I am not a regular poster and I do not express myself very well but: I am so sick of instances and instant travels. I play MMO's for the adventure and for the community and atmosphere. I want my party to actually enter a dungeon/castle and meet people along the way who dare to venture alone or another band of travelers.
I dont care if we meet and end up in conflict or become friends and venture futher depth's to conqueror the unknown that lies within!
I want random dungeons (not generated) that are hidden well, so explorer's can come across them. Is it really hard to program a cave inside a cliff that isn't easily seen on the road? What is the whole point in this land mass if there only DUNGEON A, B, and C and they have a big advertizement saying "COME HERE".
Why can't we have many and many hidden depth's located around the world? I just want the simple things (lol even though they might be complicated)
And this Instant traveling BS?
Do away with it (That is my personal opinion, many people like IT and if that is there cup of tea: go ahead and do your thing), I rather travel around on foot, or horse with travelers exploring that ancient ruin's and maybe traveling along the beach to find a shipwreck that was not there yesterday. Let the world revolve. Have a schedule on key events that happen monthly or daily? I stated it before "what is the whole point in this land mass" If I am going to skip it by instant tele'ing to the city and Instant Tele'ing back to the nearest dungeons and not explore.
This may be a rant but blah blah blah!
This is not a troll or a flame. But here we go, I’m going to design below the game you have asked for.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that this game is very successful, but not “WoW” successful. Let’s say it has 500,000 players. Let’s say that only 250,000 are on at any given time due to time zones.
1. I want my party to actually enter a dungeon/castle and meet people along the way who dare to venture alone or another band of travelers.
Done! The world is seamless and has no instances. You and all your 249,999 closest friends are playing together. Approx 230,000 of these people come from WoW and their vocabulary is limited to “yo, momma, nub, lolcat, wut, kthxbai, pwnd” and the 7 words officially banned from public broadcast.
2. I want random dungeons (not generated) that are hidden well, so explorer's can come across them.
Done! I am not sure what you mean by “random” but “not generated”, so I will assume that you mean that the dungeon is pre-written as far as having the same mobs, quests and content, but shows up in a random place.
3. Is it really hard to program a cave inside a cliff that isn't easily seen on the road? What is the whole point in this land mass if there only DUNGEON A, B, and C and they have a big advertizement saying "COME HERE".Why can't we have many and many hidden depth's located around the world? I just want the simple things (lol even though they might be complicated)
Done! It is absolutely easy to hide a cave in a mountain provided that the mountain is big enough. What’s a good time to run around a mountain looking for a cave? Let’s say 10 minutes. So the mountain is such a size that it takes 10 minutes of game-time to fully explore it on foot or horse and to find your cave.
Now, because we have 250,000 looking to get a “find a cave in the mountain” experience just as you are. Since all 250,000 of you are in the same zone and you all want a relatively “unique” mountain and cave, we’ll need several of these mountains and caves. It’ll probably get crowded but let’s say we put up 1 mountain/cave for every 1,000 people.
That’s 250 mountains and caves and 230,000 people spamming local chat with “where’s cave #68 today?” “wtf I can’t find the cave” “someone help me find cave?” “is there a website that has caves?” “your mom is a cave” “lolz cave sux.” “lvl 18 cave @ 25688.2 257889.9” “wtb cave locs, pst” “selling gold, levelling, traveling to caves”
Done!
4. And this Instant traveling BS? Do away with it.
Done! All 250,000 are on the same road. Or maybe,10 roads, so we make it 25,000 people per road.
Now, given that it takes about 5 minutes to pass each mountain, it now takes you approx 20 hours to run to the end of this particular mountain range. So if the first few mountains are already taken and you want one that no one’s found, best use the bathroom before your gaming session.
5. Traveling along the beach to find a shipwreck that was not there yesterday. Let the world revolve. Have a schedule on key events that happen monthly or daily?
Done!
There is now a “shipwreck event”. This event happens once a month and always at a different place. Today it’s located approximately near mountain #208. You are located at mountain #124. Given that it takes approx 5 minutes to run/horse past each mountain and given that there is no instant travel, you’re a mere 7 hours away from the bliss of partaking in the live event with 249,999 of your closest friends right there beside you to help explore the shipwreck.
FYI, this is not at all farfetched. Dark and Light tried to build pretty much this exact game. If it had worked out, you’d have your have your wish.
I’m not going to go into the development costs of 250 separate mountain ranges and dungeons, all of which are done by hand rather than “generated. And all this to just provide one simple dungeon experience.
Me, I’d much rather be in “Mountain Range Instance 12” with 100 other people and 5 mountains. I really don’t need to see - at the same time - every one of the 500,000 people that also play the game. Maybe I’m anti-social, but 100 or so strangers that I’m unlikely to talk to is plenty for me at any given time. And I’d much rather be able to travel quickly between major points in the zone in order to actually enjoy the exploration bit once I get there in a reasonable period of time.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
You apparently haven't played a wiz (or caster class) when EQ is first released. If you solo, you can easily sit and stare at a spellbook for 10 min between fights. Grouping is only marginally better.
Oh, there are many different models. WOW is different from TOR, which is different from Secret World, and so on. Companies are smarter to innovate and differentiate in areas which players want (like sci-fi, different combat mechanics, different lore ...) but bringing back bad design (like requiring the players to trek 20 min before the adventure) is not one of those smart things.
