I never made it to endgame in WoW, but there were 2 dungeons that always had me coming back for more...
Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep.
They were both very low level, but they were some extremely well made dungeons imo. I loved the feeling it gave you.
I must have run Deadmines like 50 times and SFK like 20. Deadmines STILL doesn't get old for me. I no longer play WoW, but those are some of my best memories from my time there.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Guys! I'm hopelessly lost in a mountain of mole hills! Them damn moles!
I do not really like having to chase down gear at all.
When a game makes it so that gear affects my character's performance then it basically forces me to get the good gear for my level to not suck and to advance. That is annoying because it is both repetitive and restrictive to how I want to look.
If you make loot aquired from dungeons then it just forces me to do the dungeon over and over when I otherwise wouldn't want to. This is just a gameplay lengthing tactic that tries to make use of dungeons after the point where people get tired of them.
If you make it crafted then it just forces me to keep buying it off players to replace my old/broken armor. This is just a system to cater to the crafter demographic and make them feel important but to the adventurer it does not add any fun and is just a burden.
I prefer the CoX method where I look how I want, you could add dropped or crafted clothing pieces for me to collect but it should be an option.
If you were to make dungeons instead of using the allure of loot make them interesting, if you put them in an instance then you can add all kinds of interactivity with the dungeon and even change up the creature spawns, dungeons could be closer to a senario from Left for Dead rather than a series of rooms with badies in them.
Also the core game, like fighting, should be fun because if the thing you do 90% of the time is boring then you game is a bust not matter what.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
Grinding mobs on the off chance that one of them will drop some really good gear for you is a nuisance. If the dungeon itself is interesting, there's no need to put great loot there to get people to do it. If the dungeon is boring, essential loot doesn't make it less boring. It only makes it simultaneously boring and mandatory. That's a toxic recipe for an awful grinding game.
but tons of people play diablo for this exact reason
Pretty sure that 95%+ of the Diablo players during its prime (and perhaps even today) do NOT play for that reason. A relatively small percent of the population really wants to grind mindlessly for loot. Diablo also benefits from pretty nice gameplay, which helps it a lot and goes back to Quizzical's point.
Now, I do think there is a point to loot, but that point doesn't have to be done with loot. People like to have proof of their accomplishments. Some sense that things are different. That can be done by giving them loot, unique abilities, changing the game world, opening up more content, or many othe things. Loot is far from essential for this.
The entire point of Diablo was loot.
I don't know anyone who played Diablo to get loot. I know people who enjoyed getting loot in Diablo, but that is NOT why they played. People played it because it had very good gameplay. It also had a pretty good storyline. Thinking that people played it only to get loot is not at all accurate.
Funny, you don't know anyone who played for loot, and nearly everyone I knew were people who played for loot. Loot was basically the entire point of the game. Sure, the basic gameplay was great, and for that reason it was worthy of being a dungeon crawler. But itemization made it clear what the point of the game was. Magic find, varying stats, the possibility of finding a sub-par "uber" item, all in all the point was to make you kill bosses over and over in the hopes of finding uber lootz.
That being said, there are simply some people who do not play for loot, period. Nothing wrong with this, it's just their preferred method of gameplay. I knew some people who claimed that D2 was the most boring game ever made after initially completing the base game. I didn't agree, but I don't knock their opinion. After all, they're simply voting with their feet and moving to a game more interesting to them. As always, a game will have a population of people interested in it. There is no point going after those customers who don't find a particular style of gameplay fun. You just will never be able to please them. That's the beauty of choice and competition.
So back to the original question. Yes, I feel that hunting for loot is important to a mmo. In fact, it's the primary reason I play mmos and why I won't play a game like wow where I can't treasure hunt for myself and others (bop = shitty mechanic to me). However, I do enjoy deep crafting as well so I'm all for either treasure hunting for complete loot or crafting components.
If you make loot aquired from dungeons then it just forces me to do the dungeon over and over when I otherwise wouldn't want to. This is just a gameplay lengthing tactic that tries to make use of dungeons after the point where people get tired of them.
No, it is the result of trying to satisfy the many customers who enjoy treasure hunting. Most of these customers know full well that content is not endless, and thus have no problem crawling the same dungeons over and over. You're just a different type of customer, and a treasure hunting based game is obviously not your preference. Nothing wrong with this, just not what the designers were aiming for with the game. Thus, you need to find a game more suitable to your tastes.
I feel like it adds to a goal that even though people think the guy with the biggest weapon or the biggest shiney armor is just a guy that shows off his E-Peen, i feel like ever since diablo 2, that when I item grind or going for loot wether its by myself or with a small group of 5-6 players i feel like theres more fun there, more anticipation, more replayablity etc.
I think a mmorpg with out a rare equipment off mobs system just feels like another FPS. Its wierd. thats what really killed LOTOR for me or any game where crafting gives you the best gear because i feel like its taking away from the replayability or something that has always been common in an mmorpg.
Like I said in a previous post, I am cool with grinding for full gear or for crafting components, preferably both. You talked about enhancing replayability, and to me crafting and enhancements in addition to uber lootz adds a ton of replayability. I like my dungeon hunting, and indeed that's all I did when I played D2. But after playing SWG after D2, I realize there's a whole other world out there I was missing. Now, I still like to primarily treasure hunt, but I really like doing the other "mmo" aspects like crafting, playing the market, building player cities, hunting for SWG-style resources, etc. When you add these other aspects to the game, you will spend more time in the game doing varying activities for a much longer period of time than if you just dungeon crawl.
I just realized people always make a connection between dungeon crawling and "omg hardcore farming for that purple that won't F drop!" situations. That's the diablo model for loot, but games can have sweet pve without being chores (i.e. not just a gear treadmill). PvE games deserve one more chance.
But that is the topic of the thread - "dungeon crawling for loot" not "dungeon crawling". Or to quote him directly:
"I think a mmorpg with out a rare equipment off mobs system just feels like another FPS."
I think most people find adventuring with friends, be it dungeon or otherwise, to be fun. It's the "purple that won't F drop" that the OP is looking which several here are turned off by. The OP is talking about epics, not dungeon crawling.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
I feel the importance of loot has had a very detrimental effect on MMORPG communities. Take WoW's arena for example. If they took out the item rewards from the arenas, guess how many players would particpate. I agree that it is nice to have a goal or something to focus on in a game, but item rewards just seem like such a generic form of gratification, one that masks serious deficiencies, or perhaps even causes serious deficiencies in player interaction. Take away the loot from any treadmill game like WoW, and what are you left with?
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
IT doesnt necessarily have to be dungeon crawling but yes loot is an important part......It probably started in the old days when heroes used to slay dragons for the treasures they were guarding........I have played a couple games where loot/gear was not a factor....To me those games were very boring and got old very fast (TCoS is the most recent)....... Like most people I like to upgrade my gear and it is a nice carrot to keep many of us going in a game.
Well, loot is loot. It doesn't have to be just the best items. I like it when the overall drops of a dungeon are better than out in the world, as long as the dungeons are more challenging. Even in tabletop D&D there is a loot aspect. I wouldn't go just for loot as I explained in my first post: it's also about teamwork if I am teamed up with other people, it's about exploration, it's about character advancement through xp and money, not just loot. I like having things that I can sell for more than I normally would at my level.
I think DAoC had great dungeons. One had a choice between instanced task dungeons or aurelite dungeons if they wanted to primarily solo (though grouping was still possible), or you had the choice of the dungeons open to everyone. There were tons of niches to explore, mob spawns were pretty fast, the mobs were more challenging than world mobs, there was an overall higher xp bonus in dungeons though untouched mob spawns in the world could net more xp for short times, and quite simply there was a massive variety of loot and mobs to kill. Spindelhalla and Vendo Caverns are great examples. They were simply huge, difficult if you went in at the right level, and had mob trains in them (at least Vendo did with those bloody goblin guards). People needed to cooperate together to get through them even if not grouped up.
The problem with the more recent fantasy MMOs is that they don't have that in them. WoW is a bit tragic. I like the old, classic dungeons but so far I haven't come across a TBC or WotLK dungeon that has been as interesting and cool as Wailing Caverns or BRD.
Back in EvE. Started with BatMUD. Main MMOs have been EvE and DAoC.
I disaggree, going into a dungeon only for loot is the most boring part in EQ2 for me. And I prefer wide open dungeons over instanced crap. Instanced crap is always always always exactly the same when you go in
That would also elimante the need for these crappy BOP items.
By making boss mobs a timed spawn and tradeable evenchully everyone will get the item in one way or another.
By having the boss fight not only be challeneging but having the players them selfs fight over killing said boss adds to the excitement 10 fold.
To end this short and not go into crafting as well, its a good idea.
Dungeon crawling is awsome fun when the gameplay is awsomely fun. Diablo 2 was amazingly fun w/out uber godly gear, and it just got even more fun when you wtf pwnd everything.
I feel like it adds to a goal that even though people think the guy with the biggest weapon or the biggest shiney armor is just a guy that shows off his E-Peen, i feel like ever since diablo 2, that when I item grind or going for loot wether its by myself or with a small group of 5-6 players i feel like theres more fun there, more anticipation, more replayablity etc.
I think a mmorpg with out a rare equipment off mobs system just feels like another FPS. Its wierd. thats what really killed LOTOR for me or any game where crafting gives you the best gear because i feel like its taking away from the replayability or something that has always been common in an mmorpg.
One of the things I LOVE about LotRO is I don't have to dungeon crawl for equipment. I do it for the story and the exploration of it. I enjoy crafting, and the fact I can make great stuff that I don't have to grind a dungeon for...is GREAT. But that's just me. In this genre, there is a lot of different types of players.
Grinding mobs on the off chance that one of them will drop some really good gear for you is a nuisance. If the dungeon itself is interesting, there's no need to put great loot there to get people to do it. If the dungeon is boring, essential loot doesn't make it less boring. It only makes it simultaneously boring and mandatory. That's a toxic recipe for an awful grinding game.
but tons of people play diablo for this exact reason
Pretty sure that 95%+ of the Diablo players during its prime (and perhaps even today) do NOT play for that reason. A relatively small percent of the population really wants to grind mindlessly for loot. Diablo also benefits from pretty nice gameplay, which helps it a lot and goes back to Quizzical's point.
Now, I do think there is a point to loot, but that point doesn't have to be done with loot. People like to have proof of their accomplishments. Some sense that things are different. That can be done by giving them loot, unique abilities, changing the game world, opening up more content, or many othe things. Loot is far from essential for this.
The entire point of Diablo was loot.
Loot and the epic storyline with those epic cinematics kept many players playing for many years. MMOs should take a page out of Diablo for some success
One of the things I LOVE about LotRO is I don't have to dungeon crawl for equipment. I do it for the story and the exploration of it. I enjoy crafting, and the fact I can make great stuff that I don't have to grind a dungeon for...is GREAT. But that's just me. In this genre, there is a lot of different types of players.
I'm in your boat. I'd rather explore the world and raid the markets, collecting the pieces I need to craft something than fight one mob in one location over and over in hopes that he drops it.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
I agree with the op, I will repeat my post in the soul bound thread because I think it explains why.
...The soul bound system is added so that players cannot interfere with the value of the rewards as tokens are only gotten in special circumstances unlike gold. This plays a great role in preserving the prestige of the difficult encounters as an accomplishment at completion that cannot just simply be bought with gold. Gold though as a currency for every day items plays a valuable role in circulating less potent items.
diablo 2 wasnt about items?!?! did you even play the game? haha
"mooo mooo" ring any bells?..... hahaha.. bells...
This is an odd comment. I'm not sure if you are seriously proposing that Diablo was only about items or not. It does seem odd that you'd make such a statement, and then reference the Cow Level, which was awesome fun and certainly not loved because of the items therein.
Now, I haven't said that Diablo 2 didn't have a strong item element. What I was saying is there were many other more important parts of the game. Random maps helped to keep things from getting boring. Solid gameplay and a story where you played a central role also really helped keep you involved. Ramping difficulty with level and players helped keep things challenging even if you were working with others. Now, some people DID farm for items, but I think most players probably didn't farm for days on end killing the same boss over and over and over and over. That's a particular kind of hard core player. Items were important, but the game was not solely about items.
Unfortunately, some games are little more than Diablo with a few more dungeons and a lot less scaling with party members. That does lead to a stale end-game. Where you just kill the same monsters over and over for loot. MOST Diablo players did not engage in that sort of thing, instead happy to pay the one-time fee and enjoy the content a few times or more, but not endlessly grinding the last couple bosses like end-game MMOs expect.
Comments
I never made it to endgame in WoW, but there were 2 dungeons that always had me coming back for more...
Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep.
They were both very low level, but they were some extremely well made dungeons imo. I loved the feeling it gave you.
I must have run Deadmines like 50 times and SFK like 20. Deadmines STILL doesn't get old for me. I no longer play WoW, but those are some of my best memories from my time there.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guys! I'm hopelessly lost in a mountain of mole hills! Them damn moles!
I do not really like having to chase down gear at all.
When a game makes it so that gear affects my character's performance then it basically forces me to get the good gear for my level to not suck and to advance. That is annoying because it is both repetitive and restrictive to how I want to look.
If you make loot aquired from dungeons then it just forces me to do the dungeon over and over when I otherwise wouldn't want to. This is just a gameplay lengthing tactic that tries to make use of dungeons after the point where people get tired of them.
If you make it crafted then it just forces me to keep buying it off players to replace my old/broken armor. This is just a system to cater to the crafter demographic and make them feel important but to the adventurer it does not add any fun and is just a burden.
I prefer the CoX method where I look how I want, you could add dropped or crafted clothing pieces for me to collect but it should be an option.
If you were to make dungeons instead of using the allure of loot make them interesting, if you put them in an instance then you can add all kinds of interactivity with the dungeon and even change up the creature spawns, dungeons could be closer to a senario from Left for Dead rather than a series of rooms with badies in them.
Also the core game, like fighting, should be fun because if the thing you do 90% of the time is boring then you game is a bust not matter what.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
but tons of people play diablo for this exact reason
Pretty sure that 95%+ of the Diablo players during its prime (and perhaps even today) do NOT play for that reason. A relatively small percent of the population really wants to grind mindlessly for loot. Diablo also benefits from pretty nice gameplay, which helps it a lot and goes back to Quizzical's point.
Now, I do think there is a point to loot, but that point doesn't have to be done with loot. People like to have proof of their accomplishments. Some sense that things are different. That can be done by giving them loot, unique abilities, changing the game world, opening up more content, or many othe things. Loot is far from essential for this.
The entire point of Diablo was loot.
I don't know anyone who played Diablo to get loot. I know people who enjoyed getting loot in Diablo, but that is NOT why they played. People played it because it had very good gameplay. It also had a pretty good storyline. Thinking that people played it only to get loot is not at all accurate.
Funny, you don't know anyone who played for loot, and nearly everyone I knew were people who played for loot. Loot was basically the entire point of the game. Sure, the basic gameplay was great, and for that reason it was worthy of being a dungeon crawler. But itemization made it clear what the point of the game was. Magic find, varying stats, the possibility of finding a sub-par "uber" item, all in all the point was to make you kill bosses over and over in the hopes of finding uber lootz.
That being said, there are simply some people who do not play for loot, period. Nothing wrong with this, it's just their preferred method of gameplay. I knew some people who claimed that D2 was the most boring game ever made after initially completing the base game. I didn't agree, but I don't knock their opinion. After all, they're simply voting with their feet and moving to a game more interesting to them. As always, a game will have a population of people interested in it. There is no point going after those customers who don't find a particular style of gameplay fun. You just will never be able to please them. That's the beauty of choice and competition.
So back to the original question. Yes, I feel that hunting for loot is important to a mmo. In fact, it's the primary reason I play mmos and why I won't play a game like wow where I can't treasure hunt for myself and others (bop = shitty mechanic to me). However, I do enjoy deep crafting as well so I'm all for either treasure hunting for complete loot or crafting components.
No, it is the result of trying to satisfy the many customers who enjoy treasure hunting. Most of these customers know full well that content is not endless, and thus have no problem crawling the same dungeons over and over. You're just a different type of customer, and a treasure hunting based game is obviously not your preference. Nothing wrong with this, just not what the designers were aiming for with the game. Thus, you need to find a game more suitable to your tastes.
Like I said in a previous post, I am cool with grinding for full gear or for crafting components, preferably both. You talked about enhancing replayability, and to me crafting and enhancements in addition to uber lootz adds a ton of replayability. I like my dungeon hunting, and indeed that's all I did when I played D2. But after playing SWG after D2, I realize there's a whole other world out there I was missing. Now, I still like to primarily treasure hunt, but I really like doing the other "mmo" aspects like crafting, playing the market, building player cities, hunting for SWG-style resources, etc. When you add these other aspects to the game, you will spend more time in the game doing varying activities for a much longer period of time than if you just dungeon crawl.
But that is the topic of the thread - "dungeon crawling for loot" not "dungeon crawling". Or to quote him directly:
"I think a mmorpg with out a rare equipment off mobs system just feels like another FPS."
I think most people find adventuring with friends, be it dungeon or otherwise, to be fun. It's the "purple that won't F drop" that the OP is looking which several here are turned off by. The OP is talking about epics, not dungeon crawling.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
I feel the importance of loot has had a very detrimental effect on MMORPG communities. Take WoW's arena for example. If they took out the item rewards from the arenas, guess how many players would particpate. I agree that it is nice to have a goal or something to focus on in a game, but item rewards just seem like such a generic form of gratification, one that masks serious deficiencies, or perhaps even causes serious deficiencies in player interaction. Take away the loot from any treadmill game like WoW, and what are you left with?
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
IT doesnt necessarily have to be dungeon crawling but yes loot is an important part......It probably started in the old days when heroes used to slay dragons for the treasures they were guarding........I have played a couple games where loot/gear was not a factor....To me those games were very boring and got old very fast (TCoS is the most recent)....... Like most people I like to upgrade my gear and it is a nice carrot to keep many of us going in a game.
Well, loot is loot. It doesn't have to be just the best items. I like it when the overall drops of a dungeon are better than out in the world, as long as the dungeons are more challenging. Even in tabletop D&D there is a loot aspect. I wouldn't go just for loot as I explained in my first post: it's also about teamwork if I am teamed up with other people, it's about exploration, it's about character advancement through xp and money, not just loot. I like having things that I can sell for more than I normally would at my level.
I think DAoC had great dungeons. One had a choice between instanced task dungeons or aurelite dungeons if they wanted to primarily solo (though grouping was still possible), or you had the choice of the dungeons open to everyone. There were tons of niches to explore, mob spawns were pretty fast, the mobs were more challenging than world mobs, there was an overall higher xp bonus in dungeons though untouched mob spawns in the world could net more xp for short times, and quite simply there was a massive variety of loot and mobs to kill. Spindelhalla and Vendo Caverns are great examples. They were simply huge, difficult if you went in at the right level, and had mob trains in them (at least Vendo did with those bloody goblin guards). People needed to cooperate together to get through them even if not grouped up.
The problem with the more recent fantasy MMOs is that they don't have that in them. WoW is a bit tragic. I like the old, classic dungeons but so far I haven't come across a TBC or WotLK dungeon that has been as interesting and cool as Wailing Caverns or BRD.
Back in EvE. Started with BatMUD. Main MMOs have been EvE and DAoC.
That would also elimante the need for these crappy BOP items.
By making boss mobs a timed spawn and tradeable evenchully everyone will get the item in one way or another.
By having the boss fight not only be challeneging but having the players them selfs fight over killing said boss adds to the excitement 10 fold.
To end this short and not go into crafting as well, its a good idea.
Dungeon crawling is awsome fun when the gameplay is awsomely fun. Diablo 2 was amazingly fun w/out uber godly gear, and it just got even more fun when you wtf pwnd everything.
One of the things I LOVE about LotRO is I don't have to dungeon crawl for equipment. I do it for the story and the exploration of it. I enjoy crafting, and the fact I can make great stuff that I don't have to grind a dungeon for...is GREAT. But that's just me. In this genre, there is a lot of different types of players.
diablo 2 wasnt about items?!?! did you even play the game? haha
"mooo mooo" ring any bells?..... hahaha.. bells...
but tons of people play diablo for this exact reason
Pretty sure that 95%+ of the Diablo players during its prime (and perhaps even today) do NOT play for that reason. A relatively small percent of the population really wants to grind mindlessly for loot. Diablo also benefits from pretty nice gameplay, which helps it a lot and goes back to Quizzical's point.
Now, I do think there is a point to loot, but that point doesn't have to be done with loot. People like to have proof of their accomplishments. Some sense that things are different. That can be done by giving them loot, unique abilities, changing the game world, opening up more content, or many othe things. Loot is far from essential for this.
The entire point of Diablo was loot.
Loot and the epic storyline with those epic cinematics kept many players playing for many years. MMOs should take a page out of Diablo for some success
I'm in your boat. I'd rather explore the world and raid the markets, collecting the pieces I need to craft something than fight one mob in one location over and over in hopes that he drops it.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
I agree with the op, I will repeat my post in the soul bound thread because I think it explains why.
...The soul bound system is added so that players cannot interfere with the value of the rewards as tokens are only gotten in special circumstances unlike gold. This plays a great role in preserving the prestige of the difficult encounters as an accomplishment at completion that cannot just simply be bought with gold. Gold though as a currency for every day items plays a valuable role in circulating less potent items.
This is an odd comment. I'm not sure if you are seriously proposing that Diablo was only about items or not. It does seem odd that you'd make such a statement, and then reference the Cow Level, which was awesome fun and certainly not loved because of the items therein.
Now, I haven't said that Diablo 2 didn't have a strong item element. What I was saying is there were many other more important parts of the game. Random maps helped to keep things from getting boring. Solid gameplay and a story where you played a central role also really helped keep you involved. Ramping difficulty with level and players helped keep things challenging even if you were working with others. Now, some people DID farm for items, but I think most players probably didn't farm for days on end killing the same boss over and over and over and over. That's a particular kind of hard core player. Items were important, but the game was not solely about items.
Unfortunately, some games are little more than Diablo with a few more dungeons and a lot less scaling with party members. That does lead to a stale end-game. Where you just kill the same monsters over and over for loot. MOST Diablo players did not engage in that sort of thing, instead happy to pay the one-time fee and enjoy the content a few times or more, but not endlessly grinding the last couple bosses like end-game MMOs expect.
Dungeon crawling was one of the original reasons I loved mmo's.
It does not exist in this day the way it use to be unfortunately, all this instanced crap..