Take WoW's dungeon finder for example, how much better would it be if the dungeon finder tried to group you with the same people over and over again. Instead of grouping with randomplayerXY746 for dungeons, what if the dungeon finder prioritized people you'd completed dungeons with before. Basing the priority a player got on the success rate of your dungeon.
Complete DungeonA with PlayerZ 1x and he immediately has priority over other players in the dungeon finder you haven't completed a dungeon with. Complete DungeonA with PlayerZ twice and he now has a higher priority over players you've only completed 1 dungeon with. Essentially, you make it easier to get groups to do dungeons by increasing the pool, while prioritizing players you're familiar with. This way you can have your cake and eat it too; create content that is more easily accessible, while also creating a sense of familiarity with the community.
I think people saw the problem with this type of system in GuildWars2. When you have the opportunity to abandon ship at any given opportunity, people will always take a "grass is greener" approach over building community. I think a cool solution would be to force guilds into a bid system if they want to join a new server/faction. Essentially create a server-transfer-queue for guilds that had to be approved by the top 1-3 guilds in each faction. In one way it would add a new political element to the game and it would also ensure that no faction got screwed in the transfer process.Draegan_sl said:
For example, FactionX is sucking it up on ServerA, so the top guild from FactionX goes to the other two factions to discuss a potential server transfer into ServerA/FactionX by GuildDooDoo on ServerB. The other two factions discuss the transfer and demand some sort of tribute in exchange for the approval of GuildDooDoo's server transfer.
I like what you have to say on this topic, I would just like to add that one of the biggest fails WoW achieved on design was the recycling of old zones. I think it is a terrible idea to zone off low/middle/high end content. It creates a ghost-town effect in the lowbie areas shortly after release, when the game is actually in its prime. It also gives low/middle level players a feeling that the game world isn't alive as it actually is.Draegan_sl said:
If WoW had included higher level content alongside that in Duskwood/Westfall or at least created incentive for higher levels to travel there, I think it would've made for a much better experience for lower level players. Given, that if you have higher level players around lower level players, there's going to be griefing. The solution to this is merely to create incentives for other higher level players to prevent it. I think the corpse looting is a pretty good one.
I like it.Draegan_sl said:
I think tracking is a cool feature, especially for gank/grief prevention of lower levels in zones further away from Home-base. I also think a cool measure of this would be to make lower level characters more difficult to track and higher level characters more easily tracked. I think of it in the same sense that while Hobbits are a weaker race/people, they've got the benefit of being sneakier. In the same way, the more powerful you become, the less you care about covering up your tracks.Draegan_sl said:
Tackling is a cool feature if the lowbie gets caught regardless of the help he gets with tracking.
Call me old fashioned but I don't like the idea of being able to port somewhere in a non-instanced world. Instead, a happy medium might be to have some sort of travel mechanism activate in every town that will aid in getting you to the event more quickly. This way you've still got to work your way out of your current situation, but you don't actually have to hoof it all the way to the event.Draegan_sl said:
I like the idea, but tier the events to involve more people. Create guild, group, and individual tiers, so that the top guilds get to duke it out, the best pre-made groups get to duke it out, and the best individuals get to duke it out. This way there's something for everyone while still maintaining winners and losers. You're also increasing the opportunity for trash talk and drama.Draegan_sl said:
Sometimes having too many options is a bad thing. I think on initial release you should only have 1 type of server and force everyone to play together. Then a couple of months after release advertise the coming of a new server. Talk it up, get people excited about it, and then open it up in month three. This will be something outside of patch notes and game content that players can get excited about. Plus, if your game's sucking, players might hope it's the, "This could turn it around!", server.Draegan_sl said:
If the server is a success after another 3 months, maybe offer another one like it, or if it's a failure, try out another server. I think one of the weirdest parts of MMO's is that dev's never seem to listen to the community in situations like this. They either totally ignore cries for a new server or actually release another server, but then ignore the changes requested by the players.
Tredge
Vyemm Raider
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Knowledge is power.
EQ provided this scenario. The lower margin of error, the death penalty, where to best farm XP, gear that mattered - all required knowledge in order to succeed at the game.
Modern MMO's (with a few notable exceptions) work against this fundamental concept. They want everyone to have the same chance at success and the learning curve to be as low as possible in order to serve the masses.
What they forget is that this power curve is what drives people and their passion for a game. The game becomes meaningless without a power curve.
Everything that we think of that made EQ great comes down to power curve in my opinion. It was ruined by people who made compelling arguments to developers about "fairness" and "balance". We have not recovered.
EQ provided this scenario. The lower margin of error, the death penalty, where to best farm XP, gear that mattered - all required knowledge in order to succeed at the game.
Modern MMO's (with a few notable exceptions) work against this fundamental concept. They want everyone to have the same chance at success and the learning curve to be as low as possible in order to serve the masses.
What they forget is that this power curve is what drives people and their passion for a game. The game becomes meaningless without a power curve.
Everything that we think of that made EQ great comes down to power curve in my opinion. It was ruined by people who made compelling arguments to developers about "fairness" and "balance". We have not recovered.
Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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No, no you don't. And everytime you post in any mmo thread, you highlight that. You are supertouch 2.0, except you take up entire pages with nonsense.
People who actually played EQ don't have the ridiculous feelings you do about the game. Your ignorance of the game and its mechanics pretty much highlights just how little you actually played it. Nobody did quests... Did you start playing in like... DoD or something? 90% of the fucking population did quests. What, you never handed bone chips in to that faggot HE near Felwithe? Or orc belts to the FP guys? Or you know... those little thing called Epic QUESTS? You literally have no idea what you are talking about, ma'am. With the sheer volume of nonsense you manage to fit into each one of your posts, it is substantially more likely that you are popsickle's nostalgia troll account. Because the shit you remember? Isn't even close to what the reality was at the time.
Plus your ideas are generally completely bad, no matter what the topic is. <--- That is the first opinion in this post.
Thankfully, SOE doesn't listen to silly people like you. Also, in before one of the tard crew refers to EQ as a sandbox.
What we need is a reality television show based on "hardcore" online game players. (please god no *facepalm*)
why is there no facepalm smiley?
why is there no facepalm smiley?
Just because you are a retarded asshole who doesn't like me because I call you out on your stupidity, doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about. Give me just one example of how I don't understand MMO's?
Wtf? I played EQ an enormous amount. I started in 1999 just weeks after it was released, and I've played it almost constantly since then. And I'm still playing it today in EQ Mac. Didn't you read my post in the other thread about how the combat works? Give me just ONE example of how I don't know the game. I question your experience with it because you say stupid shit, like it was easy. You can't use the same accusation at me for no good reason.
You talk about quests like it's WoW or something, it wasn't. In original EQ there was only one quest for your starter class. Collect 4 bone chips or 4 spider silks or whatever else. You hand it in and get an item, but then that's it. There are no more quests for your class. You might find one or two random ones in the town like the drunkard or whatever, but your next 50 levels is spent grinding not questing.
Orc belts are just the Human equivalent of the drunkard. It's not so much questing as it is just one random quest. There were a few more like that, but it's not really questing. Also, the epics did not exist in early EQ. When I said nobody did quests, I am mostly right. They did the newbie quest that's one, they did orc pelts in highpass, and a few people did things like the Stein of Moggok. But that's it. It wasn't a questing game and only a nooby come lately would think otherwise. Even EQ Mac is a lot different. There is a whole set of newbie quests and the Temple of Sol Ro is in. But none of that was in early EQ. And it's still not really a questing game seeing as 95% of your time is just spent grinding mobs, not questing.
Give one example. I've already showed you how you are talking shit about quests.
No it's like the 8th stupid opinion, and again, give at least one example so you can show how clueless you are.
How do you know who SOE does and doesn't listen to?
@Tmac
Thanks for the reply. Here are some responses to a few things you brought up:
Server size: You can have 10000 people on the server, I'm not limiting that. Only you start a queue at, like 100 people. Small world, and the population should accommodate that.
Battlegrounds: This content is more like a once in a while thing. It's not like battlegrounds/warfronts today where you queue up and wait for it to pop. It pops you go. It's about a quick bit of fun.
Leaderboards and Guilds: I want this game to be about individuals. I don't want people to feel like they have to join guilds at all. The difference between this game and say CoD is that it's persistent.
Game Types: I want this game to be a mix of WOW where you have a character forever and a game like Diablo where people play hardcore or play ladders or races. You can have a f ew different options. I like games that rotate and feel fresh. Having characters for 10 years is boring. Make a name for yourself based on what you can do with your character.
Tournaments: These are quick things that are small and can be followed. I would want to attempt to make an esport out of it, and I would like some localized small group fighting tournaments that can easily be followed and people start collecting fans. You can only do this if you have individuals not large groups.
Thanks for the reply. Here are some responses to a few things you brought up:
Server size: You can have 10000 people on the server, I'm not limiting that. Only you start a queue at, like 100 people. Small world, and the population should accommodate that.
Battlegrounds: This content is more like a once in a while thing. It's not like battlegrounds/warfronts today where you queue up and wait for it to pop. It pops you go. It's about a quick bit of fun.
Leaderboards and Guilds: I want this game to be about individuals. I don't want people to feel like they have to join guilds at all. The difference between this game and say CoD is that it's persistent.
Game Types: I want this game to be a mix of WOW where you have a character forever and a game like Diablo where people play hardcore or play ladders or races. You can have a f ew different options. I like games that rotate and feel fresh. Having characters for 10 years is boring. Make a name for yourself based on what you can do with your character.
Tournaments: These are quick things that are small and can be followed. I would want to attempt to make an esport out of it, and I would like some localized small group fighting tournaments that can easily be followed and people start collecting fans. You can only do this if you have individuals not large groups.
I would like to critique your MMO design too, but I can't motivate myself to read it on account of you being a dumb shit who regularly makes clueless comments about games.
Cinge
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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EQ1's design would make for a horrible game today.
The reason it worked so well back in the day was the internet / technology / and online gamers were different. I know it's shocking to think that things might change over time but that's pretty much what it comes down too.
The reason games are made the way they are today is because of the way the internet / technology / and online gamers have changed.
Instancing came about because of the way online game third party scripting / rmt botting companies took over shit and owned it hard. There are other ways to deal with that problem other than instancing, but removing instances is like removing the medicine because of a side affect. It won't make the disease that lead to the prescription go away.
Technology / the Internet became more stable and faster allowing for things like being able to browse information sites while playing a game and for more than a handful of people to raid in the same spot without lagging out a zone or disconnecting.
Guilds / gaming cliques today don't have the need to restrict it's membership like guilds did back then. The only limit today on guilds is how willing your members are to farm up loot for newbies. Back then you had to limit your guild size because if you had to many people gathered together for a raid the game would actually stop working right.
Also, player knowledge sharing is vastly superior than it was back then. It wasn't possible to document and disseminate the entirety of a games content in a few days and actively run 5+ webpages while triple boxing and having some third party programs automating some of your actions for you.
It really was a different experience back then that I doubt will be possible to recapture. Back then, even if you wanted to metagame and learn everything you could about the game, depending on the knowledge you sought out, it could be extremely difficult to find the information you were looking for if it existed at all.
Shitty knowledge sharing added that sense of mystery to the game world. There is no mystery in games these days because gamers as a whole have become better. Our knowledge is better.
Also, better knowledge of scripting / bots makes it to where more games today are released with integrated botting / automated character action scripting tools because they realize it's common place now and unstoppable. People in the past didn't rely heavily on these automated programs to help improve their gameplay. Automated programs can add new and different layers of challenge to a game but it certainly isn't the same "gaming experience" as existed back then (well for the majority of players leave your epeen I was the first haxor!!1! at the door please).
Those are a few reasons why I think that EQ1 would be shitty today but awesome back then.
"The solutions of yesterday for tomorrow" is a terrible slogan also.
Games will have to continue to evolve and there is no point hoping the failed ideas of yesterday will work today. EQ1 turned into a shit fest because of all the fixes they tried to stop the change in gamers. Reverting back will not make those fundamental problems go away.
Tmac
Adventurer
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Gotcha.
Start a queue for bg's or events? Since there are no instances what would you queue for?Draegan_sl said:
Ah. So, like Alterac Valley?Draegan_sl said: