What exactly would you call a game that has sold 5 million copies if not a huge success ?
How about those figures from 2013 ,2014 and look at the figure in 2015. Still want to argue that GW 2 is a flop ?
You can make your arguments against the type combat in the GW 2 and the lack of trinity but saying it flopped is a warped opinion if you go by the success of GW 2.
Really I would beg to differ from your definition of failure. Isn't GW 2 a huge success? Your reality seems to be a bit warped.
Not sure I would use the term "huge success" but we get the point.......
Well compared to Vanguard I would say that GW 2 is indeed a huge success would you not agree ? I play a lot of Everquest 2 and FFXIV ARR where you have a trinity and enjoy it . I have also played GW 2 . I think that the combat in GW 2 is a lot of fun. You can adapt and you do play it very differently from EQ 2 but I dislike it when people feel the need to categorize something that is clearly not a flop as a flop to make a point. You can make a point without falsely representing the opposing type of combat as having failed I should think. This practice of always trying to denigrate or deny other forms of combat and gameplay is a tiresome form of debate.
How do you explain its continuing success and ability to remain so even though there are many F2P games that use the trinity. Would those games not do better if money was the sole consideration ?
This example may not hold true for all mmos, but something to keep in mind.
Vanilla World of Warcraft - Many didn't like playing Tanks or Healer classes because they were :
- Boring
- Hard time soloing
With all mmos :
- Tanks, many are afraid of the responsibilities of being in charge. It's a stigma that tanks are in charge, in most cases they are, so this is justifiable.
That mentality really did stem from EQ. Basically between the tank and the puller (if you had one) were expected to know all the mobs, know the spawn times, spawn locations, etc etc etc. Unfortunately in later MMO's it didn't persist as well but the stigma as such did.
actually its the opposite.
In EQ, the tank didn't need to know the mobs if there was a puller. No game since EQ that I know of has pullers, so in all post EQ games the tank is expected to lead and know the mobs. They control the pace of the group. The leadership role is actually tougher in most games than the tank role itself, because unlike EQ a basic rotation is usually enough to hold aggro.
How do you explain its continuing success and ability to remain so even though there are many F2P games that use the trinity. Would those games not do better if money was the sole consideration ?
Why are you turning this into a GW2 discussion......I'm talking about a non-trinity, and GW2 was a good example.
Maybe your not warped, but please open your mind and stay on topic, or start a new one.
Oh its perfectly all right to refer to GW 2 as an example of a non trinity but you should not have said it flopped as a result of that choice. It was blatantly false and I simply pointed that out much to your chagrin I would imagine .
WoW has the best lfg tool in MMOs. They give incentives for players to use it as well. Most players use it for everything from questing to raiding to pvp, because it gives you bonus rewards for doing so.
WoW has the best lfg tool in MMOs. They give incentives for players to use it as well. Most players use it for everything from questing to raiding to pvp, because it gives you bonus rewards for doing so.
Really, I only played Vanilla and a little into the BC...That may have came later with incentives, so that was cool.
I liked how you could search for players by levels, groups of levels such as Warlocks only, or 20-28, Guilds by name and their populations. It was deep even in vanilla.
But as I stated in the OP........The best ever was D&D Online with, its built in Message board, that each and every player had, where you can type paragraphs or anything you feel into your group search.
If you already have part of a group, it would display who, class, and level of your group that you have so far. This way people know before hand what they were walking into
Ultra rare mobs/drops the best feature ever. Frustrating at times but oh so satisfying when you finally get the item you wanted. Think Stormfeather or DBoW (Darkblade of the Warlord) from RZ in Plane of Time sort of thing.
I care about your gaming 'problems' and teenage anxieties, just not today.
WoW has the best lfg tool in MMOs. They give incentives for players to use it as well. Most players use it for everything from questing to raiding to pvp, because it gives you bonus rewards for doing so.
You wouldn't think it from a game that depends on group finder so much but this is 100% accurate. A great lesson to be learned here.
A tool is only as good as the frequency with which it is used. If you have a tool that your player base avoids like a plague it will not matter how brilliantly it was displayed. That is why in my opinion the WoW tool that offers incentives works so well because of its popularity and ease of use however having used it as a healer I will not recommend using it. That was not the fault of the tool though but the nasty player base that uses it.
WoW has the best lfg tool in MMOs. They give incentives for players to use it as well. Most players use it for everything from questing to raiding to pvp, because it gives you bonus rewards for doing so.
You wouldn't think it from a game that depends on group finder so much but this is 100% accurate. A great lesson to be learned here.
Any game that has to give rewards to players in order to get them to group is completely ignoring the actual problem. If it is a group game, people will group because they have to, not because they get special prize.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling." - Michael Bitton Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about." - SEANMCAD
I would love if Pantheon had a simple feature as part of the in
game friends list that lets you jot a note next to someone's name. "Met
John at Karnor's Castle." Only you can see those notes, but it helps to
have that reference. It's also nice to have note making ability on your
ignore list. "Jane is a KSer." Yes, I could always write it on a piece
of paper. But who wants to stop playing to do that.
Thats the one feature I keep missing EVERYWHERE, not just in games.
FFXI Ninja class....FFXI Redmage class both better classes than anything i have seen in any game.Ok on a role now FFXI Blue Mage class where you learn abilities and spells from the creatures in the game.
Mentoring was a great idea,i believe it was SOE who started that.
Skill chains,kill more in a set amount of time you get added xp,not really sure who started that.
Tactical points or Skill points to setup combos or big attack moves.
here is one>>>>SUB CLASS yep again Square Enix,goes way back to like FF3.Brilliant design,1/2 your main level so as to not dumb down the CLASS idea,it keeps your role while allowing some versatility to your class,hence the infamous RDM/NIN class from early ffxi days.
That is why i get so bummed out playing some of these cheap generic games,they have no creativity or uniqueness to them.
Here is a really old one that i have no idea who started it in mmo's >>>>Voice acting.I am sure everyone loves it,most of the time.
To round out my post before i go find some food,i'll end it with one idea that i would like to toss in the gutter somewhere.....Yellow question marks over npc heads,whomever started that crap should never make videos games ever again.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
WOW, SWTOR, Rift, GW2 all solved this problem years ago.
If you consider megaservers that create almost complete anonymity and break down the very fabric of community as was originally found in the MMORPG, yes, they did an excellent job.
Now I can spend more time enjoying content and less time waiting for my guild to login.
I played FFXI for almost 8 years, and Lineage 2 for almost 5. Both were (especially then) very group-focused MMOs.
I never had to "wait for my guild (Clan or LS in this case) to log in to get anything done. There were always ways to communicate and find other people to do content with. It only requires being social and showing some initiative.
The problem has never been a lack of means. It's that people became too lazy and anti-social to do it.
And of course, sometimes there just aren't enough people in your level range, with the classes you need, looking to do the content you're looking to do. There's nothing a MMO dev can do about that - not even with a group finder.
The core of the issue can be found right in people's own words, and they say it soooo often it pretty much speaks for itself (until it's pointed out to them, then they somehow completely change their argument). The problem is right in the words "waiting for a group", or similar.
As just one example... People complain about how FFXI was horrible because they'd "wait for hours for a group invite". Their problem is right in their complaint. They were waiting for others to invite them, rather than taking initiative and starting a group themselves. They would instead blame the game/developers. Meanwhile, people who were pro-active, and who didn't wait for someone else to invite them could log on and within 20-30 minutes, max, have a full group together and out doing content.
Seriously. I knew some of these people. Every time they logged in, without fail, within 30 minutes, give or take, they had a group assembled and were out xp'ing, or doing some other content. All the while, others are sitting around, seek flags up, complaining about how they're not getting invites.
I know some people don't want to acknowledge that, because the thought that they might be responsible for their own experience (or lack of it) is just too offensive to consider, and it's easier to just blame the game/devs. But, well... "not liking" something doesn't make it not so.
I mean think about it... Older MMOs didn't have dungeon finders, group finders, auto-anything. Players had to be social, outgoing and have initiative to get things done. The MMO genre had far fewer people in it, and nothing was cross-server - your server was your pool of potential group-mates. Yet, people did it. They met people, they assembled groups, they formed friendships, they got stuff done.
Nowadays, where the genre is ginormous, and grouping up has become a matter of clicking a button and letting the game do all the work... people can't seem to find groups.
Having seen the transition in the genre from what it was 10+ years ago, to what it is now... It's not a coincidence.
Often, hard time grouping is the players fault. There are many steps developers can use to help, and auto everything is by far a bad solution with negative consequences.
However, putting auto everything aside. Developers destroy community's in so many other ways by story telling. Rift is the best example. All new mmos do this but Rift is the worst.
Rift was one big chain-quest !....I'm very social. After level 10 in any mmo I seek others. Rift was impossible to make friends.
You moved from one quest hub to the next in order. At each quest hub you received at least three parts of a quest. IN EVERY CASE, players around you were never on the same part....You could never sync up.
I played this game with two characters. One with a real life friend, and one to play with the community. It was extremely hard to play with both.
My friend and I had to match quest exactly, no room what so ever to deviate from this. You were never allowed to play on your own and expect to be in sync next time you played. We proved this several times.
I tried to match quest with random players, this was the same. Could never match.
Important :
Funny little story in Rift that sums up every mmo.
I was out questing solo one day ( because this is how the game had to be played ). And this kid was following me everyplace I went. I took this as kind of strange, but it happens now and then. Finally he asked if we could play together. Knowing how the game is I turned to say, we cant. Well he insisted !
I went on to explain I'm two levels higher than him and will never match quest. Well, he latched on to me and no letting go. He asked me to share my quest and I couldn't. He's like why not ?....I explained again the game is not designed that way, and he has to go wayyyy back to where he originally was. He couldn't grasp this and continued to follow me for a good half hour, pestering me to share. I had two choices to let him follow or log off......I decided to let him follow. Another hour passed where he just came out with it....Give me 3 Gold....He was after my money
I'll never forget this story. I then realized every other newer story telling mmo is the same as Rift !
We all have our reasons for loving mmos. I'll not list them because the list would be long, besides you already know.
For me it's Dungeon crawling. You need a good " social panel ".
I remember watching players spam chat for hours looking for that particular class, or anyone for that matter. I would right click on that person to see what level or class he was. Then I would open up the " Social panel " and do a search for them only to find no healer or tanks at all in his range......I would think to my self, the poor guy is wasting his time and doesn't even know it........Often times I would politely let them know.
Here is something else.
- No one reads open chat or very little. This is the worst way to find others.
- Guilds, the second worst way to find others. Lets do a little math. Your guild has 200 members, 40 online during prim time and 16 online at off peak times. Your level 22 ranged dps.........How many healers, tanks or even dps do you think you would find at YOUR LEVEL RANGE !
Even so, have you ever been in a situation where all dps say yes, and the tank is silent ?...... I've been their more often than not, picking 3 more dps and telling everyone else no. Now your the bad guy.
Every mmo has a " social panel ". They all have filters to help search. Developers never seem to encourage there use. I've seen a few mmos with quest to get a group together, yet no explanation on how. This would be irritating.
Vanguard later made a trial island, a well thought out starting zone. I'll admit, it was well done. They had at least three sections in the 1-10 area where you were encouraged to group. Most players like to solo a new mmo for ten levels to get a feel, but Vanguard was an exception, it flowed nicely. This could have been because everyone were trapped on the island and everyone was like minded. The social panel was not really needed in this case........But as players fanned out and filled the world grouping became a problem. No one used the " social panel ".
Early Dungeons & Dragons Online encouraged the use of the " social panel " and everyone used it !.....This was my inspiration in all mmos. Grouping was never a problem in ANY game after that.
They went beyond with a message board. An easy excisable feature to list your intentions with filters and an area to type a few lines like " new players are welcome ". It would also display who was already in the group along with classes, this neat little trick in it self was great.
like the dude put it so eloquently once:
for you it might be random PUGs, imo that is about the worst that can happen. not knowing the guys you fight with is a thing i don't like at all ^^
you know, back "in the days" dungeons even didn't zone you, they were public, people used to farm certain mob grps (and other people were not comming to take their kills and went like "haha, why you no hit last!?"), or work together in teams to decent deeper.
i kinda miss spindelhalla
Oh, yes! Good old DAoC. The whole gameplay was a lot more focused on teamplay. Else you needed a buffbot or had to grind for a very long time.
When it comes to the best invention in an MMO ever made ...
I think City of Heroes sidekick system was great. When forming a group with a higher level player he could make you his sidekick resulting in your level being put in line with his level. An astounding innovation for a MMO that was released in 2004.
I think City of Heroes sidekick system was great. When forming a group with a higher level player he could make you his sidekick resulting in your level being put in line with his level. An astounding innovation for a MMO that was released in 2004.
That was a good feature. Plus they adjusted the sidekick's xp and rewards so the sidekick progressed more or less as if he were grouped with people his own level. It allowed people to keep grouping with their friends even if they drifted apart in levels.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Sorry, just wanted to say how awful of a feature that is. The idea that players don't actually have to progress through the game to experience higher level content defeats much of the purpose of the MMO. That takes convenience to a whole new level.
Comments
Seriously dude? Seriously?
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
What exactly would you call a game that has sold 5 million copies if not a huge success ?
How about those figures from 2013 ,2014 and look at the figure in 2015. Still want to argue that GW 2 is a flop ?
You can make your arguments against the type combat in the GW 2 and the lack of trinity but saying it flopped is a warped opinion if you go by the success of GW 2.
No one ever said the game was a flop. Calm down, you don't have to come in and White Knight this thread is about Pantheon......
Guild wars 2 is a success because it's was released as a very good model Buy-to-play.
Extremely cheap one time pay......So many people love it just because of that.
The non trinity is not the selling point !!!!
In EQ, the tank didn't need to know the mobs if there was a puller. No game since EQ that I know of has pullers, so in all post EQ games the tank is expected to lead and know the mobs. They control the pace of the group. The leadership role is actually tougher in most games than the tank role itself, because unlike EQ a basic rotation is usually enough to hold aggro.
Why are you turning this into a GW2 discussion......I'm talking about a non-trinity, and GW2 was a good example.
Maybe your not warped, but please open your mind and stay on topic, or start a new one.
Really, I only played Vanilla and a little into the BC...That may have came later with incentives, so that was cool.
I liked how you could search for players by levels, groups of levels such as Warlocks only, or 20-28, Guilds by name and their populations. It was deep even in vanilla.
But as I stated in the OP........The best ever was D&D Online with, its built in Message board, that each and every player had, where you can type paragraphs or anything you feel into your group search.
If you already have part of a group, it would display who, class, and level of your group that you have so far. This way people know before hand what they were walking into
Frustrating at times but oh so satisfying when you finally get the item you wanted.
Think Stormfeather or DBoW (Darkblade of the Warlord) from RZ in Plane of Time sort of thing.
I care about your gaming 'problems' and teenage anxieties, just not today.
/ignore
jk....mostly
Close second: Resource Gathering and crafting in SWG.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
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Mentoring was a great idea,i believe it was SOE who started that.
Skill chains,kill more in a set amount of time you get added xp,not really sure who started that.
Tactical points or Skill points to setup combos or big attack moves.
here is one>>>>SUB CLASS yep again Square Enix,goes way back to like FF3.Brilliant design,1/2 your main level so as to not dumb down the CLASS idea,it keeps your role while allowing some versatility to your class,hence the infamous RDM/NIN class from early ffxi days.
That is why i get so bummed out playing some of these cheap generic games,they have no creativity or uniqueness to them.
Here is a really old one that i have no idea who started it in mmo's >>>>Voice acting.I am sure everyone loves it,most of the time.
To round out my post before i go find some food,i'll end it with one idea that i would like to toss in the gutter somewhere.....Yellow question marks over npc heads,whomever started that crap should never make videos games ever again.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I never had to "wait for my guild (Clan or LS in this case) to log in to get anything done. There were always ways to communicate and find other people to do content with. It only requires being social and showing some initiative.
The problem has never been a lack of means. It's that people became too lazy and anti-social to do it.
And of course, sometimes there just aren't enough people in your level range, with the classes you need, looking to do the content you're looking to do. There's nothing a MMO dev can do about that - not even with a group finder.
The core of the issue can be found right in people's own words, and they say it soooo often it pretty much speaks for itself (until it's pointed out to them, then they somehow completely change their argument). The problem is right in the words "waiting for a group", or similar.
As just one example... People complain about how FFXI was horrible because they'd "wait for hours for a group invite". Their problem is right in their complaint. They were waiting for others to invite them, rather than taking initiative and starting a group themselves. They would instead blame the game/developers. Meanwhile, people who were pro-active, and who didn't wait for someone else to invite them could log on and within 20-30 minutes, max, have a full group together and out doing content.
Seriously. I knew some of these people. Every time they logged in, without fail, within 30 minutes, give or take, they had a group assembled and were out xp'ing, or doing some other content. All the while, others are sitting around, seek flags up, complaining about how they're not getting invites.
I know some people don't want to acknowledge that, because the thought that they might be responsible for their own experience (or lack of it) is just too offensive to consider, and it's easier to just blame the game/devs. But, well... "not liking" something doesn't make it not so.
I mean think about it...
Older MMOs didn't have dungeon finders, group finders, auto-anything. Players had to be social, outgoing and have initiative to get things done. The MMO genre had far fewer people in it, and nothing was cross-server - your server was your pool of potential group-mates. Yet, people did it. They met people, they assembled groups, they formed friendships, they got stuff done.
Nowadays, where the genre is ginormous, and grouping up has become a matter of clicking a button and letting the game do all the work... people can't seem to find groups.
Having seen the transition in the genre from what it was 10+ years ago, to what it is now... It's not a coincidence.
Spot on Pratt,
Often, hard time grouping is the players fault. There are many steps developers can use to help, and auto everything is by far a bad solution with negative consequences.
However, putting auto everything aside. Developers destroy community's in so many other ways by story telling. Rift is the best example. All new mmos do this but Rift is the worst.
Rift was one big chain-quest !....I'm very social. After level 10 in any mmo I seek others. Rift was impossible to make friends.
You moved from one quest hub to the next in order. At each quest hub you received at least three parts of a quest. IN EVERY CASE, players around you were never on the same part....You could never sync up.
I played this game with two characters. One with a real life friend, and one to play with the community. It was extremely hard to play with both.
My friend and I had to match quest exactly, no room what so ever to deviate from this. You were never allowed to play on your own and expect to be in sync next time you played. We proved this several times.
I tried to match quest with random players, this was the same. Could never match.
Important :
Funny little story in Rift that sums up every mmo.
I was out questing solo one day ( because this is how the game had to be played ). And this kid was following me everyplace I went. I took this as kind of strange, but it happens now and then. Finally he asked if we could play together. Knowing how the game is I turned to say, we cant. Well he insisted !
I went on to explain I'm two levels higher than him and will never match quest. Well, he latched on to me and no letting go. He asked me to share my quest and I couldn't. He's like why not ?....I explained again the game is not designed that way, and he has to go wayyyy back to where he originally was. He couldn't grasp this and continued to follow me for a good half hour, pestering me to share. I had two choices to let him follow or log off......I decided to let him follow. Another hour passed where he just came out with it....Give me 3 Gold....He was after my money
I'll never forget this story. I then realized every other newer story telling mmo is the same as Rift !
Oh, yes! Good old DAoC. The whole gameplay was a lot more focused on teamplay. Else you needed a buffbot or had to grind for a very long time.
When it comes to the best invention in an MMO ever made ...
I think City of Heroes sidekick system was great. When forming a group with a higher level player he could make you his sidekick resulting in your level being put in line with his level. An astounding innovation for a MMO that was released in 2004.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests