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Keeping the good, fixing the bad?
Finduilas
Member Posts: 377
From reading the numerous FAQs on the official site I get a general impression that Sigil want to make an MMORPG that returns to the original "vision" of Everquest, without making the same mistakes. They also will look at the "mistakes" made both by SOE in trying to fix those early errors, and every other game's attempt to correct what EQ did badly.
For example, long distance travel. They want to KEEP long travel times, but NOT have the down time that it lead to in EQ, or the quick-fix solution later put in of easy portals. They intend NOT to make the same "mistakes" as many current games in their attempt to reduce travel down times.
So, a couple of questions.
What feature/s from the original EQ did you enjoy, and consider were ruined once SOE took over, and how would you like to see Sigil implement them in Vanguard?
What mistake/s did EQ make, what game-play flaw/s, that you would like to see addressed in Vanguard, and how would you like to see that "flaw" fixed?
And what would you say is the worst game-play solution to a problem, currently implemented, that in one sense made the game even worse as a result?
I'll start with;
Grinding. I would like to see how they make the game HARD, provide longevity, but do not resort to making the player simply grind for hours. How will they make the game a fun adventure ALL the way to the end levels, but still make the end level difficult and time consuming to obtain? WoW was fun, but too easy to reach 60.
Comments
I hope that they wont make expansions/new content that will make older zones obsolete.
I really hated how they kept destroying the old world with every expansion after Shadow of Luclin due to massive expbonus in the newer zones meaning that everyone went to Paludan Caverns as soon as possible, leaving most of the "old" world dead and empty.
Same goes for keeping making drops better that those in older zones. That meant that nobody wanted to go to old content zones. When I quit EQ you could get better drops of mobs soloing them in some of the newer zones than you could get of raidmobs in older zones.
If they stick to the everquest conception of grinding, then that will be a very bad move on sigils part. No one these days wants to experience grind for hours. That type of gameplay is prevelant on asian mmorpgs and everquest, but as the market has shown, these types of games do very very poorly in the west, there is one single reason that WoW has the lions share of the market currently, the content, im not speaking of high level content, im speaking on content for the normal adventurers that are still leveling, the sheer ammount of extremely high quality quests and lore/story, that you get to experience in the game.
Vanguard needs to provide that kind of content to its players if it wants to be competitive, ppl want to be pulled into the game world and experience it, that wont be achieved by heavy grinding, that will only be achieved by quest content, ingame books, lore npc´s, etc, not one of these issues has been adressed by sigil, the only thing they said was at PAX, where the a sigil member said "quests are not our focus" "the game will not have a significant number of quests". Needless to say, i was sorly dispointed.
All ur Mountain Dew is belong to me.
Ok, wait. In another thread here, you suggest that Lineage I and Lineage II are in the top 3 of all-time most popular MMO's (and I agree). They are asian, and among the most intense for grinding....
How long it takes to get levels is irrelevant if you're having fun getting them.
-Feyshtey-
Here I go again, picking on Vanguard. But I don't just troll. There is a substantive point I want to make.
I want to talk about travel in Vanguard. Ok, they want to leave out teleporting and make us travel the old fashioned way. But keep it interesting...it won't just be uneventful jogging or going afk on a ship. Sounds great right? Sounds like an adventure?
To be perfectly honest I LOVE the idea. In fact, when I imagine what I would do with a MMORPG if I could make one, adventurous travel is a key feature I would want to include. Getting where you're going should be at least half the fun. It shouldn't just be jog, jog, jog, jog to get to a dungeon and THEN the fun starts. Just getting there should be a big part of the challenge. The one game that still gives me hope for the MMORPG genre (not Vanguard) is talking about travel times in terms of real time days/multiple play sessions.
But, Vanguard is a level based game and....
It...won't...work...in...a...level...based...game.
How can they possibly prevent travel from becoming a boring chore for people as they out-level the areas they have to travel through? When you get to level 30 is there still going to be any challenge for you when you have to travel through a level 10 area? Probably not. When you get close to max level will there be any challenge in traveling through ANY low to mid level area? Probably not.
So what's going to happen? Travel becomes boring, that's what happens. It once again becomes little more than pointless downtime. Like running up the mountain ramp in East Karana for the 1000th time in EQ. Or jogging through West Karana long after you've out-leveled most everything in the zone.
You just can't keep travel interesting in a level based game or any game where the power difference between older and younger characters is HUGE. Because you have to chop the world up into different level range areas and if a character is too high level for the area he's in then there isn't going to be much, if any, challenge for him in that area.
I love the idea in theory but it just ain't gonna work in Vanguard. I will make a prediction that you all can write down on a piece of paper so you don't forget it. And my prediction is this: Vanguard will put in teleports or some other form of instant or very fast travel...sooner or later. They WILL abandon the idea of adventerous travel because it will turn out that travel in Vanguard quickly loses it's challenge and becomes boring down time. They may not do it untill the playerbase starts to get topheavy with high level characters but they WILL do it sooner or later.
So write that down and if, in the fullness of time, it turns out that I was wrong about it..then you can rub my nose in it.
Neanderthal, you are making several assumptions. The most important one here is that you will always be returning to low level areas to train/repair/craft/obtain quests/bank/etc.
It has been said that the design of the game is for you to be more or less continuously traveling outward from your starting areas. And that in the process of doing so, you will leave the lower level areas behind you. The hope is for this to be so true in fact, that entire player built towns will periodically be abandoned and rebuilt in areas more appropriate for the town's creator's levels. It's also evidenced by the caravan system, whereby those who you normally group with will move with you through the gameworld if they are in your caravan, even if they are not online when you relocate. (They will not be physically apparent in the gameworld during that move, but will likely instead spawn on login at the last player hub that the caravan were in.) The devs have said pointedly that they do not foresee higher level players returning to low level areas they've outgrown with any regularity, except perhaps the capital cities for quests and such (which there is less focus on that a game like WoW).
Part of the concept of Vanguard is that you are always moving out into the world, into more and more dangerous areas. And that you'll be establishing a foothold there (in the form of player cities) from which to launch deeper and deeper into the gameworld. You won't be running back to Freeport through it's newbie grounds to train or go to the bank. Those types of services will be available in hubs of player activity in areas appropriate for your level.
Which suggests that travel will be integral to gameplay. You might only need to travel 5 minutes or so from your current location to get to good hunting grounds. But 5 minutes travel in any direction from where you last logged off will be areas that you need to respect at least some.
This type of system does create some adjustments in the way players have learned to think. Mainly that there is no part of the gameworld that the players can't get to in a relatively short amount of time. But it's exactly that sort of system that makes the gameworld 'feel' small. It's also the sort of system that removes scenarios where a single uber guild can skip across all the game's content poaching named and raid encounters, leaving the smaller guilds at a loss.
This isn't like WoW, or EQ, or EQ2, where by level 10 you were in the place you would always return to for services for the rest of your character's life.
-Feyshtey-
How long it takes to get levels is irrelevant if you're having fun getting them.
I rarely even can bear Festhey been in the same room then I...but on this topic I agree with him.
On travel I am pretty sure Vanguard will fail and make it unappealing (agreeing more or less with Neandethal), but it is a secondary aspect of the game if I enjoy the rest...and if I dont enjoy the rest, then travel wont change that either. The main troubles is, if there is challenge in travel, there need to be reward...and reward in a level 10 zones...err...you see the dilemna. In SoR the travel is plainly boring and pointlessly dangerous, without any reason to do it...at least there is some teleport, but they attack your funds...but again, travel is a side aspect that wont change that you like or dislike the basic of the game, it only improve your playing experience. CoH travels pretty much sums the best system IMO.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Feyshtey, you'll have to correct me if I have completely misunderstood what you said. But your post gave me a very strange impression.
It sounds like you're saying that players in Vanguard will head out into the world, leaving their home towns behind, and never have any reason to go back.
So, for example, let's say that all the PCs start working their way north. They go north a little ways, stop there for a while, gain some levels, then go a little further north. And they NEVER have any reason to go back south through the lower level areas they left behind? It's just...march north...level up...march further north...never look back?
What if some of the players start out heading south? Will they be forever segregated from those who went north? And what about players who start the game later than most? Will they log into deserted ghost towns in the starting cities?
Is this what you were actually saying or did I just mis-interpret you?
To a point, yes. That's my understanding of it.
Aradune quotes on the subject :
and this one :
Considering that Thestra is one of 4 known starting continents, and travel between continents is much like overland travel... it might take you 2-6 hours to traverse the entire gamespace. Not exactly a design that lends itself to regularly changing your location.
These kinds of remarks lead me to believe that should you be returning to lower level areas, it will be the exception rather than the norm.
But then again, I could be wrong... Guess we should wait to play the game to see
-Feyshtey-
Ah ok, that clears things up a bit. I was misunderstanding you and thought you were saying something a bit different.
So basically the idea is that people will head out to a level appropriate area and then stay there a good long time before they head back through the lower level areas and across to some different higher level area.
But really what is the chance that people will be happy staying put in the same area for long periods of time? I honestly don't know. I can only speak for myself and I know that I tend to get bored hanging around in one area for too long.
People get bored and want to go somewhere else. Or maybe they hear of a quest or something they want to do in a different area and they don't want to wait. Or one of their friends gets bored or has something they want to do somewhere else. Or your guild wants you to go somewhere.
But anyway, the way you (and the quotes) explained it in your last post...it isn't about making travel interesting and challenging...it's just hoping that people won't make so many trips that they get fed up with travel. Travel through areas you've out-leveled will still be boring and unchallenging. They're just hoping people won't feel the desire to go wandering around so much.
You have a pre-concieved notion of 'an area' too. I have the impression that in Vanguard, 'an area' has a meaning we're not exactly used to
Imagine if 'an area' were the size of Kunark....
I don't think it's that drastic. But it's certainly going to be different than expecting a player to stay in Solusek's Eye for 10 levels (although it was entirely possible to, and many did). The shear enormity of this game will probably stagger us.
The dev's have talked about a half dozen or so adventure areas, just in posts on the forums. Each of those areas are 2km x 2km in size. And they aren't even talking about mid-level areas yet... these are all low level areas, and only ones confined to the northern region of one continent. One of 3 starting continents.
-Feyshtey-
Its entirely possible to keep it challenging. Its really just a question of how far the designers will go with it.
Even if you are cap level and traveling through a newbie zone, there's nothing preventing game design that gives a random chance for a spawned encounter. Imagine that your High Elf character has completed a series of quests that makes you absolutely hated by a particular faction of rogues. Maybe you're just running along, near the capital city which has a low-mid level creatures around it. But because of your political alliances, and becauase of groups you have pissed off, a spawn occurs and several higher level mercenaries attack you.
Or an even more simple means to keep it meaningful: There might be a 'safe' route between cities. But the most direct, and least time-consuming requires going through rarely used mountain passes taht are far less friendly. Or, applied to ocean travel, the most direct route between two continents might cross through an series of small islands infested by pirates...
If I can come up with this much in a couple of minutes of casual thought, you can bet people with a decade of experience in MUD/MMO design could do a hell of a lot more.
-Feyshtey-
Heh, yeah, and pretty much the exact same thing occurred to me. But if you're going to start adjusting the level of spawns all over the world to match the level of whatever character happens to be present then I have to begin to wonder what's the point of having levels in the first place?
But then to make it work you have to lock the mobs onto the appropriate level PCs or it would create all kinds of chaos. Like level 45 mobs running loose in a level 5-10 area. It would be a griefers paradise if he could run through a newbie area spawning high level mobs and then train them on people or pull the plug so that he vanishes and leaves them roaming free.
And the whole idea is getting pretty close to instanced content. Not unlike their AES plans but at least that, I think, will be limited to key areas and mostly in dungeons.
So if you went with that idea you now have pseudo-instanced content in every part of the world and mobs locked to specific PCs and which poof if the PC logs or goes link dead and levels have become almost completely meaningless in the game unless you're on a PvP server and levels have never been good for PvP anyway. How's that for a run on sentance.
The other idea about shorter but higher level routes sounds a little better. But still, remember that we're talking about travel being challenging. If it's challenging the players will feel some fear of doing it. So if those shorter routes really are challenging enough to be interesting then I would be suprised if most people didn't just take the long road and avoid the risk.
But even if they didn't you still have the problem of deciding what level range to make the short cuts. Do you make the short cut from the newbie town a level 20 short cut? Level 30? 40? What? If you make it level 30 then it will become trivial for people at around level 40 or so.
If you adjust the short cut for maximum level PCs then you still have the problem of people facing boring travel through the longer routes for most the life of their characters.
This just illustrates why I hate levels in games. Levels create so many inconsistancies that it's really impossible to make a logically consistant virtual world if you use levels. I have disliked level systems since my PnP days. I even made up my own set of rules for our tabletop games and did away with levels way, way back before the internet even existed. Unfortunately there are still a lot of (most?) game developers who are hung up on the old, tired idea of levels.
Its entirely possible to keep it challenging. Its really just a question of how far the designers will go with it.
Even if you are cap level and traveling through a newbie zone, there's nothing preventing game design that gives a random chance for a spawned encounter. Imagine that your High Elf character has completed a series of quests that makes you absolutely hated by a particular faction of rogues. Maybe you're just running along, near the capital city which has a low-mid level creatures around it. But because of your political alliances, and becauase of groups you have pissed off, a spawn occurs and several higher level mercenaries attack you.
Or an even more simple means to keep it meaningful: There might be a 'safe' route between cities. But the most direct, and least time-consuming requires going through rarely used mountain passes taht are far less friendly. Or, applied to ocean travel, the most direct route between two continents might cross through an series of small islands infested by pirates...
If I can come up with this much in a couple of minutes of casual thought, you can bet people with a decade of experience in MUD/MMO design could do a hell of a lot more.
im going to jump in here and say that, even with encounters like you sugest are in the game..... there would still be not much of a point to be in that area. i mean you going to hang around the capitol just to trigger a event? i would rather travel to a new land and find things to do as well as have encounters triggered while im doing them.
read this http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1044304#post1044304 then come back and talk to me about the vanguard/soe fiasco.....
Well, I guess that's the root of your problem. And to be honest, it is your problem. Don't play level-based games.
If there is any character development or advancment at all in a game, the game is inherently level based. It doesn't matter how a character matures over time; whether it be from gear, skills, spell aquisition, etc. Those are all just different means of portraying levels. Sure, your character might forever be level 1 (or zero, or nothing). But if your character has obtained more power, through any means, the character is, for all intents and purposes, higher level.
It is that character development that the vast majority of MMO players are driven by. It is the carrot on the end of the stick that keeps them logging in, and pushing further into the game. It is the hope of power and adventure that compels them. Remove that character development, and you remove the desire for the bulk of MMO players to play at all. Hell, even single player games evidence this trend in gamer desire.
Traditional levels are the most convenient way to regulate that character development. And in turn regulate content, the reward from the content, and how players move through the gameworld. It gives meaning to accessing a new area, or defeating an encounter, or obtaining an item or skill. If there is no advancement, there's no tangible reward. And people in general want rewards.
Traditional levels also resolve a myriad of complications that would otherwise exist. No levels? Let's look at SWG for a second (as it was at release). On the very first day of release, you could get 20 unskilled players, travel to the most dangerous area of the game, and defeat a Rancor Beast, or a Krayt Dragon, or a Dark Jedi, or a Witch. Any one of those should have been end-game encounters. Something that players dreamt of one day defeating. And something that they worked toward in the hope that some day, they could experience that. But when players are able to experience that on the first day of play (if they so choose) they have no real compelling reason to stay in the game. Why? If you can do the 'highest level' encounter from the start, what is there to look forward to?
You are looking for a sandbox game, that's entirely freeform and completely unstructured. There's nothing really wrong with that desire. But it's a minority opinion. Most gamers need some reason to keep trying. They want tangible rewards with recognizable benefits. You can't have that without some sort of structure of levels, in whatever form those levels take.
-Feyshtey-
You're pretty much right on the bullseye with your last post Feyshtey.
I'll admit that if it were up to me I would de-emphasize character development. And I've advocated that before (probably on the MMORPG.com boards) so that's nothing new.
But aside from what I would do, it is possible to have character development without it being so extremely unbalancing. The question is a simple matter of how powerful a well developed character is in comparison to a new character.
Obviously if you have any sort of character development then characters are going to get better at things as they go along. But traditional level systems take this to a ridiculous extreme.
I'm talking about level systems in which, when you gain a level, you: 1) get a increase in your max hitpoints. 2) your AC increases. 3) your chance <to hit> is improved. 4) your chance to avoid being hit is improved. 4) your max mana increases (if you have a mana bar).....basically everything is based on your level in comparison to the level of things you fight.
So if you are significantly higher level than a mob it probably won't even be able to hit you even if you are wearing newbie armor, based simply on the level difference. And if it did hit you it's damage would be mitigated to almost nothing. And even if it did damage you your hitpoints are so far out of proportion with the damage it does that it can't really hurt you.
This is what's so crazy about traditional level based systems. Take away those purely level based bonuses and that mob could have a chance to hurt you. Well, it depends I suppose. Even a skill based system could allow people to become overpowered.
But anyway, no need to keep on with this. You understand what I'm talking about.
But you say that gamers need a reason to keep trying. I agree but I don't think their motivation has to be rooted entirely in personal character development. There could be other things to do in a virtual world. It doesn't all have to be about building up your characters' power. But now we're not even remotely talking about Vanguard anymore so I'm not sure if there's much point in going on with this.
Agreed. There's not much point in continuing the discussion. You obviously have desires not fullfilled by Vanguard (or pretty much any MMO). They aren't wrong. They just aren't going to be satisfied by Vanguard.
But just as a side note:
I could wear the best riot gear made, and be armed with a baseball bat. But if I were to attack Evandar Hollyfield, he'd kick my ass. Readily. Even if he were naked. He's 'higher level' in combat arts, by a significant margin. And my lack of knowledge would be reflected by my inability to hurt him.
-Feyshtey-