SWG is only remembered for crafting and the player driven economy.
I have to disagree here. SWG is remembered for a heck of a lot more than that. It had an amazing Faction system, entire professions dedicated to entertaining and non-combat features (which made for an awesome community in the cantinas), player cities with their own governments (including a politician profession), lots of planets to explore, Space Combat (with full ship customization), and so many other things that games have been missing out on lately (for the most part).
Personally I mastered several professions, but my main was a Master Commando. I enjoyed the PvP and PvE aspects of SWG. I still remember running the Imperial Theme park and doing missions for Darth Vader. Fun times. My point being, this game is remembered by those who played it for more than just crafting and the economy.
Yeah, there are some who did not like that a full-time game was there for crafters and merchants. Dancers, politicians, Bio-Engineers, all that was apparently bad for the Combat-Only player somehow.
The non-combat classes gave the game depth and flavor. Entertainers were always good for a fun RP night, and Politician doesn't get enough love. There were people who did nothing but act as mayor for their cities and help facilitate trade, plan expansion, and organize city/guild events.
Yes. Though crafting looks like it will be powerful in EQN, I fear that there will be no other non-combat activities outside of minecrafting (which is a great feature full of hours of fun, don't get me wrong). I fully realize that I am being unrealistic and am on the Moar chain, but I wish that EQN will marry a full-featured MMO to that amazing world they are creating. I would love to make a bard and actually be able to make some coin in Taverns. I don't think there is room in the 8 buttons for my lute playing though.
The one thing *I* really enjoyed in SWG that was crafting related was Bio Engineer... It wasn't just always about going out and finding the best samples etc... When you were limited in pet levels and wanted to use more than one pet. Once you started getting into multi-generation resampling to get the pet's individual level down and retain the best stats etc for the pet that you could. Well you were just talking about a lot of dedication and personal learning curve to do it right. (since there are likely a lot of people that won't know what I meant... when you engineered a pet it came out at a certain level. If you needed it lower you could take sample of that pet and use other samples that were from a bit lower pet. You did this mix over and over to reach your target level but it didn't always go the way you wanted.)
When they added the changes to pet abilities then you got an entire new level in there... as you might be making a 2 or 3 pet setup. where one pet used a knock down and melee based attack.. while the others used ranged abilities (poison/diseae etc) and you had to sample a lot of different mobs to end up where you wanted.
Yet at the end of the day I had this creature I had created to hunt with... or to sell. My BE was kind of hard to log into simply because of the volume of in game mail I had asking for very custom pets... and to me that is the greatest thing that can happen as a crafter. You don't really get that in most games simply because the way they are designed does not really give any incentive to find most (if any) crafters.
I'd love to see something similar to BE in EQN... where to use some typical names.. if you had something like a Necromancer they could graft well to be blunt parts of things they killed onto their pet. Or if you had elemental pets the mage could graft in other elements... or if you had something with a beastlord type warder... maybe there could be some kind of Rating passing method of doing pet breeding for new and unique pets.
Great story. There is no meaningful PvE or PvP content, but hey at least 3 people in the whole game had fun...
I guess that is a success, in a weird kind of way.
What does one have to do w/ the other? Why can't you have meaningful pve for item components instead of the items themselvs?
PvP, I don't know much about....
If I spend months to get gear from difficult PvE only to have it fade away, then people are going to be pissed. Thus these players will rarely use their best gear, which means the content has to be made easy. You just destroyed end game PvE!
If items can be destroyed, then you won't go into PVP using your best gear either. You are going to use stuff you can easily replace. You just destroyed end game PvP.
You spend the whole game in fear that you will lose the rare item you worked for!
That is the opposite of fun, which is why its not a popular system.
Meanwhile the crafters sit back as kings of the world.
The smart thing to do would be to work on your crafting as well to dethrone the douche charging you ridiculous prices to push a button. Problem is that crafting is so boring you would rather stab yourself in the face with a fork, than spend your limited game time doing a 2nd job.
PvE is a joke
PvP is a joke
And the most powerful players in the game are the least skilled, crafters and grinders.
To argue this post above. Just make drop rates really, really, good. So even if you lose the precious. It doesn't cost much time and only skill to re-aquire.
Sony has already done the strict themepark route in two everquest where everything is static. If they want to be the biggest sandbox on the market, they need to make everything destroyable/rebuildable, and decaying/growing. Everything they have announced so far stresses change and permanent change.
Permanent with no decay or loss= one and done=waiting on expansions for new content.
They need to be very clear, with whatever direction they go in. Because naming this Everquest is going to draw in old EQ players who expect that traditional D&D type experience most mmos do now. If those old EQ players get in game and it's different. They are going to voice complaints. And we all now what happens if the game direction changes in response to those complaints, as it did in SWG.
SWG is only remembered for crafting and the player driven economy.
I have to disagree here. SWG is remembered for a heck of a lot more than that. It had an amazing Faction system, entire professions dedicated to entertaining and non-combat features (which made for an awesome community in the cantinas), player cities with their own governments (including a politician profession), lots of planets to explore, Space Combat (with full ship customization), and so many other things that games have been missing out on lately (for the most part).
Personally I mastered several professions, but my main was a Master Commando. I enjoyed the PvP and PvE aspects of SWG. I still remember running the Imperial Theme park and doing missions for Darth Vader. Fun times. My point being, this game is remembered by those who played it for more than just crafting and the economy.
Yeah, there are some who did not like that a full-time game was there for crafters and merchants. Dancers, politicians, Bio-Engineers, all that was apparently bad for the Combat-Only player somehow.
Oh yes, there were many players who passionately hated the top crafters because they made huge amounts of money ingame. The fact that those crafters spent hours and hours and hours involved in crafting was irrelevant.
It was a fulltime job gathering resources, running factories and making 20 to 30 manufacturing schematics for each batch of products just to get that extra 0.25 stat points. Keeping multiple spreadsheets updated with current resource spawn data, watching your competitors and keeping 2 or 3 vendors on different planets stocked and priced. Negotiating supply contracts with combat players for resources from planets where you could never go as a crafter, because it was instant death.
Of course, there were plenty of filthy-rich combat players too, but somehow that was acceptable. Who else do you think was buying those vintage crates of Vasarian Brandy at 500K credits per crate ?
The hatred mostly came down to: "I don't want to have to do all that boring crafting crap to be rich as well, therefore nobody else should be able to get rich that way either".
The hatred mostly came down to: "I don't want to have to do all that boring crafting crap to be rich as well, therefore nobody else should be able to get rich that way either".
Why does this make me think of American politics? lol
I remember making millions of credits on creature harvesting (MRanger, MSwordsman - mostly meat and hide though, but I did recall going out of my way to milk a few creatures when the resource was superb). I had a list of clients I'd harvest on behalf off, with agreed upon wages per unit.
So much that I started collecting those veteran rewards just for the sake of having them, and asking crafters to make full sets of gear I'd never use, with the highest stats available from the best materials, with my characters name on them specifically for the purpose of being showcased in the house I had.
Plus of course the crazy tips for the entertainers.
That was great.
SWG pre-NGE will forever be the shining light in a sea of darkness.
I also hope they will have some one character only servers, since we will be able to mix and match classes accordingly. Making player reputation matter again is one of the things I expect from EQN.
The hatred mostly came down to: "I don't want to have to do all that boring crafting crap to be rich as well, therefore nobody else should be able to get rich that way either".
Why does this make me think of American politics? lol
SWG is only remembered for crafting and the player driven economy.
I have to disagree here. SWG is remembered for a heck of a lot more than that. It had an amazing Faction system, entire professions dedicated to entertaining and non-combat features (which made for an awesome community in the cantinas), player cities with their own governments (including a politician profession), lots of planets to explore, Space Combat (with full ship customization), and so many other things that games have been missing out on lately (for the most part).
Personally I mastered several professions, but my main was a Master Commando. I enjoyed the PvP and PvE aspects of SWG. I still remember running the Imperial Theme park and doing missions for Darth Vader. Fun times. My point being, this game is remembered by those who played it for more than just crafting and the economy.
Yeah, there are some who did not like that a full-time game was there for crafters and merchants. Dancers, politicians, Bio-Engineers, all that was apparently bad for the Combat-Only player somehow.
I loved combat in the game, but then I made up my own versions of it such as being a contract hunter / tracker for crafting mats as a Master Ranger. I made a fortune in game selling elite mats to crafters and had fun hunting and killing creatures. The thing that was always lacking was the Galactic Civil War. They never did make any meaningful game there, and that was a problem.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Someone above said they brought flavor to the game. I agree. In fact, they brought PEOPLE to the game that might have no otherwise played an MMO in the first place. This was one of the things that made the community so special. You had people from all walks of life playing SWG, not just people interested in combat and rushing to some kind of end game.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Someone above said they brought flavor to the game. I agree. In fact, they brought PEOPLE to the game that might have no otherwise played an MMO in the first place. This was one of the things that made the community so special. You had people from all walks of life playing SWG, not just people interested in combat and rushing to some kind of end game.
For what it's worth, I registered just to spread more love to my fellow SWG non-combat-classers /hugs /hugs /hugs
Gary from Gamebreaker is very nostalgic about SWG and he interviewed Dave Georgeson and asked about crafting (among other things). The most revealing bits (and I use the word "revealing" loosely) can be seen between the 1:30-3:30 mark.
Furthermore, during one of the live panels (it was either the Q&A portion of the class panel or the Q&A panel), someone in attendance specifically cited SWG crafting and the connectivity it brought to the entire game as something they would like to see in EQN. While he was saying these things, Jeff Butler (the SOE dev responsible for running everything through a "fun filter") was nodding his head in agreement and giving the thumbs up.
If there's anything encouraging to take away from this, it's that the EQN devs at least pay good lip service to those players who build communities and relationships in game (through crafting, leadership roles, etc). Whether or not they can deliver is something I'm sure we'll be speculating on for months; possibly years before release.
The reasons why I personally hold out a little bit of hope are:
1)Sony has the resources capable of making this happen. They have the money, they have the talent, they have the experience, and (finally) they have the motivation to try something different.
2)While they have a ton of mechanics to show off still, the technology behind the core of their game exists. The ForgeLight engine has served Planetside 2 players admirably for about a year now. The Storybricks AI tool has had the gaming industry's attention for at least about year (that I know of).
3)So far, the marketing is absolutely drenched in nostalgia and the developers seem like genuine fans of the EverQuest series. All you have to do is see Dave Georgeson's atrocious sense of style to know he's a nerd. Likewise, Jeff Butler sputtering out D&D and original EverQuest references didn't sound forced or insincere. Rosie Rappaport is on twitter right now asking fans to send their original EverQuest screenshots. tl;dr If they didn't want this game to appeal to old-school sand-boxy players, they very well could be marketing towards the younger "mass-market" audience--but they're not.
Of course they could all just be posing, except for the fact that the "verticality" and destructability of Norrath in EQN lends itself to what more than anything else? An epic sense of scale and exploration. And what was the most magical thing about playing EverQuest back in the day? The epic sense of scale and exploration! As they say, "The proof is in the pudding", my friends.
So anyways, this former-Wookiee-architect-and-interior-decorator (it was more satisfying than it sounds lol) remains cautiously optimistic that maybe, just maybe the evolution of the MMO will come full circle in EQN. Fingers crossed, guys & gals!
Comments
Yes. Though crafting looks like it will be powerful in EQN, I fear that there will be no other non-combat activities outside of minecrafting (which is a great feature full of hours of fun, don't get me wrong). I fully realize that I am being unrealistic and am on the Moar chain, but I wish that EQN will marry a full-featured MMO to that amazing world they are creating. I would love to make a bard and actually be able to make some coin in Taverns. I don't think there is room in the 8 buttons for my lute playing though.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
The one thing *I* really enjoyed in SWG that was crafting related was Bio Engineer... It wasn't just always about going out and finding the best samples etc... When you were limited in pet levels and wanted to use more than one pet. Once you started getting into multi-generation resampling to get the pet's individual level down and retain the best stats etc for the pet that you could. Well you were just talking about a lot of dedication and personal learning curve to do it right. (since there are likely a lot of people that won't know what I meant... when you engineered a pet it came out at a certain level. If you needed it lower you could take sample of that pet and use other samples that were from a bit lower pet. You did this mix over and over to reach your target level but it didn't always go the way you wanted.)
When they added the changes to pet abilities then you got an entire new level in there... as you might be making a 2 or 3 pet setup. where one pet used a knock down and melee based attack.. while the others used ranged abilities (poison/diseae etc) and you had to sample a lot of different mobs to end up where you wanted.
Yet at the end of the day I had this creature I had created to hunt with... or to sell. My BE was kind of hard to log into simply because of the volume of in game mail I had asking for very custom pets... and to me that is the greatest thing that can happen as a crafter. You don't really get that in most games simply because the way they are designed does not really give any incentive to find most (if any) crafters.
I'd love to see something similar to BE in EQN... where to use some typical names.. if you had something like a Necromancer they could graft well to be blunt parts of things they killed onto their pet. Or if you had elemental pets the mage could graft in other elements... or if you had something with a beastlord type warder... maybe there could be some kind of Rating passing method of doing pet breeding for new and unique pets.
To argue this post above. Just make drop rates really, really, good. So even if you lose the precious. It doesn't cost much time and only skill to re-aquire.
Sony has already done the strict themepark route in two everquest where everything is static. If they want to be the biggest sandbox on the market, they need to make everything destroyable/rebuildable, and decaying/growing. Everything they have announced so far stresses change and permanent change.
Permanent with no decay or loss= one and done=waiting on expansions for new content.
They need to be very clear, with whatever direction they go in. Because naming this Everquest is going to draw in old EQ players who expect that traditional D&D type experience most mmos do now. If those old EQ players get in game and it's different. They are going to voice complaints. And we all now what happens if the game direction changes in response to those complaints, as it did in SWG.
Oh yes, there were many players who passionately hated the top crafters because they made huge amounts of money ingame. The fact that those crafters spent hours and hours and hours involved in crafting was irrelevant.
It was a fulltime job gathering resources, running factories and making 20 to 30 manufacturing schematics for each batch of products just to get that extra 0.25 stat points. Keeping multiple spreadsheets updated with current resource spawn data, watching your competitors and keeping 2 or 3 vendors on different planets stocked and priced. Negotiating supply contracts with combat players for resources from planets where you could never go as a crafter, because it was instant death.
Of course, there were plenty of filthy-rich combat players too, but somehow that was acceptable. Who else do you think was buying those vintage crates of Vasarian Brandy at 500K credits per crate ?
The hatred mostly came down to: "I don't want to have to do all that boring crafting crap to be rich as well, therefore nobody else should be able to get rich that way either".
gameplay > graphics
Bill Murphy.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/952/feature/7640/EverQuest-Next-The-Future-of-the-MMORPG-Lies-in-Norrath.html
Despite Bill's enthusiasm, I'm still not sold yet.
Why does this make me think of American politics? lol
At first I was like, 'Bill Murray??!!'
Then I was like, 'oh'
I remember making millions of credits on creature harvesting (MRanger, MSwordsman - mostly meat and hide though, but I did recall going out of my way to milk a few creatures when the resource was superb). I had a list of clients I'd harvest on behalf off, with agreed upon wages per unit.
So much that I started collecting those veteran rewards just for the sake of having them, and asking crafters to make full sets of gear I'd never use, with the highest stats available from the best materials, with my characters name on them specifically for the purpose of being showcased in the house I had.
Plus of course the crazy tips for the entertainers.
That was great.
SWG pre-NGE will forever be the shining light in a sea of darkness.
I also hope they will have some one character only servers, since we will be able to mix and match classes accordingly. Making player reputation matter again is one of the things I expect from EQN.
Haha, so true.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
I loved combat in the game, but then I made up my own versions of it such as being a contract hunter / tracker for crafting mats as a Master Ranger. I made a fortune in game selling elite mats to crafters and had fun hunting and killing creatures. The thing that was always lacking was the Galactic Civil War. They never did make any meaningful game there, and that was a problem.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Non-Combat classes....
Someone above said they brought flavor to the game. I agree. In fact, they brought PEOPLE to the game that might have no otherwise played an MMO in the first place. This was one of the things that made the community so special. You had people from all walks of life playing SWG, not just people interested in combat and rushing to some kind of end game.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Amen
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
One thing I am fairly certain about, If crafting is a "Holy Grail" I am pretty sure SoE will somehow tie it to the cash shop to make money.
I still need to see how SoE plans to make crafting relevant in an economy where you can buy game currency with real money.
For what it's worth, I registered just to spread more love to my fellow SWG non-combat-classers /hugs /hugs /hugs
Gary from Gamebreaker is very nostalgic about SWG and he interviewed Dave Georgeson and asked about crafting (among other things). The most revealing bits (and I use the word "revealing" loosely) can be seen between the 1:30-3:30 mark.
Furthermore, during one of the live panels (it was either the Q&A portion of the class panel or the Q&A panel), someone in attendance specifically cited SWG crafting and the connectivity it brought to the entire game as something they would like to see in EQN. While he was saying these things, Jeff Butler (the SOE dev responsible for running everything through a "fun filter") was nodding his head in agreement and giving the thumbs up.
If there's anything encouraging to take away from this, it's that the EQN devs at least pay good lip service to those players who build communities and relationships in game (through crafting, leadership roles, etc). Whether or not they can deliver is something I'm sure we'll be speculating on for months; possibly years before release.
The reasons why I personally hold out a little bit of hope are:
1)Sony has the resources capable of making this happen. They have the money, they have the talent, they have the experience, and (finally) they have the motivation to try something different.
2)While they have a ton of mechanics to show off still, the technology behind the core of their game exists. The ForgeLight engine has served Planetside 2 players admirably for about a year now. The Storybricks AI tool has had the gaming industry's attention for at least about year (that I know of).
3)So far, the marketing is absolutely drenched in nostalgia and the developers seem like genuine fans of the EverQuest series. All you have to do is see Dave Georgeson's atrocious sense of style to know he's a nerd. Likewise, Jeff Butler sputtering out D&D and original EverQuest references didn't sound forced or insincere. Rosie Rappaport is on twitter right now asking fans to send their original EverQuest screenshots. tl;dr If they didn't want this game to appeal to old-school sand-boxy players, they very well could be marketing towards the younger "mass-market" audience--but they're not.
Of course they could all just be posing, except for the fact that the "verticality" and destructability of Norrath in EQN lends itself to what more than anything else? An epic sense of scale and exploration. And what was the most magical thing about playing EverQuest back in the day? The epic sense of scale and exploration! As they say, "The proof is in the pudding", my friends.
So anyways, this former-Wookiee-architect-and-interior-decorator (it was more satisfying than it sounds lol) remains cautiously optimistic that maybe, just maybe the evolution of the MMO will come full circle in EQN. Fingers crossed, guys & gals!
That Interview pretty much confirms s few of the things I thought up pretty amazing.