I really wish more games would do take a page from Eve's model. Character progression should not be primary drive to play a game. That sort of Pavlovian nonsense really grates me on these days. Games should be played because they're fun, period.
MMORPGs are unable to create system in which those who spent a lot of time playing does not have massive advantage over those who spent less time playing.
AFK skill levelling is a attempt to keep those players who spent less time playing still playing and/or paying.
For me it seems pointless. I would prefer an MMORPG in which repetetive time grind would not produce much advantage. I wonder whether that kind of MMORPG will ever be made.
I guess that's what the OP was saying, instead of either of those options, afk skilling or making you sit there and do it, why not just let you start out with those skills and dismiss all of that unnecessary effort.
Agreed. I can see why devs would want to pace the players progression, just like many games have timers on raids and hard dungeons but the solution is far from perfect. As a player I feel I should be able to set the pace myself, sometimes I play a lot and other times almost nothing.
If they instead let you start with those skills or levels they can dedicate all the time they put in the low level stuff in the rest of the game. It is not like most of us need to spend weeks or months learning our class anyways (or our specc if you don't have classes).
I think MMOs need to rethink character progression, in older games it were the point of the game but now it is just an annoying tutorial that takes 2-3 weeks and uses up most of the games content. Going back to the older thinking, skipping it altogether or figuring out something else is the right way to go here. At the moment they changed the point of progression but kept the game design from the old mechanics.
Because all those AFK options they are putting in games now are so people can feel comfortable with leaving their PC to go eat, sleep, work or other real life matters and they are still able to accomplish stuff in the game. Of course, what they can accomplish isn't necessarily significant or game breaking. So I guess my counter argument would be, why would it bother you to have a certain set of unimportant skills be tied to an AFK atmosphere. I mean everyone is capable of doing it, so there's no unfair advantage, right?
It is not an unfair advantage but why put in mechanics for not playing the game at all? If you worry about leaving your character to spend time in the real world you seriously need professional help.
But as I said in an earlier post, there are a few things that your character could do while you are offline that actually would improve the game, getting XP and sskills just ain't one of those things.
Depends on the goal of the game. If increasing skills is not the objective of the game then why not let it increase passively? I mean the way you increase crafting, mining and gathering skills in most mmorpg's is about as exciting as watching paint dry.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
MMORPGs are unable to create system in which those who spent a lot of time playing does not have massive advantage over those who spent less time playing.
AFK skill levelling is a attempt to keep those players who spent less time playing still playing and/or paying.
For me it seems pointless. I would prefer an MMORPG in which repetetive time grind would not produce much advantage. I wonder whether that kind of MMORPG will ever be made.
So you're saying that someone that has been playing guitar their entire life should only be about as good as someone that has only been playing for a week?
AFK skill levelling, outside of the way and the reasons that EVE does it, is a lazy way out for a dev team that couldn't be bothered to make anything interesting enough for you to do, therefore you should go take a nap and the game will do it for you.
Instead of praising this mechanic, you should be bitching about paying for something that you no longer even need to involve yourself in. What's next in this trend? Everyone starts the game in full top of the line raid gear? Or do you just hit a queue button, go take a dump, and when you come back you get a message telling you how you did in a raid and have gear given to you then? Simplifying/stupefying a game to meet expectations of lazy single player MMO types, or noobs with entitlement issues, will only start opening other doors that will in time take even more of the actual game away from your ability to play. Plus this crap oozes cash shop. Faster you get to max level, the faster you'll have to start spending money to get all that nifty shiny crap that you used to be able to get just by playing the game.
Trolling, being trolled, getting banned, yelling at mods, getting perma banned, making new accounts, and still trolling this site since 2004 =D
EVE's passive training model is a big reason why I play it exclusively now.
Wait .. you like to play a game where you don't have to do anything to advance?
In League of Legends and DOTA 2 you make money just by standing there. I hear those games are pretty popular.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
MMORPGs are unable to create system in which those who spent a lot of time playing does not have massive advantage over those who spent less time playing.
AFK skill levelling is a attempt to keep those players who spent less time playing still playing and/or paying.
For me it seems pointless. I would prefer an MMORPG in which repetetive time grind would not produce much advantage. I wonder whether that kind of MMORPG will ever be made.
So you're saying that someone that has been playing guitar their entire life should only be about as good as someone that has only been playing for a week?
AFK skill levelling, outside of the way and the reasons that EVE does it, is a lazy way out for a dev team that couldn't be bothered to make anything interesting enough for you to do, therefore you should go take a nap and the game will do it for you.
Instead of praising this mechanic, you should be bitching about paying for something that you no longer even need to involve yourself in. What's next in this trend? Everyone starts the game in full top of the line raid gear? Or do you just hit a queue button, go take a dump, and when you come back you get a message telling you how you did in a raid and have gear given to you then? Simplifying/stupefying a game to meet expectations of lazy single player MMO types, or noobs with entitlement issues, will only start opening other doors that will in time take even more of the actual game away from your ability to play. Plus this crap oozes cash shop. Faster you get to max level, the faster you'll have to start spending money to get all that nifty shiny crap that you used to be able to get just by playing the game.
I am not praising EVE-like mechanic. I am against it. I said: "For me it's pointless".
I merely said I know where this mechanic reasoning comes from.
Because in most other MMORPGs, most of progression is also done horribly and it is based on simplistic no-skill grind i.e. walking around and clicking on ore deposit to get ore and progress crafting or killing dumb mob over and over for gold or xp or making "go kill X" quests, and so on.
So i.e. if you sit in front of monitor and kill mobs on the spot for hours everyday and then use gold from them to uppgrade your armor to progress in game (get better weapons to have easier time of killing other players in PVP) - that is horrible.
Both above time-sink progression and EVE-like AFK progression is horrible.
I have nothing against progression based on manual skill and/or thinking.
I also like what Eve does. No one can reach a max level in days because they have the time to sit in front of a computer and play a game 20 hours a day. It's not how fast you level but how smart you train. As to games that let you max minor skills off line, it's how games try new things to see if they work. Players say they want something new and different, so good for Devs for trying new things.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
So you're saying that someone that has been playing guitar their entire life should only be about as good as someone that has only been playing for a week?
AFK skill levelling, outside of the way and the reasons that EVE does it, is a lazy way out for a dev team that couldn't be bothered to make anything interesting enough for you to do, therefore you should go take a nap and the game will do it for you.
Instead of praising this mechanic, you should be bitching about paying for something that you no longer even need to involve yourself in. What's next in this trend? Everyone starts the game in full top of the line raid gear? Or do you just hit a queue button, go take a dump, and when you come back you get a message telling you how you did in a raid and have gear given to you then? Simplifying/stupefying a game to meet expectations of lazy single player MMO types, or noobs with entitlement issues, will only start opening other doors that will in time take even more of the actual game away from your ability to play. Plus this crap oozes cash shop. Faster you get to max level, the faster you'll have to start spending money to get all that nifty shiny crap that you used to be able to get just by playing the game.
Learning to play guitar well takes about 10 000 hours (source: Sir Paul McCartney). But even with the same character, if a noob is as good as a vet you seriously have lousy game mechanics or a difficulty so easy that I can't figure out why anybody would want to play your game longer then a few hours.
If you skip level and character skill improvement you need to focus more on player skill improvement, gear, achievements and other stuff instead.
I am not objecting to your post but agreeing (to be clear) even if I think you are a bit hard on Eve.
MMORPGs are unable to create system in which those who spent a lot of time playing does not have massive advantage over those who spent less time playing.
AFK skill levelling is a attempt to keep those players who spent less time playing still playing and/or paying.
For me it seems pointless. I would prefer an MMORPG in which repetetive time grind would not produce much advantage. I wonder whether that kind of MMORPG will ever be made.
So you're saying that someone that has been playing guitar their entire life should only be about as good as someone that has only been playing for a week?
AFK skill levelling, outside of the way and the reasons that EVE does it, is a lazy way out for a dev team that couldn't be bothered to make anything interesting enough for you to do, therefore you should go take a nap and the game will do it for you.
Instead of praising this mechanic, you should be bitching about paying for something that you no longer even need to involve yourself in. What's next in this trend? Everyone starts the game in full top of the line raid gear? Or do you just hit a queue button, go take a dump, and when you come back you get a message telling you how you did in a raid and have gear given to you then? Simplifying/stupefying a game to meet expectations of lazy single player MMO types, or noobs with entitlement issues, will only start opening other doors that will in time take even more of the actual game away from your ability to play. Plus this crap oozes cash shop. Faster you get to max level, the faster you'll have to start spending money to get all that nifty shiny crap that you used to be able to get just by playing the game.
I am not praising EVE-like mechanic. I am against it. I said: "For me it's pointless".
I merely said I know where this mechanic reasoning comes from.
Because in most other MMORPGs, most of progression is also done horribly and it is based on simplistic no-skill grind i.e. walking around and clicking on ore deposit to get ore and progress crafting or killing dumb mob over and over for gold or xp or making "go kill X" quests, and so on.
Both above time-sink progression and EVE-like AFK progression is horrible.
I have nothing against progression based on manual skill and/or thinking.
" I would prefer an MMORPG in which repetetive time grind would not produce much advantage. "
Could you explain this then so that we can fully understand the concept? It may just be the way you have it worded throwing me off, because without the grind, whether it be kill X rats, or really, ANY line of quests, since they're all basically the same over and over and over and recycled into every game, what is there really to do, and where would a sense of progression come from? Quite frankly, whether it be in a game or in real life, the more you do something, technically, the better you're going to get at it. So the guitar analogy I first posted still stands if that is something you don't like.
Trolling, being trolled, getting banned, yelling at mods, getting perma banned, making new accounts, and still trolling this site since 2004 =D
Years ago, My 1st introduction to EVE was like this: I went to a forum.....I believe it was the official, but don't really recall. One of the popular threads for new players something along these lines.......... Purchase 2 accounts and, then, let your accounts mature a few months before you start playing............... To this day, I still chuckle a bit when I think about that.
Yea I wouldn't call that brilliant design...
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Most AFK systems are an idle timer that will log you out if you just stand there. Let's go back to those and make riding a horse and fishing actual game play content again. If you can do it while your afk it's not really content.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
MMORPGs are unable to create system in which those who spent a lot of time playing does not have massive advantage over those who spent less time playing.
AFK skill levelling is a attempt to keep those players who spent less time playing still playing and/or paying.
For me it seems pointless. I would prefer an MMORPG in which repetetive time grind would not produce much advantage. I wonder whether that kind of MMORPG will ever be made.
So you're saying that someone that has been playing guitar their entire life should only be about as good as someone that has only been playing for a week?
AFK skill levelling, outside of the way and the reasons that EVE does it, is a lazy way out for a dev team that couldn't be bothered to make anything interesting enough for you to do, therefore you should go take a nap and the game will do it for you.
Instead of praising this mechanic, you should be bitching about paying for something that you no longer even need to involve yourself in. What's next in this trend? Everyone starts the game in full top of the line raid gear? Or do you just hit a queue button, go take a dump, and when you come back you get a message telling you how you did in a raid and have gear given to you then? Simplifying/stupefying a game to meet expectations of lazy single player MMO types, or noobs with entitlement issues, will only start opening other doors that will in time take even more of the actual game away from your ability to play. Plus this crap oozes cash shop. Faster you get to max level, the faster you'll have to start spending money to get all that nifty shiny crap that you used to be able to get just by playing the game.
I am not praising EVE-like mechanic. I am against it. I said: "For me it's pointless".
I merely said I know where this mechanic reasoning comes from.
Because in most other MMORPGs, most of progression is also done horribly and it is based on simplistic no-skill grind i.e. walking around and clicking on ore deposit to get ore and progress crafting or killing dumb mob over and over for gold or xp or making "go kill X" quests, and so on.
Both above time-sink progression and EVE-like AFK progression is horrible.
I have nothing against progression based on manual skill and/or thinking.
" I would prefer an MMORPG in which repetetive time grind would not produce much advantage. "
Could you explain this then so that we can fully understand the concept? It may just be the way you have it worded throwing me off, because without the grind, whether it be kill X rats, or really, ANY line of quests, since they're all basically the same over and over and over and recycled into every game, what is there really to do, and where would a sense of progression come from? Quite frankly, whether it be in a game or in real life, the more you do something, technically, the better you're going to get at it. So the guitar analogy I first posted still stands if that is something you don't like.
It is more about concept on the most part rather than technical possibility now.
Conceptually in an MMORPG it would require things like:
1. very good AI scripts for open world mobs, so instead of killing thousands of them without any real challange and actual gameplay, you would kill maybe hundreads in the same timespan but you have to weight your chances before engaging, think, learn attack patterns, etc <--- obviously technically impossible atm. Closest to this today is (in non-MMO game) what Dark Souls does, but I would like something better than Dark Souls and in an MMORPG as well - so impossible in today business & technology.
2. Dungeons - in some MMORPGs this is present as progressing in dungeons need some thinking, learning, manual skill, etc Problem is with two things.
a) Implementation - often too much trash mobs or/and too easy difficulty meaning you "farm" skilllessly dungeon hundreads of times
b) financial - there is simply not enough dungeons. Creators can't keep up. So there is "easy/hard modes/tiers" instead of just one version, necessity of recycling old dungeons (scaling, etc), heavy repetition (dungeon/raid on farm for months because newer ones cannot be released often enough) and so on.
3. Less emphasis on stats more on manual execution and/or builds. <- self-explanatory I think
and so on.
Nowadays there is huge amount of filler content that does not have actual gameplay in it - it just requires a body in front of tv/monitor to press buttons continuesly, because admit yourself - your average quest in an MMORPG does not require any skill from you aside of being able to press few buttons. So unless you're unfortunatelly handicapped or heavily intoxicated or complete begginer in gaming it does not provide actual gameplay.
I would like for gameplay to have actual gameplay. Preferably always, or at least majority of the time.
Then theoretically once you have gameplay provided - and assuming that market is very deep and AAA niche games are possible - you could theoretically create an MMORPG for people who don't want to spend 40 hours per week playing an MMO to be on top.
So you could create MMORPG with hard cap - let's say 10 h / week that gives stat based progression. Of course it would not be attractive for students, people on retirement, stay in home moms and generally people who can put a lot of time into repetition of no-skill content to be on top in online game, but assuming very deep market you could create an MMORPG without them in mind in order to get into niche of people who don't want to spend long hours every day playing an MMORPG to keep up.
But because of conceptual, technical and monetary reasons it is impossible it seems. Kinda why I gave up playing MMORPGs.
So you're saying that someone that has been playing guitar their entire life should only be about as good as someone that has only been playing for a week?
AFK skill levelling, outside of the way and the reasons that EVE does it, is a lazy way out for a dev team that couldn't be bothered to make anything interesting enough for you to do, therefore you should go take a nap and the game will do it for you.
Instead of praising this mechanic, you should be bitching about paying for something that you no longer even need to involve yourself in. What's next in this trend? Everyone starts the game in full top of the line raid gear? Or do you just hit a queue button, go take a dump, and when you come back you get a message telling you how you did in a raid and have gear given to you then? Simplifying/stupefying a game to meet expectations of lazy single player MMO types, or noobs with entitlement issues, will only start opening other doors that will in time take even more of the actual game away from your ability to play. Plus this crap oozes cash shop. Faster you get to max level, the faster you'll have to start spending money to get all that nifty shiny crap that you used to be able to get just by playing the game.
Learning to play guitar well takes about 10 000 hours (source: Sir Paul McCartney). But even with the same character, if a noob is as good as a vet you seriously have lousy game mechanics or a difficulty so easy that I can't figure out why anybody would want to play your game longer then a few hours.
If you skip level and character skill improvement you need to focus more on player skill improvement, gear, achievements and other stuff instead.
I am not objecting to your post but agreeing (to be clear) even if I think you are a bit hard on Eve.
I wasn't being hard on EVE, I loved that game, I was just singling out the way it did its offline leveling from the rest of the lazy development pack, because in EVE it made sense, especially with the length of time it used to take to gain some of the higher tiered skills. Even though a skill might have taken say... a month to go up, the way things were laid out prior to that still made you valid in one capacity or another. The crap these kiddie games are doing now is just pure lazy, for lazy gamers that don't want a game to play, but a facebook app they can just log into to see if they got a retard achievement that day.
Trolling, being trolled, getting banned, yelling at mods, getting perma banned, making new accounts, and still trolling this site since 2004 =D
MMORPGs are unable to create system in which those who spent a lot of time playing does not have massive advantage over those who spent less time playing.
AFK skill levelling is a attempt to keep those players who spent less time playing still playing and/or paying.
For me it seems pointless. I would prefer an MMORPG in which repetetive time grind would not produce much advantage. I wonder whether that kind of MMORPG will ever be made.
So you're saying that someone that has been playing guitar their entire life should only be about as good as someone that has only been playing for a week?
AFK skill levelling, outside of the way and the reasons that EVE does it, is a lazy way out for a dev team that couldn't be bothered to make anything interesting enough for you to do, therefore you should go take a nap and the game will do it for you.
Instead of praising this mechanic, you should be bitching about paying for something that you no longer even need to involve yourself in. What's next in this trend? Everyone starts the game in full top of the line raid gear? Or do you just hit a queue button, go take a dump, and when you come back you get a message telling you how you did in a raid and have gear given to you then? Simplifying/stupefying a game to meet expectations of lazy single player MMO types, or noobs with entitlement issues, will only start opening other doors that will in time take even more of the actual game away from your ability to play. Plus this crap oozes cash shop. Faster you get to max level, the faster you'll have to start spending money to get all that nifty shiny crap that you used to be able to get just by playing the game.
I am not praising EVE-like mechanic. I am against it. I said: "For me it's pointless".
I merely said I know where this mechanic reasoning comes from.
Because in most other MMORPGs, most of progression is also done horribly and it is based on simplistic no-skill grind i.e. walking around and clicking on ore deposit to get ore and progress crafting or killing dumb mob over and over for gold or xp or making "go kill X" quests, and so on.
Both above time-sink progression and EVE-like AFK progression is horrible.
I have nothing against progression based on manual skill and/or thinking.
" I would prefer an MMORPG in which repetetive time grind would not produce much advantage. "
Could you explain this then so that we can fully understand the concept? It may just be the way you have it worded throwing me off, because without the grind, whether it be kill X rats, or really, ANY line of quests, since they're all basically the same over and over and over and recycled into every game, what is there really to do, and where would a sense of progression come from? Quite frankly, whether it be in a game or in real life, the more you do something, technically, the better you're going to get at it. So the guitar analogy I first posted still stands if that is something you don't like.
It is more about concept on the most part rather than technical possibility now.
Conceptually in an MMORPG it would require things like:
1. very good AI scripts for open world mobs, so instead of killing thousands of them without any real challange and actual gameplay, you would kill maybe hundreads in the same timespan but you have to weight your chances before engaging, think, learn attack patterns, etc <--- obviously technically impossible atm. Closest to this today is (in non-MMO game) what Dark Souls does.
2. Dungeons - in some MMORPGs this is present as progressing in dungeons need some thinking, learning, manual skill, etc Problem is with two things.
a) Implementation - often too much trash mobs or/and too easy difficulty meaning you "farm" skilllessly dungeon hundreads of times
b) financial - there is simply not enough dungeons. Creators can't keep up. So there is "easy/hard modes/tiers" instead of just one version, necessity of recycling old dungeons (scaling, etc), heavy repetition (dungeon/raid on farm for months because newer ones cannot be released often enough) and so on.
3. Less emphasis on stats more on manual execution and/or builds. <- self-explanatory I think
and so on.
Nowadays three is huge amount of filler content that does not have actual gameplay in it - it just requires a body in front of tv/monitor to press buttons continuesly, because admit yourself - your average quest in an MMORPG does not require any skill from you aside of being able to press few buttons. So unless you're unfortunatelly handicapped or heavily intoxicated or complete begginer in gaming it does not provide actual gameplay.
I would like for gameplay to have actual gameplay. Preferably always, or at least majority of the time.
Then theoretically once you have gameplay provided - and assuming that market is very deep and AAA niche games are possible - you could theoretically create an MMORPG for people who don't want to spend 40 hours per week playing an MMO to be on top.
So you could create MMORPG with hard cap - let's say 10 h / week that gives stat based progression. Of course it would not be attractive for students, people on retirement, stay in home moms and generally people who can put a lot of time into repetition of no-skill content to be on top in online game, but assuming very deep market you could create an MMORPG without them in mind in order to get into niche of people who don't want to spend long hours every day playing an MMORPG to keep up.
But because of conceptual, technical and monetary reasons it is impossible it seems. Kinda why I gave up playing MMORPGs.
Coolies, makes sense now and I'm in full agreement. Weed those people out of my games so that our devs don't have to keep catering to the masses and instead focuses on what their game was meant to be again. Cheers!
Trolling, being trolled, getting banned, yelling at mods, getting perma banned, making new accounts, and still trolling this site since 2004 =D
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
[Insert Picture of Mounts Running Around In A Circle from Archeage]
Yeah, some systems are ridiculous. Others, though, seem fairly reasonable.
I'm a fan of EVE Online's. It allows the player to choose the paths of training for their characters, but to spend their ingame time playing rather than grinding for skills to play.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Years ago, My 1st introduction to EVE was like this: I went to a forum.....I believe it was the official, but don't really recall. One of the popular threads for new players something along these lines.......... Purchase 2 accounts and, then, let your accounts mature a few months before you start playing............... To this day, I still chuckle a bit when I think about that.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Award XP for completing content, not killing mobs. This eliminates the mad rush to get to the level cap 3 weeks after release, which inevitably results in people crying about lack of end-game content. Try the early- and mid-game content first.
Award XP for completing content, not killing mobs. This eliminates the mad rush to get to the level cap 3 weeks after release, which inevitably results in people crying about lack of end-game content. Try the early- and mid-game content first.
And what would content be then? And if you get no xp for killing mobs, you've already taken away about 75% of the options you had for content.
Trolling, being trolled, getting banned, yelling at mods, getting perma banned, making new accounts, and still trolling this site since 2004 =D
Crowfall will have passive skill training, but for that game, it makes a lot of sense. There won't be PvE other than random mobs. Why force players to grind mobs to skill up when they would rather be engaging in PvP activities? The skill system is just one of the ways a character can be customized. All of the others will require actually playing the game. And winning campaigns will require actually playing the game. Someone who doesn't play and just passively raises their skills isn't going to accomplish anything.
There won't be PvE other than random mobs. Why force players to grind mobs to skill up when they would rather be engaging in PvP activities?
That hasn't been fully set in stone as of yet and is still in the design phase. And if all people wanted was straight PVP, you're better off in an FPS, because that 15 minutes of play time before they go play something more interesting is all it's going to be worth to them without something more fulfilling to do in the off time. Or do you think the few main spec crafters are going to be content with making weapons and getting ganked while farming more mats only? Even EVE wouldn't survive being straight PVP.
Trolling, being trolled, getting banned, yelling at mods, getting perma banned, making new accounts, and still trolling this site since 2004 =D
Sitting in Qeynos or Freeport hitting that spell over and over because your divination was at zero and you had to get that skill up or you fizzled when you needed it most. So you sit there and hit that spell over and over and over..... real value in that gameplay. I rather have some method of gaining that skill while I go do some housework then come back and actually use that skill in gameplay instead of finding some value in hitting a damn button every minute and then wait like 20 minutes for mana to regenerate to do that all over again.... quality gaming.
I guess that's what the OP was saying, instead of either of those options, afk skilling or making you sit there and do it, why not just let you start out with those skills and dismiss all of that unnecessary effort.
Sitting in Qeynos or Freeport hitting that spell over and over because your divination was at zero and you had to get that skill up or you fizzled when you needed it most. So you sit there and hit that spell over and over and over..... real value in that gameplay. I rather have some method of gaining that skill while I go do some housework then come back and actually use that skill in gameplay instead of finding some value in hitting a damn button every minute and then wait like 20 minutes for mana to regenerate to do that all over again.... quality gaming.
I guess that's what the OP was saying, instead of either of those options, afk skilling or making you sit there and do it, why not just let you start out with those skills and dismiss all of that unnecessary effort.
Because people typically play mmos to build a character in a virtual world.
Comments
AFK skill levelling is a attempt to keep those players who spent less time playing still playing and/or paying.
For me it seems pointless. I would prefer an MMORPG in which repetetive time grind would not produce much advantage. I wonder whether that kind of MMORPG will ever be made.
If they instead let you start with those skills or levels they can dedicate all the time they put in the low level stuff in the rest of the game. It is not like most of us need to spend weeks or months learning our class anyways (or our specc if you don't have classes).
I think MMOs need to rethink character progression, in older games it were the point of the game but now it is just an annoying tutorial that takes 2-3 weeks and uses up most of the games content. Going back to the older thinking, skipping it altogether or figuring out something else is the right way to go here. At the moment they changed the point of progression but kept the game design from the old mechanics.
It is not an unfair advantage but why put in mechanics for not playing the game at all?
If you worry about leaving your character to spend time in the real world you seriously need professional help.
But as I said in an earlier post, there are a few things that your character could do while you are offline that actually would improve the game, getting XP and sskills just ain't one of those things.
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AFK skill levelling, outside of the way and the reasons that EVE does it, is a lazy way out for a dev team that couldn't be bothered to make anything interesting enough for you to do, therefore you should go take a nap and the game will do it for you.
Instead of praising this mechanic, you should be bitching about paying for something that you no longer even need to involve yourself in. What's next in this trend? Everyone starts the game in full top of the line raid gear? Or do you just hit a queue button, go take a dump, and when you come back you get a message telling you how you did in a raid and have gear given to you then? Simplifying/stupefying a game to meet expectations of lazy single player MMO types, or noobs with entitlement issues, will only start opening other doors that will in time take even more of the actual game away from your ability to play. Plus this crap oozes cash shop. Faster you get to max level, the faster you'll have to start spending money to get all that nifty shiny crap that you used to be able to get just by playing the game.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
I merely said I know where this mechanic reasoning comes from.
Because in most other MMORPGs, most of progression is also done horribly and it is based on simplistic no-skill grind i.e. walking around and clicking on ore deposit to get ore and progress crafting or killing dumb mob over and over for gold or xp or making "go kill X" quests, and so on.
So i.e. if you sit in front of monitor and kill mobs on the spot for hours everyday and then use gold from them to uppgrade your armor to progress in game (get better weapons to have easier time of killing other players in PVP) - that is horrible.
Both above time-sink progression and EVE-like AFK progression is horrible.
I have nothing against progression based on manual skill and/or thinking.
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If you skip level and character skill improvement you need to focus more on player skill improvement, gear, achievements and other stuff instead.
I am not objecting to your post but agreeing (to be clear) even if I think you are a bit hard on Eve.
Could you explain this then so that we can fully understand the concept? It may just be the way you have it worded throwing me off, because without the grind, whether it be kill X rats, or really, ANY line of quests, since they're all basically the same over and over and over and recycled into every game, what is there really to do, and where would a sense of progression come from? Quite frankly, whether it be in a game or in real life, the more you do something, technically, the better you're going to get at it. So the guitar analogy I first posted still stands if that is something you don't like.
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Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/Conceptually in an MMORPG it would require things like:
1. very good AI scripts for open world mobs, so instead of killing thousands of them without any real challange and actual gameplay, you would kill maybe hundreads in the same timespan but you have to weight your chances before engaging, think, learn attack patterns, etc <--- obviously technically impossible atm. Closest to this today is (in non-MMO game) what Dark Souls does, but I would like something better than Dark Souls and in an MMORPG as well - so impossible in today business & technology.
2. Dungeons - in some MMORPGs this is present as progressing in dungeons need some thinking, learning, manual skill, etc Problem is with two things.
a) Implementation - often too much trash mobs or/and too easy difficulty meaning you "farm" skilllessly dungeon hundreads of times
b) financial - there is simply not enough dungeons. Creators can't keep up. So there is "easy/hard modes/tiers" instead of just one version, necessity of recycling old dungeons (scaling, etc), heavy repetition (dungeon/raid on farm for months because newer ones cannot be released often enough) and so on.
3. Less emphasis on stats more on manual execution and/or builds. <- self-explanatory I think
and so on.
Nowadays there is huge amount of filler content that does not have actual gameplay in it - it just requires a body in front of tv/monitor to press buttons continuesly, because admit yourself - your average quest in an MMORPG does not require any skill from you aside of being able to press few buttons. So unless you're unfortunatelly handicapped or heavily intoxicated or complete begginer in gaming it does not provide actual gameplay.
I would like for gameplay to have actual gameplay. Preferably always, or at least majority of the time.
Then theoretically once you have gameplay provided - and assuming that market is very deep and AAA niche games are possible - you could theoretically create an MMORPG for people who don't want to spend 40 hours per week playing an MMO to be on top.
So you could create MMORPG with hard cap - let's say 10 h / week that gives stat based progression. Of course it would not be attractive for students, people on retirement, stay in home moms and generally people who can put a lot of time into repetition of no-skill content to be on top in online game, but assuming very deep market you could create an MMORPG without them in mind in order to get into niche of people who don't want to spend long hours every day playing an MMORPG to keep up.
But because of conceptual, technical and monetary reasons it is impossible it seems. Kinda why I gave up playing MMORPGs.
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I'm a fan of EVE Online's. It allows the player to choose the paths of training for their characters, but to spend their ingame time playing rather than grinding for skills to play.
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