I played plenty of caster classes. Staring at the book meditating was indeed dumb and it was a good thing when they got rid of it, but 10 mins is absurd. If you were absolutely drained and happened to be soloing then maybe a full minute. Still I really would consider why you were soloing in the first place. Only druids and necros could solo efficiently really beyond lvl 15 or so, even then it wasnt as good as in a group. I assumed you were talking about group oriented downtime seeing as how 98% of your battles in eq was in a group.
Also bad design is obviously a matter of opinion, seeing as how so many people on this thread enjoy what you consider insane and boring. Personally I think "hit button A to win" .....Congratulations your a winner! is extremely boring, I want some sort of effort and challenge, even time to be put into something so I can actually appreciate what I earned. No I dont have all the time in the world, I work long hours. But MMORPGs are supposed to be long term, not mastered in a few months. If I wanted to master a game in a week I would play a console game.
I did play a druid in EQ and I remember soloing giants in FM and medding for about 10 minutes when drained was pretty common. I don't think I ever had a time when medding was as little as a minute unlessI had a KOI or something.
Your comment stating only druids and necros could solo effectively after 15 was solely directed towards casters right? Because if not I soloed with druid, necro, bard, monk, beast, paly, till mid 40's. I never got any character beyond that, I just ended up bored by that time.
Venge Sunsoar
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
I did play a druid in EQ and I remember soloing giants in FM and medding for about 10 minutes when drained was pretty common. I don't think I ever had a time when medding was as little as a minute unlessI had a KOI or something.
Your comment stating only druids and necros could solo effectively after 15 was solely directed towards casters right? Because if not I soloed with druid, necro, bard, monk, beast, paly, till mid 40's. I never got any character beyond that, I just ended up bored by that time.
Venge Sunsoar
what the hell were you doing soloing till 40 in eq? Every char I ever had I dropped soloing at lvl 8 probably. It was all chain pulling from then on. You had the puller bringing the next mob when the one you were working on was around 10%, in fact most groups would get pissed if they didnt have the next mob by the time theirs was dead. After 15-20 kills you might sit for a minute, but that was with all regen buffs. Solo wise downtime was bad. I dont know how long it would take because I never wasted my time even attempting to solo, nobody really did in fact....
1. I want my party to actually enter a dungeon/castle and meet people along the way who dare to venture alone or another band of travelers.
2. I want random dungeons (not generated) that are hidden well, so explorer's can come across them.
3. Is it really hard to program a cave inside a cliff that isn't easily seen on the road? What is the whole point in this land mass if there only DUNGEON A, B, and C and they have a big advertizement saying "COME HERE".Why can't we have many and many hidden depth's located around the world? I just want the simple things (lol even though they might be complicated)
4. And this Instant traveling BS? Do away with it.
5. Traveling along the beach to find a shipwreck that was not there yesterday. Let the world revolve. Have a schedule on key events that happen monthly or daily?
Excellent!
Now as you can see, there are many many reasonable consumers that will certainly make their expectations known for a better game, dynamic and open virtual world, and game-play that involves the community openly and seamlessly without heavy instancing and cruise control cross-map travel.
But where this industry gets bogged down is by the excusionists, the consumers that have little expectations, that are easily distracted by the simpleton approach to instancing, carving up of community into little isolated pitces, and instant travel that will inevitably retard any real open virtual world progression and notable game-play development. In essence, you'll continue to see the dumbification of mmorpg's as we have over the last few years, leading up to the lates flop known as Star Trek Online.
I did play a druid in EQ and I remember soloing giants in FM and medding for about 10 minutes when drained was pretty common. I don't think I ever had a time when medding was as little as a minute unlessI had a KOI or something.
Your comment stating only druids and necros could solo effectively after 15 was solely directed towards casters right? Because if not I soloed with druid, necro, bard, monk, beast, paly, till mid 40's. I never got any character beyond that, I just ended up bored by that time.
Venge Sunsoar
what the hell were you doing soloing till 40 in eq? Every char I ever had I dropped soloing at lvl 8 probably. It was all chain pulling from then on. You had the puller bringing the next mob when the one you were working on was around 10%, in fact most groups would get pissed if they didnt have the next mob by the time theirs was dead. After 15-20 kills you might sit for a minute, but that was with all regen buffs. Solo wise downtime was bad. I dont know how long it would take because I never wasted my time even attempting to solo, nobody really did in fact....
Soloing was not the only activity I did, but I did do it often enough to know good areas. For my bard nothing beat FM, could pull 20 at a time before they nerfed that and just dot them to death. Ah those were the days.
Many many people soloed, especially those classes I previously mentioned. They were the solo kings. Quad kiting with druid; fear, charm, dot kiting with bard. Almost makes me want to go try it again.
Venge Sunsoar
edit: Grouping was preferred in the game though, as it did greatly increase xp and reduce downtime. But sometimes I just want to relax and know I'm not going to be pulling my weight so I solo'd, other times it seemed to take hours to get a group going and so I soloed.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
I did play a druid in EQ and I remember soloing giants in FM and medding for about 10 minutes when drained was pretty common. I don't think I ever had a time when medding was as little as a minute unlessI had a KOI or something.
Your comment stating only druids and necros could solo effectively after 15 was solely directed towards casters right? Because if not I soloed with druid, necro, bard, monk, beast, paly, till mid 40's. I never got any character beyond that, I just ended up bored by that time.
Venge Sunsoar
what the hell were you doing soloing till 40 in eq? Every char I ever had I dropped soloing at lvl 8 probably. It was all chain pulling from then on. You had the puller bringing the next mob when the one you were working on was around 10%, in fact most groups would get pissed if they didnt have the next mob by the time theirs was dead. After 15-20 kills you might sit for a minute, but that was with all regen buffs. Solo wise downtime was bad. I dont know how long it would take because I never wasted my time even attempting to solo, nobody really did in fact....
Soloing was not the only activity I did, but I did do it often enough to know good areas. For my bard nothing beat FM, could pull 20 at a time before they nerfed that and just dot them to death. Ah those were the days.
Many many people soloed, especially those classes I previously mentioned. They were the solo kings. Quad kiting with druid; fear, charm, dot kiting with bard. Almost makes me want to go try it again.
Venge Sunsoar
edit: Grouping was preferred in the game though, as it did greatly increase xp and reduce downtime. But sometimes I just want to relax and know I'm not going to be pulling my weight so I solo'd, other times it seemed to take hours to get a group going and so I soloed.
well earlier you mentioned classes like pally soloing. Pally was my main class, was my only serious raiding class, and you had to be freaking crazy to solo as a paladin. That would be the most mind numbing boring way to play ever.
Necro, Druid, Bard were the popular soloers, none of which I got too terribly high as. I watched some friends kite around tons of mobs as bard though and it looked fun. Eq was definately built for group play though, majory of people did it and it was by far the most efficient and usually most fun way of playing.
Soloing in EQ was more challenging than soloing in most games today, but it was far from impossible. Necros, Wizards, Enchanters, Mages, Druids, Monks, Bards, Shamans, Beast Lords and Rangers were some of the easier classes to solo with, but with every expansion, each class got just a little better at it. I used to hear people complaining about how horrible the Cleric was at soloing at the same time I was in lower guk farming the undead while making tons of experience and cash for peridots. Knowing your classes abilities and limitations was a huge part of success in EQ.
I did play a druid in EQ and I remember soloing giants in FM and medding for about 10 minutes when drained was pretty common. I don't think I ever had a time when medding was as little as a minute unlessI had a KOI or something.
Your comment stating only druids and necros could solo effectively after 15 was solely directed towards casters right? Because if not I soloed with druid, necro, bard, monk, beast, paly, till mid 40's. I never got any character beyond that, I just ended up bored by that time.
Venge Sunsoar
what the hell were you doing soloing till 40 in eq? Every char I ever had I dropped soloing at lvl 8 probably. It was all chain pulling from then on. You had the puller bringing the next mob when the one you were working on was around 10%, in fact most groups would get pissed if they didnt have the next mob by the time theirs was dead. After 15-20 kills you might sit for a minute, but that was with all regen buffs. Solo wise downtime was bad. I dont know how long it would take because I never wasted my time even attempting to solo, nobody really did in fact....
Nah .. groups are slower than that. You just can't generate mana that fast. One kill take 10 min worth of mana regen (unless you have that enchanter buff) and if you have 5 other wiz in your group to play ping pong, you go OOM in 6 kills and have to sit for 10 min to recover.
Is fast travel really a problem? The problem seems to be a lack of reason to not fast travel. The design philosphies that eliminated reasons to not fast travel are also the philosophies that took the genre in the direction that people complaign about. The older games that everyone heralds as the way to do things had plenty of fast travel mechanisms.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
I did play a druid in EQ and I remember soloing giants in FM and medding for about 10 minutes when drained was pretty common. I don't think I ever had a time when medding was as little as a minute unlessI had a KOI or something.
Your comment stating only druids and necros could solo effectively after 15 was solely directed towards casters right? Because if not I soloed with druid, necro, bard, monk, beast, paly, till mid 40's. I never got any character beyond that, I just ended up bored by that time.
Venge Sunsoar
what the hell were you doing soloing till 40 in eq? Every char I ever had I dropped soloing at lvl 8 probably. It was all chain pulling from then on. You had the puller bringing the next mob when the one you were working on was around 10%, in fact most groups would get pissed if they didnt have the next mob by the time theirs was dead. After 15-20 kills you might sit for a minute, but that was with all regen buffs. Solo wise downtime was bad. I dont know how long it would take because I never wasted my time even attempting to solo, nobody really did in fact....
Nah .. groups are slower than that. You just can't generate mana that fast. One kill take 10 min worth of mana regen (unless you have that enchanter buff) and if you have 5 other wiz in your group to play ping pong, you go OOM in 6 kills and have to sit for 10 min to recover.
You ping ponged a single mob with a wizard group? That was rather inefficient.
A balanced group could chain pull all day. DPS casters just had to learn they were primarily about burst and not about sustained DPS. A good group only cared about the clerics mana (which really wasn't an issue) and the enchanters mana on a multi-pull. Of course I'm describing the standard group setup. There was a plethora of setups that could accomplish chain pulling. That is one the very nice things about EQ, the flexibility was amazing in the early days.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
dynamic and open virtual world, and game-play that involves the community openly and seamlessly without heavy instancing and cruise control cross-map travel.
But where this industry gets bogged down is by the excusionists, the consumers that have little expectations, that are easily distracted by the simpleton approach to instancing, carving up of community into little isolated pitces, and instant travel that will inevitably retard any real open virtual world progression and notable game-play development. In essence, you'll continue to see the dumbification of mmorpg's as we have over the last few years, leading up to the lates flop known as Star Trek Online.
But keep fighting the good fight.
See here where you have the disconnect. I too want "dynamic and open virtual world and gameplay that involves the community". I just don't think that instancing or convenient travel methods take anything away from it.
Take take travel. If you have a lot of interesting and compelling content between point A and point B, people will explore the area between those two points even if fast travel is available from A to B. If you have garbage between those two points, people will put a paper-weight on their forward key and go AFK while they run through it. The point is that if you want people to explore the world, give players a world to explore. It doesn't matter if can get certain places faster.
I have massive expectations. And I'm not distracted by instancing or carving up of communities, i'm disappointed in companies failing to properly incorporate these concepts into games or making the assumpion that "instancing is bad because EQ didn't have it and EQ was like totally awesome" or whatever. Anarchy Online - the game that really pioneered instancing to a large degree - had one of the largest open worlds of all MMOs before or since and tons of instances as well. Oh and it also had at least 3 methods of fast travel, yet it didn't stifle any of the exploration. The best examples of sandbox games out there - EVE and SWG both have fast travel.
Aside from the macro-instancing that splits populations into different servers, instancing doesn't split communities, in fact it brings communities closer by letting you have intimate experiences than you otherwise would. Again, the example of 10,000 people standing in a line-up to simultaneously talk to Gandalf is NOT a good experience in my book.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
Is fast travel really a problem? The problem seems to be a lack of reason to not fast travel. The design philosphies that eliminated reasons to not fast travel are also the philosophies that took the genre in the direction that people complaign about. The older games that everyone heralds as the way to do things had plenty of fast travel mechanisms.
true but the game event forced you to slow down or stop you needed an item at the far end of the 69 th map or you had to get this weapon polished by an npc that was so hard to find you had to slowdown no need now
you go in org put you name on the list till to go in a dungeon till you are max level then raid till end game never saw one map never saw even one character outside a city!(all in dungeon)too mutch dungeon is like not enough!
Is fast travel really a problem? The problem seems to be a lack of reason to not fast travel. The design philosphies that eliminated reasons to not fast travel are also the philosophies that took the genre in the direction that people complaign about. The older games that everyone heralds as the way to do things had plenty of fast travel mechanisms.
true but the game event forced you to slow down or stop you needed an item at the far end of the 69 th map or you had to get this weapon polished by an npc that was so hard to find you had to slowdown no need now
you go in org put you name on the list till to go in a dungeon till you are max level then raid till end game never saw one map never saw even one character outside a city!(all in dungeon)too mutch dungeon is like not enough!
That was my point. Though not quite what I was thinking about. Running around randomly just to get into fighting shape was part of the problem with older games (WoW had some of this in the beginning) and has been highly eliminated.
I was thinking of the lack of interesting things like rare spawns with items that mean something. Random events. GM events. Blah, blah, blah, stuff with a good chance of occuring (not WoW's bronze proto-drake dumb luck camp). Things that mean something in the overworld to the character or to the player experience.
Your second point, that is no different than before really. Everyone was almost always in the dungeons. The only difference is that the dungeons are instanced. The dungeons are not the problem but the overwhelming usage of instancing in this case.
Again, the problem is not with instant travel but with lack of meaningful and interesting things to do in the overworld. Those that don't like fast travel have something to occupy their time while not fast traveling. The rest, keep their fast travel.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
Instant travel is the epitome of ease and shallowness. And what compounds the interest of instant travel is lack of discoverable game-play elements, artifacts, challenges that should lie along the way of travel.
When I think of instant travel, i liken it to instant character development. They're there to compensate for flawed game design and lack of content. And when i see others jump to it and when I experience it, it makes me feel so game-play unaccomplished and that the game-play has much less to provide a sense of accomplishment, that I get this unnerving sense that I'm within a cheating environment and cheating myself.
Now, one thing that might save me from this sense of shallowness is if the instant travel were across a trechorous land, but that in order to get to that point of travel, you had to endure some treachrous game-play or challenging game-play.
When I think of instant travel, i liken it to instant character development. They're there to compensate for flawed game design and lack of content. And when i see others jump to it and when I experience it, it makes me feel so game-play unaccomplished and that the game-play has much less to provide a sense of accomplishment, that I get this unnerving sense that I'm within a cheating environment and cheating myself.
Then stop using it, theres many situations where you dont HAVE to use instant travel, but people do anyway then they bitch about it, because apparently they cant control themselves.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling" Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
When I think of instant travel, i liken it to instant character development. They're there to compensate for flawed game design and lack of content. And when i see others jump to it and when I experience it, it makes me feel so game-play unaccomplished and that the game-play has much less to provide a sense of accomplishment, that I get this unnerving sense that I'm within a cheating environment and cheating myself.
Then stop using it, theres many situations where you dont HAVE to use instant travel, but people do anyway then they bitch about it, because apparently they cant control themselves.
It has very little to do with choice when your environment conditions you to use the things you don't want. Consider the scenario where you get invited to a group to go play somewhere and they say "come on over here" we're already killing. You tell them that it will take you some time to get there because you're riding/walking/taking the slower option and they simply state that they don't want to wait for you and tell you not to bother making the trek.
When everybody around you is using instant travels/faster travels you use them to because most of the new generation of gamers don't want to wait for anything... especially other people.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
Instant travel is the epitome of ease and shallowness. And what compounds the interest of instant travel is lack of discoverable game-play elements, artifacts, challenges that should lie along the way of travel.
When I think of instant travel, i liken it to instant character development. They're there to compensate for flawed game design and lack of content. And when i see others jump to it and when I experience it, it makes me feel so game-play unaccomplished and that the game-play has much less to provide a sense of accomplishment, that I get this unnerving sense that I'm within a cheating environment and cheating myself.
Now, one thing that might save me from this sense of shallowness is if the instant travel were across a trechorous land, but that in order to get to that point of travel, you had to endure some treachrous game-play or challenging game-play.
You're correlating two things that are in no way related.
Just because I choose to take a plane from Toronto (Canada) to San Francisco (USA) doesn't mean that all the cities in between (Chicago, Denver, etc.) are uninteresting, not worth visiting or that the invention of the plane has lowered my interest in visiting them. In fact there are lots of places between these two points that I plan to visit in the future - cities as well as the countryside between them. The reason I take the plane is because I only have a week for my vacation and I've chosen to spend it exploring San Francisco. Next time I have two months of vacation, I will probably make the drive and explore everything in the between.
The exact same thing is true for a game. If i choose to go from Qeynos (city in EQ2) to Freeport (a far away city in EQ2) without visiting every place in-between, it is not because I'm not interested in visiting any of the zones or dungeons in between, it's because I only have an hour to play and I'd like to spend it meeting up with my friend in the other city or picking something up from him or running a dungeon there. And the fact that EQ2 has tons of fast travel hasn't prevented me from (over the years) exploring every inch of every zone and dungeon in the game, most of them multiple times. There were some compelling gameplay reasons to do this which have nothing to do with speed of travel. THAT is what makes the difference.
If you make good content and give people a reason to explore the world, people will do that. Travel options have no effect on this.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
When I think of instant travel, i liken it to instant character development. They're there to compensate for flawed game design and lack of content. And when i see others jump to it and when I experience it, it makes me feel so game-play unaccomplished and that the game-play has much less to provide a sense of accomplishment, that I get this unnerving sense that I'm within a cheating environment and cheating myself.
Then stop using it, theres many situations where you dont HAVE to use instant travel, but people do anyway then they bitch about it, because apparently they cant control themselves.
It has very little to do with choice when your environment conditions you to use the things you don't want. Consider the scenario where you get invited to a group to go play somewhere and they say "come on over here" we're already killing. You tell them that it will take you some time to get there because you're riding/walking/taking the slower option and they simply state that they don't want to wait for you and tell you not to bother making the trek.
When everybody around you is using instant travels/faster travels you use them to because most of the new generation of gamers don't want to wait for anything... especially other people.
Who wants to sit for half an hour and wait for some dude to get there? no one, this is why fast travel exists, why people l,ove timesinks is beyond me.
Still, nothing stopping you from taking teh long way the other 99% of the time.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling" Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
There is only one game on the market, which really gives you that feeling of total freedom and one big persisting world without any instances and this is Lineage 2. There you can do and become whatever you want to and you can conquer and rule the entire world as the King of Aden. Unfortunately the koreans made it a grind nightmare.
Who wants to sit for half an hour and wait for some dude to get there? no one, this is why fast travel exists, why people l,ove timesinks is beyond me.
Because some people, albeit a minority, do not just want to play a game but rather live in a virtual high fantasy world. And zip/zapping across continents isn't excactly immersive.
Imagine Frodo and the group insta-teleporting from Rivendell to Rohan to the White City instead of actually travelling there.
Something to add to this statement... everyone has one while believing their own does not stink.
Anyway....Do people ever just play games for enjoyment anymore?... rather than play games to find whats "wrong" with them just to whine and cry about it? Just wondering... as there seems to be tons of people that only have negative things to say about games.
This isnt a proper MMO because of this... this feature is stupid because of this... this shouldnt be in the game because of this..
Its a game.... and games can take liberties that wouldnt be pratical in movies, shows, real life.
Because some people, albeit a minority, do not just want to play a game but rather live in a virtual high fantasy world. And zip/zapping across continents isn't excactly immersive.
Imagine Frodo and the group insta-teleporting from Rivendell to Rohan to the White City instead of actually travelling there.
For me: Immersion >> casual or easy
That's not entirely true. It depends on your own outlook. I actually AM one of those people for whom immersion is more important than having something easy. The real world has fast travel. One of the first things any civilization develops is means of transportation and getting from place to place. They build roads, airships, railroads, planes, etc. In a world of magic, it's only natural that some magic studies and energies are dedicated to creating easier travel.
That being said, even if it's not magic but a fast horse, my immersion doesn't suffer from skipping the 7 hours uneventful horse ride any more than it suffers from skipping the fact that my characters gets up in the morning, takes a piss, washes up, brushes teeth, shaves, makes breakfast, eats breakfast, reads newspaper, puts on clothes and only THEN goes out.
Yes, one kind of adventure to be has is the "traveling and exploring" adventure. But having fast travel doesn't prevent you from being able to have that adventure. It just gives you a choice in having to go through it every single day. The most immersive MMOs I've ever played and the ones closest to being a virtual world - EVE, AO, SWG - all had multiple means of fast travel which took nothing away from the immersion.
And about Frodo and company. Gandalf had fast travel But anyhow, in many other fantasy books there are magic means of transportation that deliver heroes instantly to where they need to be. It's quite common.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
Comments
This is not a troll or a flame. But here we go, I’m going to design below the game you have asked for.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that this game is very successful, but not “WoW” successful. Let’s say it has 500,000 players. Let’s say that only 250,000 are on at any given time due to time zones.
1. I want my party to actually enter a dungeon/castle and meet people along the way who dare to venture alone or another band of travelers.
Done! The world is seamless and has no instances. You and all your 249,999 closest friends are playing together. Approx 230,000 of these people come from WoW and their vocabulary is limited to “yo, momma, nub, lolcat, wut, kthxbai, pwnd” and the 7 words officially banned from public broadcast.
2. I want random dungeons (not generated) that are hidden well, so explorer's can come across them.
Done! I am not sure what you mean by “random” but “not generated”, so I will assume that you mean that the dungeon is pre-written as far as having the same mobs, quests and content, but shows up in a random place.
3. Is it really hard to program a cave inside a cliff that isn't easily seen on the road? What is the whole point in this land mass if there only DUNGEON A, B, and C and they have a big advertizement saying "COME HERE".Why can't we have many and many hidden depth's located around the world? I just want the simple things (lol even though they might be complicated)
Done! It is absolutely easy to hide a cave in a mountain provided that the mountain is big enough. What’s a good time to run around a mountain looking for a cave? Let’s say 10 minutes. So the mountain is such a size that it takes 10 minutes of game-time to fully explore it on foot or horse and to find your cave.
Now, because we have 250,000 looking to get a “find a cave in the mountain” experience just as you are. Since all 250,000 of you are in the same zone and you all want a relatively “unique” mountain and cave, we’ll need several of these mountains and caves. It’ll probably get crowded but let’s say we put up 1 mountain/cave for every 1,000 people.
That’s 250 mountains and caves and 230,000 people spamming local chat with “where’s cave #68 today?” “wtf I can’t find the cave” “someone help me find cave?” “is there a website that has caves?” “your mom is a cave” “lolz cave sux.” “lvl 18 cave @ 25688.2 257889.9” “wtb cave locs, pst” “selling gold, levelling, traveling to caves”
Done!
4. And this Instant traveling BS? Do away with it.
Done! All 250,000 are on the same road. Or maybe,10 roads, so we make it 25,000 people per road.
Now, given that it takes about 5 minutes to pass each mountain, it now takes you approx 20 hours to run to the end of this particular mountain range. So if the first few mountains are already taken and you want one that no one’s found, best use the bathroom before your gaming session.
5. Traveling along the beach to find a shipwreck that was not there yesterday. Let the world revolve. Have a schedule on key events that happen monthly or daily?
Done!
There is now a “shipwreck event”. This event happens once a month and always at a different place. Today it’s located approximately near mountain #208. You are located at mountain #124. Given that it takes approx 5 minutes to run/horse past each mountain and given that there is no instant travel, you’re a mere 7 hours away from the bliss of partaking in the live event with 249,999 of your closest friends right there beside you to help explore the shipwreck.
FYI, this is not at all farfetched. Dark and Light tried to build pretty much this exact game. If it had worked out, you’d have your have your wish.
I’m not going to go into the development costs of 250 separate mountain ranges and dungeons, all of which are done by hand rather than “generated. And all this to just provide one simple dungeon experience.
Me, I’d much rather be in “Mountain Range Instance 12” with 100 other people and 5 mountains. I really don’t need to see - at the same time - every one of the 500,000 people that also play the game. Maybe I’m anti-social, but 100 or so strangers that I’m unlikely to talk to is plenty for me at any given time. And I’d much rather be able to travel quickly between major points in the zone in order to actually enjoy the exploration bit once I get there in a reasonable period of time.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
I played plenty of caster classes. Staring at the book meditating was indeed dumb and it was a good thing when they got rid of it, but 10 mins is absurd. If you were absolutely drained and happened to be soloing then maybe a full minute. Still I really would consider why you were soloing in the first place. Only druids and necros could solo efficiently really beyond lvl 15 or so, even then it wasnt as good as in a group. I assumed you were talking about group oriented downtime seeing as how 98% of your battles in eq was in a group.
Also bad design is obviously a matter of opinion, seeing as how so many people on this thread enjoy what you consider insane and boring. Personally I think "hit button A to win" .....Congratulations your a winner! is extremely boring, I want some sort of effort and challenge, even time to be put into something so I can actually appreciate what I earned. No I dont have all the time in the world, I work long hours. But MMORPGs are supposed to be long term, not mastered in a few months. If I wanted to master a game in a week I would play a console game.
I did play a druid in EQ and I remember soloing giants in FM and medding for about 10 minutes when drained was pretty common. I don't think I ever had a time when medding was as little as a minute unlessI had a KOI or something.
Your comment stating only druids and necros could solo effectively after 15 was solely directed towards casters right? Because if not I soloed with druid, necro, bard, monk, beast, paly, till mid 40's. I never got any character beyond that, I just ended up bored by that time.
Venge Sunsoar
what the hell were you doing soloing till 40 in eq? Every char I ever had I dropped soloing at lvl 8 probably. It was all chain pulling from then on. You had the puller bringing the next mob when the one you were working on was around 10%, in fact most groups would get pissed if they didnt have the next mob by the time theirs was dead. After 15-20 kills you might sit for a minute, but that was with all regen buffs. Solo wise downtime was bad. I dont know how long it would take because I never wasted my time even attempting to solo, nobody really did in fact....
Excellent!
Now as you can see, there are many many reasonable consumers that will certainly make their expectations known for a better game, dynamic and open virtual world, and game-play that involves the community openly and seamlessly without heavy instancing and cruise control cross-map travel.
But where this industry gets bogged down is by the excusionists, the consumers that have little expectations, that are easily distracted by the simpleton approach to instancing, carving up of community into little isolated pitces, and instant travel that will inevitably retard any real open virtual world progression and notable game-play development. In essence, you'll continue to see the dumbification of mmorpg's as we have over the last few years, leading up to the lates flop known as Star Trek Online.
But keep fighting the good fight.
Soloing was not the only activity I did, but I did do it often enough to know good areas. For my bard nothing beat FM, could pull 20 at a time before they nerfed that and just dot them to death. Ah those were the days.
Many many people soloed, especially those classes I previously mentioned. They were the solo kings. Quad kiting with druid; fear, charm, dot kiting with bard. Almost makes me want to go try it again.
Venge Sunsoar
edit: Grouping was preferred in the game though, as it did greatly increase xp and reduce downtime. But sometimes I just want to relax and know I'm not going to be pulling my weight so I solo'd, other times it seemed to take hours to get a group going and so I soloed.
well earlier you mentioned classes like pally soloing. Pally was my main class, was my only serious raiding class, and you had to be freaking crazy to solo as a paladin. That would be the most mind numbing boring way to play ever.
Necro, Druid, Bard were the popular soloers, none of which I got too terribly high as. I watched some friends kite around tons of mobs as bard though and it looked fun. Eq was definately built for group play though, majory of people did it and it was by far the most efficient and usually most fun way of playing.
Soloing in EQ was more challenging than soloing in most games today, but it was far from impossible. Necros, Wizards, Enchanters, Mages, Druids, Monks, Bards, Shamans, Beast Lords and Rangers were some of the easier classes to solo with, but with every expansion, each class got just a little better at it. I used to hear people complaining about how horrible the Cleric was at soloing at the same time I was in lower guk farming the undead while making tons of experience and cash for peridots. Knowing your classes abilities and limitations was a huge part of success in EQ.
Nah .. groups are slower than that. You just can't generate mana that fast. One kill take 10 min worth of mana regen (unless you have that enchanter buff) and if you have 5 other wiz in your group to play ping pong, you go OOM in 6 kills and have to sit for 10 min to recover.
Is fast travel really a problem? The problem seems to be a lack of reason to not fast travel. The design philosphies that eliminated reasons to not fast travel are also the philosophies that took the genre in the direction that people complaign about. The older games that everyone heralds as the way to do things had plenty of fast travel mechanisms.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
You ping ponged a single mob with a wizard group? That was rather inefficient.
A balanced group could chain pull all day. DPS casters just had to learn they were primarily about burst and not about sustained DPS. A good group only cared about the clerics mana (which really wasn't an issue) and the enchanters mana on a multi-pull. Of course I'm describing the standard group setup. There was a plethora of setups that could accomplish chain pulling. That is one the very nice things about EQ, the flexibility was amazing in the early days.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
See here where you have the disconnect. I too want "dynamic and open virtual world and gameplay that involves the community". I just don't think that instancing or convenient travel methods take anything away from it.
Take take travel. If you have a lot of interesting and compelling content between point A and point B, people will explore the area between those two points even if fast travel is available from A to B. If you have garbage between those two points, people will put a paper-weight on their forward key and go AFK while they run through it. The point is that if you want people to explore the world, give players a world to explore. It doesn't matter if can get certain places faster.
I have massive expectations. And I'm not distracted by instancing or carving up of communities, i'm disappointed in companies failing to properly incorporate these concepts into games or making the assumpion that "instancing is bad because EQ didn't have it and EQ was like totally awesome" or whatever. Anarchy Online - the game that really pioneered instancing to a large degree - had one of the largest open worlds of all MMOs before or since and tons of instances as well. Oh and it also had at least 3 methods of fast travel, yet it didn't stifle any of the exploration. The best examples of sandbox games out there - EVE and SWG both have fast travel.
Aside from the macro-instancing that splits populations into different servers, instancing doesn't split communities, in fact it brings communities closer by letting you have intimate experiences than you otherwise would. Again, the example of 10,000 people standing in a line-up to simultaneously talk to Gandalf is NOT a good experience in my book.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
true but the game event forced you to slow down or stop you needed an item at the far end of the 69 th map or you had to get this weapon polished by an npc that was so hard to find you had to slowdown no need now
you go in org put you name on the list till to go in a dungeon till you are max level then raid till end game never saw one map never saw even one character outside a city!(all in dungeon)too mutch dungeon is like not enough!
That was my point. Though not quite what I was thinking about. Running around randomly just to get into fighting shape was part of the problem with older games (WoW had some of this in the beginning) and has been highly eliminated.
I was thinking of the lack of interesting things like rare spawns with items that mean something. Random events. GM events. Blah, blah, blah, stuff with a good chance of occuring (not WoW's bronze proto-drake dumb luck camp). Things that mean something in the overworld to the character or to the player experience.
Your second point, that is no different than before really. Everyone was almost always in the dungeons. The only difference is that the dungeons are instanced. The dungeons are not the problem but the overwhelming usage of instancing in this case.
Again, the problem is not with instant travel but with lack of meaningful and interesting things to do in the overworld. Those that don't like fast travel have something to occupy their time while not fast traveling. The rest, keep their fast travel.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
Instant travel is the epitome of ease and shallowness. And what compounds the interest of instant travel is lack of discoverable game-play elements, artifacts, challenges that should lie along the way of travel.
When I think of instant travel, i liken it to instant character development. They're there to compensate for flawed game design and lack of content. And when i see others jump to it and when I experience it, it makes me feel so game-play unaccomplished and that the game-play has much less to provide a sense of accomplishment, that I get this unnerving sense that I'm within a cheating environment and cheating myself.
Now, one thing that might save me from this sense of shallowness is if the instant travel were across a trechorous land, but that in order to get to that point of travel, you had to endure some treachrous game-play or challenging game-play.
Then stop using it, theres many situations where you dont HAVE to use instant travel, but people do anyway then they bitch about it, because apparently they cant control themselves.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
It has very little to do with choice when your environment conditions you to use the things you don't want. Consider the scenario where you get invited to a group to go play somewhere and they say "come on over here" we're already killing. You tell them that it will take you some time to get there because you're riding/walking/taking the slower option and they simply state that they don't want to wait for you and tell you not to bother making the trek.
When everybody around you is using instant travels/faster travels you use them to because most of the new generation of gamers don't want to wait for anything... especially other people.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
You're correlating two things that are in no way related.
Just because I choose to take a plane from Toronto (Canada) to San Francisco (USA) doesn't mean that all the cities in between (Chicago, Denver, etc.) are uninteresting, not worth visiting or that the invention of the plane has lowered my interest in visiting them. In fact there are lots of places between these two points that I plan to visit in the future - cities as well as the countryside between them. The reason I take the plane is because I only have a week for my vacation and I've chosen to spend it exploring San Francisco. Next time I have two months of vacation, I will probably make the drive and explore everything in the between.
The exact same thing is true for a game. If i choose to go from Qeynos (city in EQ2) to Freeport (a far away city in EQ2) without visiting every place in-between, it is not because I'm not interested in visiting any of the zones or dungeons in between, it's because I only have an hour to play and I'd like to spend it meeting up with my friend in the other city or picking something up from him or running a dungeon there. And the fact that EQ2 has tons of fast travel hasn't prevented me from (over the years) exploring every inch of every zone and dungeon in the game, most of them multiple times. There were some compelling gameplay reasons to do this which have nothing to do with speed of travel. THAT is what makes the difference.
If you make good content and give people a reason to explore the world, people will do that. Travel options have no effect on this.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
Instancing assures that I can enjoy content without being bothered by griefers.
Instant Travel assures that I get to fun content faster.
Call me crazy, but I'm a fan of both those things.
Who wants to sit for half an hour and wait for some dude to get there? no one, this is why fast travel exists, why people l,ove timesinks is beyond me.
Still, nothing stopping you from taking teh long way the other 99% of the time.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
There is only one game on the market, which really gives you that feeling of total freedom and one big persisting world without any instances and this is Lineage 2. There you can do and become whatever you want to and you can conquer and rule the entire world as the King of Aden. Unfortunately the koreans made it a grind nightmare.
Because some people, albeit a minority, do not just want to play a game but rather live in a virtual high fantasy world. And zip/zapping across continents isn't excactly immersive.
Imagine Frodo and the group insta-teleporting from Rivendell to Rohan to the White City instead of actually travelling there.
For me: Immersion >> casual or easy
My gaming blog
Something to add to this statement... everyone has one while believing their own does not stink.
Anyway....Do people ever just play games for enjoyment anymore?... rather than play games to find whats "wrong" with them just to whine and cry about it? Just wondering... as there seems to be tons of people that only have negative things to say about games.
This isnt a proper MMO because of this... this feature is stupid because of this... this shouldnt be in the game because of this..
Its a game.... and games can take liberties that wouldnt be pratical in movies, shows, real life.
That's not entirely true. It depends on your own outlook. I actually AM one of those people for whom immersion is more important than having something easy. The real world has fast travel. One of the first things any civilization develops is means of transportation and getting from place to place. They build roads, airships, railroads, planes, etc. In a world of magic, it's only natural that some magic studies and energies are dedicated to creating easier travel.
That being said, even if it's not magic but a fast horse, my immersion doesn't suffer from skipping the 7 hours uneventful horse ride any more than it suffers from skipping the fact that my characters gets up in the morning, takes a piss, washes up, brushes teeth, shaves, makes breakfast, eats breakfast, reads newspaper, puts on clothes and only THEN goes out.
Yes, one kind of adventure to be has is the "traveling and exploring" adventure. But having fast travel doesn't prevent you from being able to have that adventure. It just gives you a choice in having to go through it every single day. The most immersive MMOs I've ever played and the ones closest to being a virtual world - EVE, AO, SWG - all had multiple means of fast travel which took nothing away from the immersion.
And about Frodo and company. Gandalf had fast travel
But anyhow, in many other fantasy books there are magic means of transportation that deliver heroes instantly to where they need to be. It's quite common.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO