Wanted to expound on my previous post, because I think a good balance in map design and weapon tradeoffs are the keys to making a successful MMOFPS with sidegrading. All weapons should excel somewhere, and the maps and objectives need to create many different kinds of battles so all the weapons seem necessary to the overall mission strategy.
Kabulozo said: Why would you want a MMO with low to no cap/stat gap? There is no point in it. Why would you want to waste time collecting rare materials to craft an awesome rare item if in the end a player that just popped int he world is just as good as you with this rare item? In the end all the work was wasted for just a cosmetic item that only changes your visual.
GW1 has proven this actually is a successful model and that many people buy into the exact model you say they won't.
Kabulozo said: Why would you want a MMO with low to no cap/stat gap? There is no point in it. Why would you want to waste time collecting rare materials to craft an awesome rare item if in the end a player that just popped int he world is just as good as you with this rare item? In the end all the work was wasted for just a cosmetic item that only changes your visual.
GW1 has proven this actually is a successful model and that many people buy into the exact model you say they won't.
But case in point, it wasn't a MMORPG. There are many successful games with this model that people have bought into, but in this genre, not so much.
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
People compare MMO battle with MOBA and Battle royale FPS are people who never doing massive PVP with over hundreds players at same time . If i remember right , Battle royale have around 100 players play same time at max while in MMORPG some raid with multiple guilds can easily pass 100 .
It's very funny in case where few whales wipe whole raid cause gear gap are too big , or the lowbie being feed while not able to do anything because of the gap .
The small scale PVP can't compare with the "war" that MMO offer
Kabulozo said: Why would you want a MMO with low to no cap/stat gap? There is no point in it. Why would you want to waste time collecting rare materials to craft an awesome rare item if in the end a player that just popped int he world is just as good as you with this rare item? In the end all the work was wasted for just a cosmetic item that only changes your visual.
GW1 has proven this actually is a successful model and that many people buy into the exact model you say they won't.
But case in point, it wasn't a MMORPG. There are many successful games with this model that people have bought into, but in this genre, not so much.
GW1 wasn't technically an MMO but it was so similar to an MMO in form in content I can't see any meaningful difference that would stop it from being engaging if translated into an actual MMO format. If anything it would be more engaging.
Kabulozo said: Why would you want a MMO with low to no cap/stat gap? There is no point in it. Why would you want to waste time collecting rare materials to craft an awesome rare item if in the end a player that just popped int he world is just as good as you with this rare item? In the end all the work was wasted for just a cosmetic item that only changes your visual.
GW1 has proven this actually is a successful model and that many people buy into the exact model you say they won't.
GW1 came out 2005. Online game was still new and a very different time. Saying "many people bought into this exact model" is disingenuous at best and outright lying at worst. The amount of people playing MMOs in 2005 is a FRACTION of how many people are playing MMOs in 2018.
That's not even mentioning the amount of MMOs there even were back then compared to now. There weren't all that many back then. So again, disingenuous at best, outright lie at worst.
Not to mention the fact that GW1 was more an arena based game than an MMO which you alluded to in a later post. Which proves other peoples point that your argument doesn't really hold water when talking about MMOs. You want to play arena/battle royale games. Low/no stat gap does not work in MMOs.
GW2 was proof of this and then they went and tried to go back on their horizontal progression when they realized people weren't buyin it.
I remember when I went to visit my brother's family this christmas and my 5 year old nephew was told "Just because someone says something you don't agree with doesn't mean they are lying." Good advise. You might want to take it.
"The amount of people playing MMOs in 2005 is a FRACTION of how many people are playing MMOs in 2018."
GW2 is frequently cited as one of the more popular current MMOs. Sooo..... yeah there is that.
So GW1 was an arena based game? Have you even played GW1? It had Arena PvP just like WoW but exploring the world and questing was a huge portion of the game, and the central focus of PvE. It is just that zones only allowed for the player and that player's party. You wouldn't randomly encounter other players while questing out and zones, just in towns.
Other than that, and the altered progression, it was very much like a themepark MMO. And it was a popular game where people did a lot of that PVE content just to get prettier sets of armor. I fail to see how making the very small changes needed to make it into a true MMO would change that.
I remember when I went to visit my brother's family this christmas and my 5 year old nephew was told "Just because someone says something you don't agree with doesn't mean they are lying." Good advise. You might want to take it.
"The amount of people playing MMOs in 2005 is a FRACTION of how many people are playing MMOs in 2018."
GW2 is frequently cited as one of the more popular current MMOs. Sooo..... yeah there is that.
So GW1 was an arena based game? Have you even played GW1? It had Arena PvP just like WoW but exploring the world and questing was a huge portion of the game, and the central focus of PvE. It is just that zones only allowed for the player and that player's party. You wouldn't randomly encounter other players while questing out and zones, just in towns.
Other than that, and the altered progression, it was very much like a themepark MMO. And it was a popular game where people did a lot of that PVE content just to get prettier sets of armor. I fail to see how making the very small changes needed to make it into a true MMO would change that.
Also pointing out GW2's initial sales does what exactly for your case? Absolutely nothing. I can also point out how many people back failed kickstarters, what does that tell you? That people will throw their money at their hopes and dreams. What matters is player retention which GW2 had a massive issue and they backtracked with their "horizontal progression" when they tried adding Ascendant gear because it was widespread issue for people that dungeon gear was essentially just cosmetic.
The work for the reward was at a broken ratio. So people started leaving the game in droves(well that wasn't the only reason). I don't see very many people citing GW2 as "one of the most popular current mmos". It's a AAA title, so of course it's gonna make a bunch of top lists because of how few there are. But if you think its pulling some amazing numbers you're wrong. It's interesting how you showed GW2's initial launch sales but not Path of Fire's. That's what would show what current interest in the game is really about. Especially since GW2 base is free to play lol.(Which they wouldn't have done unless they felt they needed to boost their playerbase fyi)
I remember when I went to visit my brother's family this christmas and my 5 year old nephew was told "Just because someone says something you don't agree with doesn't mean they are lying." Good advise. You might want to take it.
"The amount of people playing MMOs in 2005 is a FRACTION of how many people are playing MMOs in 2018."
GW2 is frequently cited as one of the more popular current MMOs. Sooo..... yeah there is that.
So GW1 was an arena based game? Have you even played GW1? It had Arena PvP just like WoW but exploring the world and questing was a huge portion of the game, and the central focus of PvE. It is just that zones only allowed for the player and that player's party. You wouldn't randomly encounter other players while questing out and zones, just in towns.
Other than that, and the altered progression, it was very much like a themepark MMO. And it was a popular game where people did a lot of that PVE content just to get prettier sets of armor. I fail to see how making the very small changes needed to make it into a true MMO would change that.
Also pointing out GW2's initial sales does what exactly for your case? Absolutely nothing. I can also point out how many people back failed kickstarters, what does that tell you? That people will throw their money at their hopes and dreams. What matters is player retention which GW2 had a massive issue and they backtracked with their "horizontal progression" when they tried adding Ascendant gear because it was widespread issue for people that dungeon gear was essentially just cosmetic.
The work for the reward was at a broken ratio. So people started leaving the game in droves(well that wasn't the only reason). I don't see very many people citing GW2 as "one of the most popular current mmos". It's a AAA title, so of course it's gonna make a bunch of top lists because of how few there are. But if you think its pulling some amazing numbers you're wrong. It's interesting how you showed GW2's initial launch sales but not Path of Fire's. That's what would show what current interest in the game is really about. Especially since GW2 base is free to play lol.(Which they wouldn't have done unless they felt they needed to boost their playerbase fyi)
The link was to the GW1 wiki like the 2nd link was too the GW2 wiki. I was referring to GW1. GW Series = GW1 and GW1 expansions (None of which raised the level cap or had gear with better stats than the first game) up until 2012.
The point is you said:
"The amount of people playing MMOs in 2005 is a FRACTION of how many people are playing MMOs in 2018."
Now you are saying:
"It's a AAA title, so of course it's gonna make a bunch of top lists because of how few there are. But if you think its pulling some amazing numbers you're wrong."
So if it's a AAA title and making top lists, but isn't pulling amazing numbers. But there are very few AAA titles now by your own admission. Which games are pulling these amazing numbers to make it so there were only a fraction of the number of MMO players that there are now?
Because most data I can point to shows that recent populations are showing a longterm path of decline broken only by spikes for each new expansion pretty much across the board for all MMOs. With a declining number of titles that would seem to show an MMO industry in retreat, not eclipsing the MMO industry of the past.
And while 2005 was not near the peak of the MMO boom, GW1 and it's expansions persisted as a popular title through the peak years of the MMO boom, and did fairly well during those years.
I remember when I went to visit my brother's family this christmas and my 5 year old nephew was told "Just because someone says something you don't agree with doesn't mean they are lying." Good advise. You might want to take it.
"The amount of people playing MMOs in 2005 is a FRACTION of how many people are playing MMOs in 2018."
GW2 is frequently cited as one of the more popular current MMOs. Sooo..... yeah there is that.
So GW1 was an arena based game? Have you even played GW1? It had Arena PvP just like WoW but exploring the world and questing was a huge portion of the game, and the central focus of PvE. It is just that zones only allowed for the player and that player's party. You wouldn't randomly encounter other players while questing out and zones, just in towns.
Other than that, and the altered progression, it was very much like a themepark MMO. And it was a popular game where people did a lot of that PVE content just to get prettier sets of armor. I fail to see how making the very small changes needed to make it into a true MMO would change that.
Also pointing out GW2's initial sales does what exactly for your case? Absolutely nothing. I can also point out how many people back failed kickstarters, what does that tell you? That people will throw their money at their hopes and dreams. What matters is player retention which GW2 had a massive issue and they backtracked with their "horizontal progression" when they tried adding Ascendant gear because it was widespread issue for people that dungeon gear was essentially just cosmetic.
The work for the reward was at a broken ratio. So people started leaving the game in droves(well that wasn't the only reason). I don't see very many people citing GW2 as "one of the most popular current mmos". It's a AAA title, so of course it's gonna make a bunch of top lists because of how few there are. But if you think its pulling some amazing numbers you're wrong. It's interesting how you showed GW2's initial launch sales but not Path of Fire's. That's what would show what current interest in the game is really about. Especially since GW2 base is free to play lol.(Which they wouldn't have done unless they felt they needed to boost their playerbase fyi)
The link was to the GW1 wiki like the 2nd link was too the GW2 wiki. I was referring to GW1. GW Series = GW1 and GW1 expansions (None of which raised the level cap or had gear with better stats than the first game) up until 2012.
The point is you said:
"The amount of people playing MMOs in 2005 is a FRACTION of how many people are playing MMOs in 2018."
Now you are saying:
"It's a AAA title, so of course it's gonna make a bunch of top lists because of how few there are. But if you think its pulling some amazing numbers you're wrong."
So if it's a AAA title and making top lists, but isn't pulling amazing numbers. But there are very few AAA titles now by your own admission. Which games are pulling these amazing numbers to make it so there were only a fraction of the number of MMO players that there are now?
Because most data I can point to shows that recent populations are showing a longterm path of decline broken only by spikes for each new expansion pretty much across the board for all MMOs. With a declining number of titles that would seem to show an MMO industry in retreat, not eclipsing the MMO industry of the past.
And while 2005 was not near the peak of the MMO boom, GW1 and it's expansions persisted as a popular title through the peak years of the MMO boom, and did fairly well during those years.
When i said The amount of people playing MMOs in 2005 is a fraction of how many were playing in 2018 i was talking about GW1 because it came out in 2005. Curiously you also didn't show how many people were playing GW1 via sales.
When i said It's a AAA title, i was talking about GW2 not GW1. Which games are pulling amazing numbers is irrelevant because GW2 is not one of them yet you prop it up as if low-cap is design philosophy that can work in mmorpgs but the numbers says otherwise.
Longterm decline broken only by spikes of new people from expansions is a standard for pretty much all mmos but that's only after a few months of the expansion or launch(aka player retention). I'm not talking about player retention, i'm talking about expansion sales. Legion broke the record for amount of copies sold for a WoW expansion beating out Cataclysm. How many bought Path of Fire?
GW1 isn't an MMO and never was an MMO which i thought we both agreed on but apparently not?
Kabulozo said: Why would you want a MMO with low to no cap/stat gap? There is no point in it. Why would you want to waste time collecting rare materials to craft an awesome rare item if in the end a player that just popped int he world is just as good as you with this rare item? In the end all the work was wasted for just a cosmetic item that only changes your visual.
GW1 has proven this actually is a successful model and that many people buy into the exact model you say they won't.
But case in point, it wasn't a MMORPG. There are many successful games with this model that people have bought into, but in this genre, not so much.
GW1 wasn't technically an MMO but it was so similar to an MMO in form in content I can't see any meaningful difference that would stop it from being engaging if translated into an actual MMO format. If anything it would be more engaging.
Yet the games creators went on to make a "sequel" MMORPG and basically tossed out the first game's design and built a more progression centric game.
As I recall ANET explained why, they felt MMORPGS do better with a more fleshed out progression system.
They still flattened it out quite a bit in GW2 but that is one reason why I never was interested in the title, though it is pretty popular.
I've forgotten, what was your thoughts on GW2, favorable or not so much?
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
IMHO WoW should be ignored for every discussion as in the West not one game came even near to those numbers and it is a phenomenon of itself packed with people that haven't played any other MMORPG. Most hardcore WOW players I know don't even know what other MMORPG s came out in the last years as they don't care. Its like Apple, its his own world.
But its no point to proof that WOWs progression system is the best and horizontal will fail as everything else failed compared to WoW, even games with the same progression system.
I don't want to say vertical fails and horizontal won't. I just want to say, besides WoW. Horizontal may have the same chances as vertical, if not even more if done right. And there is a market for both but still most games stick to vertical which is sad.
I've forgotten, what was your thoughts on GW2, favorable or not so much?
I disliked it but I never really got far enough for the progression system to be an issue one way or another. In the original Guild Wars you picked a primary class at character creation but also picked a secondary class which could eventually be changed. You had 8 ability slots and could pick from any known abilities from either your primary or secondary class.
The original classes had ~140 abilities each meaning if your primary and secondary class were original classes you had ~280 abilities to pick from.
If you were a paragon/devish (The classes from the most recently released expansion) then each class would have 85 skills meaning 170 abilities to pick from.
GW2 picked half your abilities for you when you selected your weapon combo and offered a single class per character.
It felt very much inferior and a slap in the face to a game that had one of the best customization systems ever.
Now GW2 did have some improvements. The ability to randomly counter other players in the open world, a crafting system etc. but ultimately those features were copied over from WoW so their inclusion didn't improve the game enough to keep me from getting bored before I ever left the first zone.
The way I look at it is that most MMORPG have bad single player story, flat challenge, boring, across genre repetitive vertical progression. All to funnel you into more repetition end game that's unfriendly with bad gear and learning requirements. Most gamers aren't interested. I a MMORPG lover can't stand it anymore.
Story tends to be forced and generic because of vertical progression that needs to be feed. Rather have less story based only on class/skill advancement and dungeons. Meaning you get story to gain new skills or very involved dungeon coop experiences that aren't based on gear grinds. Random quest can be generated procedurally for world back ground. Character story reigns.
@Eldurian, hey, what do you think about WOWs upcoming War mode.
I found this to be an interesting statement,
"During PvP combat, gear will be scaled to a roughly equivalent level between combatants. If a player's gear is better than the opponent, they will still have a slight advantage, but a reasonable one"
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
@Eldurian, hey, what do you think about WOWs upcoming War mode.
I found this to be an interesting statement,
"During PvP combat, gear will be scaled to a roughly equivalent level between combatants. If a player's gear is better than the opponent, they will still have a slight advantage, but a reasonable one"
World of Warcraft is the prime example of a game that puts in vertical progression to only fight it with features. What Eldurian is talking about where you faced with flaws you find ways to minimize impact but hold on to the broken mechanic.
@Eldurian, hey, what do you think about WOWs upcoming War mode.
I found this to be an interesting statement,
"During PvP combat, gear will be scaled to a roughly equivalent level between combatants. If a player's gear is better than the opponent, they will still have a slight advantage, but a reasonable one"
World of Warcraft is the prime example of a game that puts in vertical progression to only fight it with features. What Eldurian is talking about where you faced with flaws you find ways to minimize impact but hold on to the broken mechanic.
Again, there's benefits to doing so. Progression remains intact for the gear junkies, competitive multiplayer retains an equal playing field. Best of both worlds. Much easier to balance than attempting sidegrading.
Blizzard isn't ignorant to the effects of gear on competitive multiplayer. They just also aren't ignorant of a large playerbase that enjoys gear progression.
Kabulozo said: Why would you want a MMO with low to no cap/stat gap? There is no point in it. Why would you want to waste time collecting rare materials to craft an awesome rare item if in the end a player that just popped int he world is just as good as you with this rare item? In the end all the work was wasted for just a cosmetic item that only changes your visual.
GW1 has proven this actually is a successful model and that many people buy into the exact model you say they won't.
Since when GW1 was successful? I follow NCsoft quartely earnings for years and GW1 is so insignificant that they don't even highlight it on its own. It's merged on "others" category.
Today NC's revenue behemoths are Lineage M -> Lineage 1 -> Blade & Soul -> GW2 -> Lineage 2 -> Aion (ordered by revenue from bigger to smaller).
Lineage M made almost 1 trillion KRW in 2017. Even with the expansion in 2017, GW2 only made 83 billion KRW, against 161 billion KRW of Blade & Soul.
Lineage 1 suffered loss compared to previous years due to Lineage M, falling from 375 billion KRW in 2016 to 154 billion KRW in 2017.
Kabulozo said: Why would you want a MMO with low to no cap/stat gap? There is no point in it. Why would you want to waste time collecting rare materials to craft an awesome rare item if in the end a player that just popped int he world is just as good as you with this rare item? In the end all the work was wasted for just a cosmetic item that only changes your visual.
GW1 has proven this actually is a successful model and that many people buy into the exact model you say they won't.
Since when GW1 was successful? I follow NCsoft quartely earnings for years and GW1 is so insignificant that they don't even highlight it on its own. It's merged on "others" category.
Today NC's revenue behemoths are Lineage M -> Lineage 1 -> Blade & Soul -> GW2 -> Lineage 2 -> Aion (ordered by revenue from bigger to smaller).
Lineage M made almost 1 trillion KRW in 2017. Even with the expansion in 2017, GW2 only made 83 billion KRW, against 161 billion KRW of Blade & Soul.
Lineage 1 suffered loss compared to previous years due to Lineage M, falling from 375 billion KRW in 2016 to 154 billion KRW in 2017.
GW1 was successful when they were still releasing content for GW1 and for a little while after they stopped. Of course GW1 isn't successful when looking at 2015-2017 data. That's like looking at the 2015-2017 data for Halo 1-3 and being like "Those games were never successful." They were very successful at the time.
@Eldurian, hey, what do you think about WOWs upcoming War mode.
I found this to be an interesting statement,
"During PvP combat, gear will be scaled to a roughly equivalent level between combatants. If a player's gear is better than the opponent, they will still have a slight advantage, but a reasonable one"
I follow absolutely nothing that WoW does since they removed skill trees. I didn't like that game before and the main part I did enjoy was taking ownership of my build and customizing it to play the way I wanted it to. Now that it's gone, I could care less what they do in that game. And my distaste for all themeparks has only grown since I originally made the decision never to play WoW or SWTOR again.
Some of the recent changes sounds like they are trying to make the game a bit more sandboxy, the Open World PvP more meaningful, and apparently the PvP in general more engaging. All good decisions if true but still not enough to get me to actually investigate a game that treats it's players like children too stupid to make their own character builds.
GW1 came out 2005. Online game was still new and a very different time. Saying "many people bought into this exact model" is disingenuous at best and outright lying at worst. The amount of people playing MMOs in 2005 is a FRACTION of how many people are playing MMOs in 2018.
That's not even mentioning the amount of MMOs there even were back then compared to now. There weren't all that many back then. So again, disingenuous at best, outright lie at worst.
Not to mention the fact that GW1 was more an arena based game than an MMO which you alluded to in a later post. Which proves other peoples point that your argument doesn't really hold water when talking about MMOs. You want to play arena/battle royale games. Low/no stat gap does not work in MMOs.
GW2 was proof of this and then they went and tried to go back on their horizontal progression when they realized people weren't buyin it.
Online gaming was hardly new in 2005. It was relatively new in 1996 when M59 and Diablo came out but by 2005 online gaming was a huge thing.
And GW was kinda 2 games in one, one of them was a huge arena and the other a co-op PvE game with a story and an end.
It was a fun simple game but with many customization options and a relatively high difficulty the first 2 years. It was also at the time popular as an early E-sport game.
It was not really a MMO but a co-opration and arena game but it could have been a MMO, ANET had rather limited funding back then and did what they could afford with a very small team.
Anyways, no stat gap does indeed not work in MMOs, I agree with you there. A low is another matter?
If you go from 500 HP to 2000 or if you go to 50 000 does not make the game less fun. You still gain power, the difference is that zones can last longer without greying out and that PvP becomes more meaningful, nothing else. It also will be easier to group with friends a few level above or below you.
It wouldn't make the game harder or easier (unless you have open PvP which would make things easier for gankers and griefers but that is not a + in my book), difficulty is another matter completelly and either kind of progression could be really hard or super easy.
The only positive thing with the 50K HP is if you really like high numbers or go and killing everything in the noob area as fast as possible to annoy noobs.
GW1 came out 2005. Online game was still new and a very different time. Saying "many people bought into this exact model" is disingenuous at best and outright lying at worst. The amount of people playing MMOs in 2005 is a FRACTION of how many people are playing MMOs in 2018.
That's not even mentioning the amount of MMOs there even were back then compared to now. There weren't all that many back then. So again, disingenuous at best, outright lie at worst.
Not to mention the fact that GW1 was more an arena based game than an MMO which you alluded to in a later post. Which proves other peoples point that your argument doesn't really hold water when talking about MMOs. You want to play arena/battle royale games. Low/no stat gap does not work in MMOs.
GW2 was proof of this and then they went and tried to go back on their horizontal progression when they realized people weren't buyin it.
Online gaming was hardly new in 2005. It was relatively new in 1996 when M59 and Diablo came out but by 2005 online gaming was a huge thing.
And GW was kinda 2 games in one, one of them was a huge arena and the other a co-op PvE game with a story and an end.
It was a fun simple game but with many customization options and a relatively high difficulty the first 2 years. It was also at the time popular as an early E-sport game.
It was not really a MMO but a co-opration and arena game but it could have been a MMO, ANET had rather limited funding back then and did what they could afford with a very small team.
Anyways, no stat gap does indeed not work in MMOs, I agree with you there. A low is another matter?
If you go from 500 HP to 2000 or if you go to 50 000 does not make the game less fun. You still gain power, the difference is that zones can last longer without greying out and that PvP becomes more meaningful, nothing else. It also will be easier to group with friends a few level above or below you.
It wouldn't make the game harder or easier (unless you have open PvP which would make things easier for gankers and griefers but that is not a + in my book), difficulty is another matter completelly and either kind of progression could be really hard or super easy.
The only positive thing with the 50K HP is if you really like high numbers or go and killing everything in the noob area as fast as possible to annoy noobs.
So why wouldn't it work?
Depends on how low stat gap is implemented. You're right that 500 hp to 2000 or 50k doesn't really matter. The numbers don't matter, its the experience that does. Which is why i claim low stat gap doesn't work(also why we see so little of it).
Very few people will be satisfied taking the same amount of time or even nearly the same amount of time to kill the same level 1 skeleton when they're at max level that they did when they first opened the game. This is what i mean by low stat gap does not work in mmos. For a low stat gap, at least the one Eldurian was proposing would mean that you would still struggle against beginner intro mobs even at max level.
Depends on how low stat gap is implemented. You're right that 500 hp to 2000 or 50k doesn't really matter. The numbers don't matter, its the experience that does. Which is why i claim low stat gap doesn't work(also why we see so little of it).
Very few people will be satisfied taking the same amount of time or even nearly the same amount of time to kill the same level 1 skeleton when they're at max level that they did when they first opened the game. This is what i mean by low stat gap does not work in mmos. For a low stat gap, at least the one Eldurian was proposing would mean that you would still struggle against beginner intro mobs even at max level.
"Struggle" seems to be a pretty strong twisting of my words. Essentially if we are talking a 500% increase in character effectiveness, it should be equally difficult for a single veteran player to do a 5 man dungeon for newbs as it would be for 5 newbies to do that same dungeon. Assuming equal levels of player skill (Which hopefully is NOT the case).
So a veteran character would feel heroic. Low level mobs would be pretty easy to them, but they would not be immortal. Get in too far over your head and play badly enough and you can still die.
You act this is a problem but I would submit to you, how often do you go back and do content you are overleveled for? For me the answer is almost never. And the reason it's almost never is precisely because of the stat gap. I don't find one shotting mobs who's attacks I parry 100% of engaging. I find it boring.
Take away my immortality and the content I skipped at a lower level is something I may go do if it's good content. Take away my immortality and I will enjoy playing alongside my low level friends as a max level character. Take away my immortality, and I'll actually be able to feel and enjoy the rewards of being a high level character instead of being segregated into high level content 100% of the time where my character does not feel extraordinary in any way.
Because you can't tell me you go back to low level areas on your max level character, one shot everything, and that stays entertaining for more than 5 minutes.
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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
It's very funny in case where few whales wipe whole raid cause gear gap are too big , or the lowbie being feed while not able to do anything because of the gap .
The small scale PVP can't compare with the "war" that MMO offer
That's not even mentioning the amount of MMOs there even were back then compared to now. There weren't all that many back then. So again, disingenuous at best, outright lie at worst.
Not to mention the fact that GW1 was more an arena based game than an MMO which you alluded to in a later post. Which proves other peoples point that your argument doesn't really hold water when talking about MMOs. You want to play arena/battle royale games. Low/no stat gap does not work in MMOs.
GW2 was proof of this and then they went and tried to go back on their horizontal progression when they realized people weren't buyin it.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
"The amount of people playing MMOs in 2005 is a FRACTION of how many people are playing MMOs in 2018."
"In April 2009, NCSoft announced that 6 million units of games in the Guild Wars series had been sold."
"As reported by NCsoft and ArenaNet, by September 13 (about 2 weeks after launch), despite temporarily halting first-party sales, the game has sold over 2 million copies. By August 2013, the peak player concurrency had reached 460,000. By August 2015, over 5 million copies had been sold, at which point the base game became free-to-play"
GW2 is frequently cited as one of the more popular current MMOs. Sooo..... yeah there is that.
So GW1 was an arena based game? Have you even played GW1? It had Arena PvP just like WoW but exploring the world and questing was a huge portion of the game, and the central focus of PvE. It is just that zones only allowed for the player and that player's party. You wouldn't randomly encounter other players while questing out and zones, just in towns.
Other than that, and the altered progression, it was very much like a themepark MMO. And it was a popular game where people did a lot of that PVE content just to get prettier sets of armor. I fail to see how making the very small changes needed to make it into a true MMO would change that.
Also pointing out GW2's initial sales does what exactly for your case? Absolutely nothing. I can also point out how many people back failed kickstarters, what does that tell you? That people will throw their money at their hopes and dreams. What matters is player retention which GW2 had a massive issue and they backtracked with their "horizontal progression" when they tried adding Ascendant gear because it was widespread issue for people that dungeon gear was essentially just cosmetic.
The work for the reward was at a broken ratio. So people started leaving the game in droves(well that wasn't the only reason). I don't see very many people citing GW2 as "one of the most popular current mmos". It's a AAA title, so of course it's gonna make a bunch of top lists because of how few there are. But if you think its pulling some amazing numbers you're wrong. It's interesting how you showed GW2's initial launch sales but not Path of Fire's. That's what would show what current interest in the game is really about. Especially since GW2 base is free to play lol.(Which they wouldn't have done unless they felt they needed to boost their playerbase fyi)
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
The point is you said:
"The amount of people playing MMOs in 2005 is a FRACTION of how many people are playing MMOs in 2018."
Now you are saying:
"It's a AAA title, so of course it's gonna make a bunch of top lists because of how few there are. But if you think its pulling some amazing numbers you're wrong."
So if it's a AAA title and making top lists, but isn't pulling amazing numbers. But there are very few AAA titles now by your own admission. Which games are pulling these amazing numbers to make it so there were only a fraction of the number of MMO players that there are now?
Because most data I can point to shows that recent populations are showing a longterm path of decline broken only by spikes for each new expansion pretty much across the board for all MMOs. With a declining number of titles that would seem to show an MMO industry in retreat, not eclipsing the MMO industry of the past.
And while 2005 was not near the peak of the MMO boom, GW1 and it's expansions persisted as a popular title through the peak years of the MMO boom, and did fairly well during those years.
When i said It's a AAA title, i was talking about GW2 not GW1. Which games are pulling amazing numbers is irrelevant because GW2 is not one of them yet you prop it up as if low-cap is design philosophy that can work in mmorpgs but the numbers says otherwise.
Longterm decline broken only by spikes of new people from expansions is a standard for pretty much all mmos but that's only after a few months of the expansion or launch(aka player retention). I'm not talking about player retention, i'm talking about expansion sales. Legion broke the record for amount of copies sold for a WoW expansion beating out Cataclysm. How many bought Path of Fire?
GW1 isn't an MMO and never was an MMO which i thought we both agreed on but apparently not?
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
As I recall ANET explained why, they felt MMORPGS do better with a more fleshed out progression system.
They still flattened it out quite a bit in GW2 but that is one reason why I never was interested in the title, though it is pretty popular.
I've forgotten, what was your thoughts on GW2, favorable or not so much?
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
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
Afaik ESO and GW2 are probably in the top 10 if not Top 5.
(I guess its something like WoW, FFXIV, ESO, GW2, BDO in the West)
Maybe Runescape, STO and TOR being better than ESO or GW1.
http://massivelyop.com/2017/12/06/perfect-ten-the-healthiest-live-mmorpgs-at-the-end-of-2017/
There is nothing else out there atm.
IMHO WoW should be ignored for every discussion as in the West not one game came even near to those numbers and it is a phenomenon of itself packed with people that haven't played any other MMORPG.
Most hardcore WOW players I know don't even know what other MMORPG s came out in the last years as they don't care.
Its like Apple, its his own world.
But its no point to proof that WOWs progression system is the best and horizontal will fail as everything else failed compared to WoW, even games with the same progression system.
I don't want to say vertical fails and horizontal won't.
I just want to say, besides WoW. Horizontal may have the same chances as vertical, if not even more if done right.
And there is a market for both but still most games stick to vertical which is sad.
1997 Meridian 59 'til 2019 ESO
Waiting for Camelot Unchained & Pantheon
The original classes had ~140 abilities each meaning if your primary and secondary class were original classes you had ~280 abilities to pick from.
If you were a paragon/devish (The classes from the most recently released expansion) then each class would have 85 skills meaning 170 abilities to pick from.
GW2 picked half your abilities for you when you selected your weapon combo and offered a single class per character.
It felt very much inferior and a slap in the face to a game that had one of the best customization systems ever.
Now GW2 did have some improvements. The ability to randomly counter other players in the open world, a crafting system etc. but ultimately those features were copied over from WoW so their inclusion didn't improve the game enough to keep me from getting bored before I ever left the first zone.
Story tends to be forced and generic because of vertical progression that needs to be feed. Rather have less story based only on class/skill advancement and dungeons. Meaning you get story to gain new skills or very involved dungeon coop experiences that aren't based on gear grinds. Random quest can be generated procedurally for world back ground. Character story reigns.
After that a big gap until SWG, Warhammer,...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_games
1997 Meridian 59 'til 2019 ESO
Waiting for Camelot Unchained & Pantheon
I found this to be an interesting statement,
"During PvP combat, gear will be scaled to a roughly equivalent level between combatants. If a player's gear is better than the opponent, they will still have a slight advantage, but a reasonable one"
https://www.mmorpg.com/mobile/news.cfm?read=48288&game=15&ismb=1
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
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
World of Warcraft is the prime example of a game that puts in vertical progression to only fight it with features. What Eldurian is talking about where you faced with flaws you find ways to minimize impact but hold on to the broken mechanic.
Blizzard isn't ignorant to the effects of gear on competitive multiplayer. They just also aren't ignorant of a large playerbase that enjoys gear progression.
Today NC's revenue behemoths are Lineage M -> Lineage 1 -> Blade & Soul -> GW2 -> Lineage 2 -> Aion (ordered by revenue from bigger to smaller).
Lineage M made almost 1 trillion KRW in 2017. Even with the expansion in 2017, GW2 only made 83 billion KRW, against 161 billion KRW of Blade & Soul.
Lineage 1 suffered loss compared to previous years due to Lineage M, falling from 375 billion KRW in 2016 to 154 billion KRW in 2017.
"In April 2009, NCSoft announced that 6 million units of games in the Guild Wars series had been sold."
"As reported by NCsoft and ArenaNet, by September 13 (about 2 weeks after launch), despite temporarily halting first-party sales, the game has sold over 2 million copies. By August 2013, the peak player concurrency had reached 460,000. By August 2015, over 5 million copies had been sold, at which point the base game became free-to-play"
Some of the recent changes sounds like they are trying to make the game a bit more sandboxy, the Open World PvP more meaningful, and apparently the PvP in general more engaging. All good decisions if true but still not enough to get me to actually investigate a game that treats it's players like children too stupid to make their own character builds.
And GW was kinda 2 games in one, one of them was a huge arena and the other a co-op PvE game with a story and an end.
It was a fun simple game but with many customization options and a relatively high difficulty the first 2 years. It was also at the time popular as an early E-sport game.
It was not really a MMO but a co-opration and arena game but it could have been a MMO, ANET had rather limited funding back then and did what they could afford with a very small team.
Anyways, no stat gap does indeed not work in MMOs, I agree with you there. A low is another matter?
If you go from 500 HP to 2000 or if you go to 50 000 does not make the game less fun. You still gain power, the difference is that zones can last longer without greying out and that PvP becomes more meaningful, nothing else. It also will be easier to group with friends a few level above or below you.
It wouldn't make the game harder or easier (unless you have open PvP which would make things easier for gankers and griefers but that is not a + in my book), difficulty is another matter completelly and either kind of progression could be really hard or super easy.
The only positive thing with the 50K HP is if you really like high numbers or go and killing everything in the noob area as fast as possible to annoy noobs.
So why wouldn't it work?
Very few people will be satisfied taking the same amount of time or even nearly the same amount of time to kill the same level 1 skeleton when they're at max level that they did when they first opened the game. This is what i mean by low stat gap does not work in mmos. For a low stat gap, at least the one Eldurian was proposing would mean that you would still struggle against beginner intro mobs even at max level.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
So a veteran character would feel heroic. Low level mobs would be pretty easy to them, but they would not be immortal. Get in too far over your head and play badly enough and you can still die.
You act this is a problem but I would submit to you, how often do you go back and do content you are overleveled for? For me the answer is almost never. And the reason it's almost never is precisely because of the stat gap. I don't find one shotting mobs who's attacks I parry 100% of engaging. I find it boring.
Take away my immortality and the content I skipped at a lower level is something I may go do if it's good content. Take away my immortality and I will enjoy playing alongside my low level friends as a max level character. Take away my immortality, and I'll actually be able to feel and enjoy the rewards of being a high level character instead of being segregated into high level content 100% of the time where my character does not feel extraordinary in any way.
Because you can't tell me you go back to low level areas on your max level character, one shot everything, and that stays entertaining for more than 5 minutes.