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Vet EQ Player w/ Suggestions
healz4u
Member Posts: 1,065
Hello!
As a veteran Everquest player who recently quit to play Vanguard only to quit Vanguard, I have some suggestions that are quite broad for developers of MMORPG that I think are profitable.
You can flame, discard, add to, challenge, or support any of the following.
Note: non-comprehensive and I did not prepare in any way to create this list.
Gameplay
Solo - worthwhile, meaningful and fun - 60%
Group - mainly optional, primarily to tackle named boss or bosses in dungeons* - 20%
Raid - primarily end-game, no zerging or 5-hour plus requirement** -20%
*defined as more than one person
**two groups should be enough for an adequate raid force
Quests
a) fun but fewer and mainly optional. Questing to quest or forced-questing is tedious, boring and artificial
b) mostly solo quests to get that feel of logging in for a few hours and accomplishing something
c) forced-group quests are frustrating, especially when trying to find people who happen to be on the same quest
Grind
a) variety of camps, dungeons, and so-forth to avoid tedium, boring, sense of being trapped from level 42 to 45
b) people do not hate to "grind" - they just want more options, more variety, more "stuff" to do
c) if you have variety and fun content, it does not feel like a grind
Dungeons
a) many and varied: solo (yes, solo dungeons - yes - yes), group, and raid
b) range from small manors to farms to vast castles and even cities
c) instances are not bad (success of WoW attributed to intelligent use of instances? - I ask)
PvP
a) environmental PvP is great but impractical in some ways
b) great to avoid terminal level boredom
World
a) vast world but practical mobility
b) no instantaneous travel - separate continents with stops to islands to enhance "world feel"
c) robust with life
Crafting/Professions
a) make it fun, important, but non-essential
Conclusion
People want to have fun; that is what it is all about. People have fun in fantasy mmorpg to join a fantastic world, develop a character, and have unique experiences while doing it. Your creativity, ingenuity with the advances and limitations of technology need to somehow create an experience that is ... not predictable. Content: lots of it, solo, group, raid.
I wrote this while downloading, in boredom because there is no fun mmorpg to play, the EQ 2 trial. The above are broad suggestions and ideas, non-comprehensive, and just scratch the surface. Listen to the community.
As a veteran Everquest player who recently quit to play Vanguard only to quit Vanguard, I have some suggestions that are quite broad for developers of MMORPG that I think are profitable.
You can flame, discard, add to, challenge, or support any of the following.
Note: non-comprehensive and I did not prepare in any way to create this list.
Gameplay
Solo - worthwhile, meaningful and fun - 60%
Group - mainly optional, primarily to tackle named boss or bosses in dungeons* - 20%
Raid - primarily end-game, no zerging or 5-hour plus requirement** -20%
*defined as more than one person
**two groups should be enough for an adequate raid force
Quests
a) fun but fewer and mainly optional. Questing to quest or forced-questing is tedious, boring and artificial
b) mostly solo quests to get that feel of logging in for a few hours and accomplishing something
c) forced-group quests are frustrating, especially when trying to find people who happen to be on the same quest
Grind
a) variety of camps, dungeons, and so-forth to avoid tedium, boring, sense of being trapped from level 42 to 45
b) people do not hate to "grind" - they just want more options, more variety, more "stuff" to do
c) if you have variety and fun content, it does not feel like a grind
Dungeons
a) many and varied: solo (yes, solo dungeons - yes - yes), group, and raid
b) range from small manors to farms to vast castles and even cities
c) instances are not bad (success of WoW attributed to intelligent use of instances? - I ask)
PvP
a) environmental PvP is great but impractical in some ways
b) great to avoid terminal level boredom
World
a) vast world but practical mobility
b) no instantaneous travel - separate continents with stops to islands to enhance "world feel"
c) robust with life
Crafting/Professions
a) make it fun, important, but non-essential
Conclusion
People want to have fun; that is what it is all about. People have fun in fantasy mmorpg to join a fantastic world, develop a character, and have unique experiences while doing it. Your creativity, ingenuity with the advances and limitations of technology need to somehow create an experience that is ... not predictable. Content: lots of it, solo, group, raid.
I wrote this while downloading, in boredom because there is no fun mmorpg to play, the EQ 2 trial. The above are broad suggestions and ideas, non-comprehensive, and just scratch the surface. Listen to the community.
Comments
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Champions Online Fansite
I also agree with you in instancing. WoW did a great job with it, and hopefully some of the upcoming MMOs take a page out if it's book.
_____________________________
SWG- (retired) 2 year vet.
WoW- (retired) 3 year vet.
EQ2- (retired) 1.5 year vet
Waiting for:
AoC // WAR // Darkfall
It seems to me you would be very happy playing an offline RPG on a console. You want everything in the game for much variety and content, but at the same time you want to be able to level by grinding mobs and never having to talk to another living person. You don't need to pay a subscription fee for that... I would suggest you play WoW, because of the ability to solo so easily, but I think even that game would have to much of a social aspect for you. Go play Fable or Oblivion
I have found people that complain about the MM part of MMORPG are those that want to be able to advance their character for the sole goal of being able to show off when you thing you have 'won the game'. I'm taking a wild guess and branding you as such.
1. Quests are a needed element in a MMORPG. They are used to move the story line along, and add content to the game without having every NPC need a cut scene. I'm sure it won't kill people to actually read something other than their damage or spell power while playing a game. Also without them, leveling would be a mindless grind with even less reason to kill stuff than the 'kill and collect' quests, devs use as filler.
2. Interacting with other PCs is what sets these games aside from traditional RPGs. Being forced to group with people is just a way of getting people like you (Who seem to like playing 1 player games) used to it. You might complain about this, but you always have the option of going back to your Final Fantasy 7.
3. As much as someone would think they want a realistic MMORPG, they really wouldn't. If playing an online game was exciting as real life, we wouldn't need to play the game now would we.
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Tested: SWG, Sims, EVE, CoH, RO, Darkages, Neocron, AO, Lineage 2, ATITD 2, AC 2, WoW, MxO, LotRO, Armada Online, VsoH
Playing: WoW
Waiting for: StO
In my own experience, it all depends on the mood. Sometimes, I just want to get stuff done on my own. I have 30 minutes play, and I'm just logging on to do a quest and, exactly like you say, I would want to play almost a single player game. Forced groups would hinder me to do this type of play. Other times, I feel a bit lonely and just want to group. I don't care about what loot I get or I don't care how far we get into an instance or what quests we get done, I just want to group. City of Heroes was great for those types of people. You can just get a pick up group going and just run some quests. You can even sidekick to play with friends at higher levels than you. Great experience for both solo'ers and groupers.
When it comes to instances, developers can create multiple instances that some would require a group and some could be done by yourself. When it comes to MMOs, there should be a balance of solo'ing and grouping, to allow for players that not only want either one, or would do both at different times in their day/week.
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Champions Online Fansite
Quests
a) fun but fewer and mainly optional. Questing to quest or forced-questing is tedious, boring and artificial
b) mostly solo quests to get that feel of logging in for a few hours and accomplishing something
c) forced-group quests are frustrating, especially when trying to find people who happen to be on the same quest
Players feel forced to quest nowadays as the reward for grinding, exploring and killing what you find etc. pale in comparison in most MMORPGs. Why not keep them at least in the same ballpark so people that enjoy both styles can decide how they want to play?
Developers also run in to a problem now where they are trying to make enough quests that the players can level up without ever having to do anything but quest. This means they quickly run out of ideas and most become repeats and/or are the typical "fed-ex" or "kill 10 rats" variety. Sometimes they spice them up with nicer stories and such but the underlying quest is the same. I'd rather do one or two great quests per level with some grinding mixed in than 20 shallow quests where I spent most of my time running around the map back and forth to quest npcs.
The biggest gripe I have though is that most quests in these games tend to be soloable, non-repeatable but then they throw in the odd group quest to encourage player interaction. All this does in fact is work opposite to what was intended. Players group up, knock off a quick group quest or two and then disband to go back to solo'ing quests. Don't want other players slowing you down! Or worse since most quests aren't repeatable their is no incentive for them to help you.
If they are going to have group quests they should be repeatable (beyond the odd important quests). Why not a simple quests to wipe out a dungeon or clear out a camp? Oh no players may be able to "grind" it fo xp? At least it wouldn't destroy groups when player A has quests x and y which player b has done but needs quest v and w.
I would suggest that I personally have not read anyone asking,
"will this game involved forced-grouping? ... I love to group, and I love spending time sitting around looking for groups."
I try to stress the above that the forced-grouping, or group-oriented approach (particularly by Vanguard) is a ... gameplay flaw. A forced-grouping element in a game is, generally if not always, a timesink element; it is designed to ensure it requires time to discover a group, organize a group, and so-on and so-forth; it does not necessarily mean the content is more "challenging," unless challenge simply means it requires 5 instead of 1 to kill a mob. Tactically, very often, it makes very little material difference.
Nevertheless, I am not opposed to grouping, but I think any game, if you look at DDO e.g., that forces grouping will fail. When grouping is required, and there are not practical aspects to the game to efficiently facilitate forming meaningful groups for "fun" and not forced content, I believe the game suffers.
As I said, of course, no one has to agree with me; but I feel the forced-grouping dimension requires this amount of attention. I think even people whom "love to group" (although I personally very rarely if virtually never see them demanding a game have forced-grouping) would appreciate a game that offers abundant solo content with grouping options.
Bear in mind, these are your opinions. Other people maybe interested in a group-emphasized game for example. Anyway, are these what put you off Vanguard or was it something else out of curiousity?
Absolutely, the original post captures some of it. However, gameplay and performance issues are really generating a bitter experience for people, particularly when they reach 27ish and are forced-grouped (if they can find one with the same quests).
SIGIL and Brad's aggressive campaign to censure bad press and essentially deceive the public with more promises all indicate the very serious issues in Vanguard. Double exp to permanent exp bonuses and so-forth are obviously desperate acts. So, the responses to the severe problems of Vanguard speak for themselves. Fun, gameplay, performance, forced-group, etc., etc., etc.
It reminds me of George Bush saying that everything is OK in Iraq and "give it some more time." It is all, well, you can guess.
I am aware of no bias or censuring of posts critical of Vanguard (or any game) on mmorpg. The quality of posting here is excellent, the thoughtfulness is freshing. =D
Thank you, vegas_6. Honestly, your comment means a lot to me. =D
Edit: I will always miss Everquest, and as my friend told me yesterday, "there is just something about that game." Indeed.
Case in point, Vanguard. I thought they were going to make travel meaningful in VG. Instead the world is ridiculously overly-large and travel is definitely the most annoying experience I've ever had in an MMORPG. Even with the instant teleporters in the game, the world is just TOO large. And the addition of even more instant teleporters will not make it less so.
I don't know how to make travelling less annoying while still keeping the idea of a vast world. I would imagine the use of flight paths like various games use (World of Warcraft, EQ2) would go along ways toward making travel less annoying while not using something cheesy (like instant teleporters).
One more point about a large world...The game world should never take precedence over the content. The content should be developed first and the world created around it. This is the exact opposite of what Sigil did...they made the world HUUGE and then were unable to adequately fill in the gaps. It shows in every single "chunk" of the game and beyond. Telon could be made 5x smaller and still retain the amount of content it currently has without losing anything except 30 minutes of monotonous travel time (which because it requires input from the player becomes a giant timesink).
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Life sucks, buy a helmet.
Thank you, vegas_6. Honestly, your comment means a lot to me. =D
Edit: I will always miss Everquest, and as my friend told me yesterday, "there is just something about that game." Indeed.
Hah, no problem. I just figure that if you took the time to write out a thoughtfully written post like that, it's only fair of me to comment on it.
No doubt about it, I cannot explain it myself. There was just "something" about the game I can't quite put my fingers on, it'll definitely be missed and I doubt another game can give that "something" that EQ did.
I think you're hitting and missing it all at the same time. While I understand your motivations for changing certain parts of the MMO experience that fail, it isn't always in the best interest to remove them entirely. Let me expound point by point.
"Granted thinking for yourself could be considered a timesink of shorter or longer duration depending on how smart..or how dumb you are."
That may be the case for people who bother to take polls on MMO websites, but in substantial personal experience in a number of MMOs, I'd have to say that the typical player prefers to solo mostly with grouping occasionally. Those folks aren't responding to the polls, but they are voting with their actions in numerous MMOs. People will generally solo unless they are forced to group, across the board, for the most part, some exceptions aside.
Thank you, vegas_6. Honestly, your comment means a lot to me. =D
Edit: I will always miss Everquest, and as my friend told me yesterday, "there is just something about that game." Indeed. I commend you on your zeal to make things better. One of the biggest things I hate is the quests have no meaning. Quests should be few and far in between so they actually have weight to their importance. Take the epic weapon quest for example in EverQuest.
The first is quests. I HATE grinding. You say that no one hates grinding. Well I do. I really, truly do. I severely dislike just going around killing stuff with no goal other than to get EXP and loot. What quests do is have me grind with a purpose, and that greatly improves my enjoyment of the game. Honestly, what I think really needs to happen is that even grinding quests need to disappear. We need genuinely fun quests that don't just send us off to kill things. That would make MMOs infinitely more fun.
Second is instant travel. I understand that some people like to walk everywhere and take in the world. Even I enjoy doing that sometimes. But instant travel is needed. I don't have loads of time each day to play MMOs. When I have time I walk, but when I have maybe an hour, I just want to get to where I'm doing quests and get those quests done, not run there then do maybe one quest. If you don't like instant travel, don't use it. Seems obvious to me.
I have been playing EQ 2, the trial,and it has the feel of EQ 1 for me without many of EQ 1's frustrations. If other games were not going to release soon, I would immediately sign-up for it.