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What ever happend to camping for xp?
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I recall discussions along the lines of too many items existing at some point, but of course the answer is not to bind them. The answer is to meaningfully degrade them. And actually them expire. Games have degradation, but they also have bound items (and not just for super-rares either). Every game I've played with item degradation rarely ever mean it.
Keeping track of the number of times an item changes hands and adding a function of that to the degrade rate might have been useful to resolving the problem also. But items should irrovacably break. The do sometimes in DDO (if you are not careful).
Now, what I underlined and italicized (and re-post here for your convenience) from Distopia is the point:
"Why then do most power-levelers (those who hit cap in 24 hrs or so) generally mob grind their way there?"
POWER LEVELERS. Then I asked a question, which you neglected to address before you went on your rant, which I also underlined and italicized for you and repeat it here:
"Would you say your example is the norm, or the exception?"
Can you now see how I came to back Sovrath's post, yet, or are your eyes still bleeding from bursting veins?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
There are other ways to do it, instead of wasting hours upon hours in a static position.
People only miss it because of the "social" chat. Personally, i'd rather be doing something else which is more interactive and mobile, instead of chatting about dinner, kids, or what kind of flavor bubblegum someone likes.
Doing both solo and group forced and having them be "equal" would probably make the people who only group to get something only play solo, that is true.
But people who actually enjoy playing with friends and/or guild mates etc. will continue to do so.
It's not about difficulty. You can make difficult solo content, and easy group content, and vice versa.
The added "difficulty" inherent in group play is either artificially created by manipulating the numbers to make enemies hit harder, so you then need a tank + healer etc. or it is a natural barrier based on communication and coordination - you are reliant upon others. When they fail, you fail.
But when you play with friends / guild mates you know and are comfortable with and mesh well together - you completely remove the natural barrier.
I thought i made it obvious it was the norm. If WoW and FFXIV are doing it, it was the fucking norm and not some rare exception that you're so fucking blind to see that it's been in front of you this entire time.
People don't do it in WoW or other games(even though it gives them the best exp/hr) for much the same reason we were given other ways to level up. Because the MAJORITY HATED IT. Just because questing is more prevalent, doesn't mean we've done away with camping for xp. Camping for xp remains the BEST way to gain exp in most games out nowadays, but it doesn't mean people want to do it, even if it is the best because to them its boring, which is why you don't see it as forced as it once was.
And when will you open your eyes and realize Sovrath genuinely believed that questing was BETTER for exp than grinding mobs. This is a legit false statement. It's a fact its not true.
Reminds me of the days of camping... about now one or the other would run around the camp and agro everything they could find...then FD, evac, or hit Ctrl-Q. Ahhh those were the days!
The difficulty in any game is artificial. You give more dmg or hp to a mob. Even if you increase the AI and give them a wider variety of abilities, its artificial (hence AI).
The point is, if its viable to solo it trivializes the game. It removes the feeling of a dangerous world. I don't care if games with soloing exist, but I don't want it as a viable means of progression in the game I play. Especially if people are capable of achieving the same goals regardless of whether they group or solo.
At least Pantheon gets it. Yes, you will be able to do some soloing, but eventually you will need better gear, and better gear requires a group. Then every 10 levels you have class trials that generally require a group. Until they are completed, you wont even be able to continue leveling up. Point is, we need both types of games. Sure you can group out in the world in WoW, but people don't do it for a reason. I can't tell you how many hundreds of times I've messaged people in games in the last decade to group and they've simply ignored it because they were too busy soloing.
Yes, I can prove it because the conversation is conveniently focused on progression:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I think it's important note that those people who do "mob grind" carefully plan out, within the games that support it, each area, what mobs they need to kill for how long.
It's not really "the norm". You get someone in game and tell them to mob grind you will see it doesn't work.
I was doing this in Aion and for the heck of it did a quest and it was faster to kill the 10 mobs and get the quest experience for the amount of xp I got for the quest.
Same in Lord of the Rings Online.
I know that someone has figured out a way to do it in ESO without questing but you need to know this exists and you need to follow it.
It's possible such a thing exists in Aion and LOTRO but I've never heard of it. His question was legitimate.
Your response was a bit overkill no?
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Basically that is summed up in click on x follow y as I said before. It is not proof to me. Those all add up to the same thing in the end. Few people even both to read the quest text because they don't have to do so. Basically quests are a linear path quickly from level 0 to max level alone. Grinding mobs in a slow path where you have the choice to go anywhere in the game and enjoy all parts of the game with many other people.
Except you're wrong. You don't need to plan anything out. It's as simple as always fight mobs at least x levels above your level. That's it.
Sure, it helps if you know ahead of time where "caster mobs" are in the level range you want ahead of time, but its not like its some EVE Online level planning that takes more than a moments thought which you can easily think while you're grinding away at w/e current mobs you're fighting.
You can not force people to not hack or bot either. Maybe we should just stop trying with those too.
Little forum boys with their polished cyber toys: whine whine, boo-hoo, talk talk.
nah, it would be HARD. And a lot of down time of course. Cant have "proper" experience without lot of downtime.
6 players*5$ is better than 1*5$
I don't believe I'm wrong at all. since my first instinct is to grind mobs my experience with the games that I play is that questing is a lot faster.
So there's got to be more to it than that. The only recent exception, at lower levels, is final fantasy 14 which I noted had a decent progression.
As a point of note, I tried it in wow at lower levels and questing was faster. Upper levels? Can't say I don't have experience with that but that would just point to it being for specific and special cases.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Of course you have to know where and what to camp, its SAME as old school games. Its not the norm since vast majority of people find it mind numbing and prefer other methos over "best" one.
grinding mobs to reach max level was norm in early LOTRO. i dont know when you played it, but they had to add actual content because people crapped all over that little fact that there was no content just mob grind in Angmar.
And there were also grind spots for lower levels, that was true well beyond it went free to play. Dont mention LOTRO since you could grind mobs for leveling just fine.
Games aren't built for grinding anymore basically. Exp bonuses for mobs not tied to quests, exp bonuses for mobs that have been alive for a long time. Rare drops tied into non quest mobs instead of itemization being a boring quest trek. Areas with procedural content not tied to quests etc. You could make a grind friendly game where it was fun to just explore around and kill stuff at random.
A game like GW2 where you kill something and it instantly respawns in the same place so you kill it again over and over and over again just aren't built for grinding to be fun.
The best way to level in WoW was always to grind from quest to quest, you did a combination of both. Well at least after release, in beta the best XP was doing dungeons but they nerfed that unfortunately.
Haha, WHAT?
I tried to play LotRO 5 different times (because I had invested so much heart into it back when it was a sandbox game, and not linear WoW clone garbage).
Each time I played I did my best to avoid the cookie cutter time wasting hand holding quests.
It is NOT POSSIBLE and NOT ENCOURAGED in LotRO to mob grind. Someone doing quests will get about 10x more money, xp, and loot in about 1/4 the time, than someone trying to mob grind.
And a huge part of the appeal of mob grinding (not camping, that's a whole different issue that it seems only EQ1 people fondly remember), is how social it was. Sharing dungeons and spawns and forming groups so you can kill faster and harder... that's not possible in LotRO because it's almost entirely a solo game through and through. The quests actively discourage grouping, and other than quests, there's nothing else to really do in LotRO, or most other modern MMOs.
You see, thats what happens when you talk about something you know nothing about.
LOTRO is now pretty much solo game because they HAD to change it. At launch and afterwards large portions of maps were group areas with elites and super fast respawns.
But hey, harp on, baseless/clueless rants are fun...for some people at least.
I was in LotRO Alpha back when it was still called Middle Earth Online.
I was in LotRO alpha when it was called LotRO.
I was in the beta. I was there at launch. I was there for the first expansion.
It was always an almost entirely solo game where the only way to progress was by doing quests. The difference is, many of those quests lines used to have a very jarring final step that FORCED you to group with people.
What would people do? End up standing around doing nothing waiting for a group to form for that one step, do it quickly, then disband and never speak again, because it wasn't possible to advance in the game doing anything else, and the population had been conditioned to play alone.
Well, few of my characters would disagree, and i had every class at 50 quite a while before MoM.
try harder next time.
It's proof of variety.
The variety I'm describing is gameplay variety. This is by far the most meaningful variety because it changes what you do.
The variety you're describing is just location and mob art. It changes what you see, but not what you do, and so is a much weaker form of variety. (At least in the context of early MMORPGs where the mobs you were grinding usually weren't meaningfully different from one another.)
I wasn't even counting quest text as variety. That's varied too, but also isn't gameplay variety. (Except occasionally in TOR where the story involves gameplay.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I understand what you are saying and you might have a point if there were no GPS and tutorials in games. Once the GPS is added that variety just turns into following a linear pathway from the start of the game to the end of the game. You barely get to enjoy a zone before you are done with it and moving on to the next. It doesn't really matter if the quests contain variation of minor differences if they are almost exactly the same and all be completed just by following the GPS around and doing what exactly what they are told to do.
The is no tech so primitive that it cannot find proponents on this website.
"Remember when you had to bash Grog with a rock for xp? Great community-builder, too bad about Grog."
It's still in Dark Age of Camelot...but yes. This built community because instead of saying by to your pals and everyone whisking away to a quest line, you had to work with other folks and grind the day away. For extra xp you could farm mobs in a pvp zone, and risk getting rolled by 2 different realms.
Epic EPIC fun. Sadly, quests destroyed this concept in mmorpgs and everyone just does there own thing until some end game results ... usually in more quests called: dailies, lol.
Rest in Peace (fun, that is).