Originally posted by hercules Well its not only a EQ2 problem its basically all new mmorpg problem. They have made the games less fusrtating but at the expense of excitement. And really the challenge is dead in all new mmorpg.I remember back in EQ1 when you actually have to use your brain to figure out what is where and what to say to each npc. Nowadays ,some mmorpg go as far as given markers on npc .All are about clicking a text which can not go wrong(unless you are really brain dead that is).The even tell you what you need to kill,where and how many . And yet i seen people have trouble with this quests. They don't even make you think or reason anymore. However,while it might be a period of dumb down verions of mmorpg it is good for newcomers since it brings them into the genre gently. Someone said ah this games cater for the casuals.Using your brain to figure out something has little to do with casual play.
I agree. I almost feel like im being babied along a chore than going on an adventure.
Originally posted by Sarnath Huh? I must be missing something here... Wasting time being bored out of your mind traveling is a GOOD thing? Large XP penalties that can days to work off is a GOOD thing? Dying through no fault of your own is a GOOD thing? Being a target for griefers is a GOOD thing? I see folk "recalling the g ood old days" about EQ1. I played in EQ before Kunark and in no way do I miss it. Spending my down time looking at my spellbook while my mana regen'd was NOT fun. Downtime is what makes a game boring, not enjoyable.
This mindset is what perpetuates the short-sightedness of the MMORPG community. All most players want is fun right here, right now, with no waiting and no penalties associated with failure. They want to win win win now now now.
Then they ALL sit and wonder why the game is boring a month or two later...
Guys, let me sum this up in a way everyone can understand. Consider your favorite RTS game, like Starcraft, Age of Empires, or even Civilization. Most of these games have cheats you can enable that make you invincible, have infinite money, or enable your units to move a lot faster. Is it fun to play these games with all of the cheats turned on? Hell yeah!... for about fifteen minutes. Then you get bored and turn them off or move on to another game. Why does it get boring? You're doing the exact same thing you do with the cheats off, there's just no challenge. Without risks, there are no real rewards. Without downtime, the uptime loses its luster. Without having to actually travel to get somewhere, you're not on a "journey," you're on a "job."
I'm not saying MMORPGs need to become tedious routines of headache tasks, but the more we neuter them by removing all of the challenge, downtime, and traveling, the faster you're going to get sick of them.
Originally posted by theBLANG Death penalties are getting more lax, more restrictions are being put in place to keep griefers from causing any trouble, very quick transportation is allowing for people to travel accross the world in minutes.
It sure sounds like you want to waste everyones time. I'm sure there is a game out there you can grief other players in, just keep looking. Thankfully, the new MMOs are not allowing players to ruin the experience of each other.
You make it sound as if I support griefing. The only waste of time is playing a game that babies one along and loses any sense of real adventure and risk.
I kind of dissagree with the above assumptions, and still the thought of "different strokes for different folks come to mind......
Obviously wow has the numbers and the sales, and every other company would have loved to make the kind of splash wow made
We are living in a different world then when eq 1 was made.... Many of us have aged since then.
Not all gamers are 16- 18 that have massive ammounts of time on there hands for "camping", traveling, or mind numbing waiting, for "LFG" or upteen accounts & bots
The newer markets, that included "causal players" have made there own splash and found their place within the market , having a game that caters to causal players obviousl rang sweet with sales and numbers to lots of folks.
I would hate for the market to only consist of games that feel like i am being "punished when i play"
I would also hate to think that no small game company would ever want again to take risks and offer us as gamers something different........
THe idea of dummied down seems to me to be a knee jerk reaction of how fun looking for days for this mob, or camping this one mob spawn .... Esepcaily when in eq 2 in ooc you continual hear "Where is this that or the other"................
I think a good mix of accomplishing something when you get on, feeling as if you made some progress, and feel repitition to the mind numbing degree is part of what makes folks leave or stay with a game.
I will never understand the gamer that likes things to be so hard painful, and like being punished as fun....
But then when i log on i expect to enjoy my time on. I stay with games that I enjoy, and go oh well not for me on ones that i left after a short while.......................
Originally posted by Groucho Really these things that you mention were timesinks, nothing more. A way for the game companies to keep players "chasing the carrot" and stretch out the subscription as long as possible. Good riddance, I say.
So you would rather everything be easy, and relativly risk free rather than have to face consequences for your actions. The notion that these things are a way for game companies to keep players subscribed is rather absurd.
There are fun challenges and then there are tedious challenges.
Playing basketball against an evenly matched team is a fun challenge.
Looking for a parking spot in manhattan is a tedious challenge. And definitely not fun at all.
Currently, stuff like long travel time and downtime is tedious. So the MMO dev can choose to either eliminate long travel time, or find a way to make a tedious thing fun. Which is easier? To focus on elements that people already enjoy, or to waste time miring people in realism?
I don't want the game to be easy. But stuff like downtime and long travel time is more a challenge to my patience than a challenge to my gaming ability and intelligence.
Good challenges are more intelligent game AI, puzzles, politics, etc etc, or in a PvP game, other players.
Games are not my life. Why should there be both a downtime and uptime in an MMO? I already have stuff like doing bills, chores, or other day to day crap in real life. Thats my downtime. I want my game to be entertainment.
Originally posted by zoey121 I kind of dissagree with the above assumptions, and still the thought of "different strokes for different folks come to mind...... Obviously wow has the numbers and the sales, and every other company would have loved to make the kind of splash wow made
We are living in a different world then when eq 1 was made.... Many of us have aged since then. Not all gamers are 16- 18 that have massive ammounts of time on there hands for "camping", traveling, or mind numbing waiting, for "LFG" or upteen accounts & bots The newer markets, that included "causal players" have made there own splash and found their place within the market , having a game that caters to causal players obviousl rang sweet with sales and numbers to lots of folks. I would hate for the market to only consist of games that feel like i am being "punished when i play" I would also hate to think that no small game company would ever want again to take risks and offer us as gamers something different........ THe idea of dummied down seems to me to be a knee jerk reaction of how fun looking for days for this mob, or camping this one mob spawn .... Esepcaily when in eq 2 in ooc you continual hear "Where is this that or the other"................ I think a good mix of accomplishing something when you get on, feeling as if you made some progress, and feel repitition to the mind numbing degree is part of what makes folks leave or stay with a game. I will never understand the gamer that likes things to be so hard painful, and like being punished as fun.... But then when i log on i expect to enjoy my time on. I stay with games that I enjoy, and go oh well not for me on ones that i left after a short while.......................
Again, like so many, you are suggesting that I am advocating the extreme. I just want a nice balance; not a game so difficult and tedious it becomes a chore, and not a game that babies me to the point of boredom.
Originally posted by Genjing There are fun challenges and then there are tedious challenges. Playing basketball against an evenly matched team is a fun challenge. Looking for a parking spot in manhattan is a tedious challenge. And definitely not fun at all. Currently, stuff like long travel time and downtime is tedious. So the MMO dev can choose to either eliminate long travel time, or find a way to make a tedious thing fun. Which is easier? To focus on elements that people already enjoy, or to waste time miring people in realism? I don't want the game to be easy. But stuff like downtime and long travel time is more a challenge to my patience than a challenge to my gaming ability and intelligence. Good challenges are more intelligent game AI, puzzles, politics, etc etc, or in a PvP game, other players. Games are not my life. Why should there be both a downtime and uptime in an MMO? I already have stuff like doing bills, chores, or other day to day crap in real life. Thats my downtime. I want my game to be entertainment.
Just because long travel time is tedious does not mean you remove any travel time at all. With the graphics capable of todays hardware their are so many possiblities for fixing the boredom of travel.
Originally posted by zoey121 I kind of dissagree with the above assumptions, and still the thought of "different strokes for different folks come to mind...... Obviously wow has the numbers and the sales, and every other company would have loved to make the kind of splash wow made
We are living in a different world then when eq 1 was made.... Many of us have aged since then. Not all gamers are 16- 18 that have massive ammounts of time on there hands for "camping", traveling, or mind numbing waiting, for "LFG" or upteen accounts & bots The newer markets, that included "causal players" have made there own splash and found their place within the market , having a game that caters to causal players obviousl rang sweet with sales and numbers to lots of folks. I would hate for the market to only consist of games that feel like i am being "punished when i play" I would also hate to think that no small game company would ever want again to take risks and offer us as gamers something different........ THe idea of dummied down seems to me to be a knee jerk reaction of how fun looking for days for this mob, or camping this one mob spawn .... Esepcaily when in eq 2 in ooc you continual hear "Where is this that or the other"................ I think a good mix of accomplishing something when you get on, feeling as if you made some progress, and feel repitition to the mind numbing degree is part of what makes folks leave or stay with a game. I will never understand the gamer that likes things to be so hard painful, and like being punished as fun.... But then when i log on i expect to enjoy my time on. I stay with games that I enjoy, and go oh well not for me on ones that i left after a short while.......................
I get tired of people using the outstanding sales of WoW to make points. I know so many people who have never even heard of an MMORPG that bought WoW simply because of the name and the backing.
I noticed in your sig u stayed with daoc a long while, not sure if u realize that there are many postive changes taken place there. Server clustering seems to be working out well with first runs, theres pvp going on and loaded frontiers........
Catacombs took some of the sting from leveling, has personal instant dungons that are sweet , they changed the portal gate to mag mell makes for a bit of traveling ( i beit slow)
anyway i am still having a ball there ........
Also if you go with a new race the /level 20 is a gonner in catacombs........
i would suggest looking at a real busy population server
Last night i saw something really neat in underground forest, i saw some mobs attacking other mobs, at a certain point i was albe to take down a quest mob even though it was oj to me and had fun watching the "Daoc" movie. A surprising even occured it seemd this mob baffed i ran into the other mob they were attacking and that mob took argo off of me and i made it out safely.
any way just a thought if your bored atm and want to see the changes..........
Originally posted by theBLANG Just because long travel time is tedious does not mean you remove any travel time at all. With the graphics capable of todays hardware their are so many possiblities for fixing the boredom of travel.
I never said any travel should be completely removed... just that long travel time should be.
Take for example, what D&D Online is doing; when you leave a city, you travel overland with a red arrow, Indiana Jones style. There are still points of interest and random encounters, much like Fallout though. All it does is fast forward over the tedious part. I understand that might not be what some people are looking for in an MMO, but it suits me just fine for MMO's to take inspiration and game mechanics from single player games.
Just because long travel time is tedious does not mean you remove any travel time at all. With the graphics capable of todays hardware their are so many possiblities for fixing the boredom of travel.
I never said any travel should be completely removed... just that long travel time should be.
Take for example, what D&D Online is doing; when you leave a city, you travel overland with a red arrow, Indiana Jones style. There are still points of interest and random encounters, much like Fallout though. All it does is fast forward over the tedious part. I understand that might not be what some people are looking for in an MMO, but it suits me just fine for MMO's to take inspiration and game mechanics from single player games.
I agree with you here. The point im trying to make is that travel should not become as easy as click a stone or buy a ticket and poof you are there, as is the case with EQ2.
So you would rather everything be easy, and relativly risk free rather than have to face consequences for your actions. The notion that these things are a way for game companies to keep players subscribed is rather absurd.
I didn't get that theory out of my butt. I've heard many MMORPG developers state as much. By making it time consuming to level, you keep people playing longer. It worked for EQ, they have subscribers that have been there since launch playing the same character.
Time consuming != Challenging
Patience != Skill
I'll make no bones about the fact that I'm a casual gamer. I'm lucky if I can get an hour in a night to play. My college days where I could spend all weekend playing video games and drinking beer are long gone.
I want a game where I can log in, play, and feel like I've accomplished something. There is no way for a game to balance this need of the casual gamer with that of the hardcore gamer. And it's unfair to say that one play style is "better" than another.
Unfortunately also for the hardcore gamer, they are vastly outnumbered by casual gamers. So that's the audience that the big commericial games are going to cater to. But I think there is a strong "niche" audience out there for a good, hardcore game to be profitable if they can keep costs low enough to match the fact that they won't have a huge number of subscribers like the "big boys."
Originally posted by theBLANG So you would rather everything be easy, and relativly risk free rather than have to face consequences for your actions. The notion that these things are a way for game companies to keep players subscribed is rather absurd.
I didn't get that theory out of my butt. I've heard many MMORPG developers state as much. By making it time consuming to level, you keep people playing longer. It worked for EQ, they have subscribers that have been there since launch playing the same character.
Time consuming != Challenging
Patience != Skill
I'll make no bones about the fact that I'm a casual gamer. I'm lucky if I can get an hour in a night to play. My college days where I could spend all weekend playing video games and drinking beer are long gone.
I want a game where I can log in, play, and feel like I've accomplished something. There is no way for a game to balance this need of the casual gamer with that of the hardcore gamer. And it's unfair to say that one play style is "better" than another.
Unfortunately also for the hardcore gamer, they are vastly outnumbered by casual gamers. So that's the audience that the big commericial games are going to cater to. But I think there is a strong "niche" audience out there for a good, hardcore game to be profitable if they can keep costs low enough to match the fact that they won't have a huge number of subscribers like the "big boys."
There are more than just casual and hardcore players. In fact I think the biggest MMO audience would be those in the middle.
the lower the complexity the greater the potential audience. condiser two unique scenarios: say a lone developer has an idea for what he/she would consider a great game. The game could be very complex and have great depth. It might not appeal to many people, but it does appeal to him/her. Now consider how a billion-dollar company would look at the prospects of making a game. Are the guys with the corner offices concerned if the game is fun? no. accounts don't care if games are fun, they are only concerned with the figure at the bottom of the balance sheet.
Thus for the lone developer it's not about how many people the game attracts, just that it's a great game. The large comany, on the otherhand, is mainly concerned with how to maximize revenues. One way to do this is the broaden its appeal.
Here's a surefire formula: make extra spiffy graphics. Pictures on gameboxes sell games. Graphics are only skin deep, but of course you won't know that's the case until after you've already spent the 50 bucks. Death penalties frustrate people, so remove them. It's little wonder that the penalties for death are lower with successive generations of MMOs. Also, by removing the complexity of things like the economy and skills we can make it more attractive to even more players! Again we aren't going for a great game here, we just want to maximize our return on investment. Be sure to thank Vivendi, SOE, EA, and the like next time you see them.
They that can give up essential liberty for temporary safetey deserve neither. -- Ben Franklin If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. -- Milton Berle
I really miss games where I can place my stats where I want them, not just use equips to do so. If Im gonna make an archer that does absolutely amazing dmg in parties, I dont want points put into healthstaminawatever. I want pure dexagi. If I want a mage that can solo really well, I wanna be able to put points into intelligence and health.
You really lose that with oversimplification, then you get every person of the same class and lvl who is in no way original, except MAYBE equips. I dont like it when that happens, no matter wat I do, how much money I spend, how much I suffer trying to lvl solo so that when I party I will totally rock other classes of my lvl away, etc.. Ill still just be a "Lvl Insert Class Here". *sigh*
Comments
-M-A-X--L-V-L--C-H-A-R-S-
-EQ: Exxar - 60 Wizard (Karana)
Quit - Scars of Velious
-DAOC: Sethir - 50 Bard (Percival)
Quit - Foundations
This mindset is what perpetuates the short-sightedness of the MMORPG community. All most players want is fun right here, right now, with no waiting and no penalties associated with failure. They want to win win win now now now.
Then they ALL sit and wonder why the game is boring a month or two later...
Guys, let me sum this up in a way everyone can understand. Consider your favorite RTS game, like Starcraft, Age of Empires, or even Civilization. Most of these games have cheats you can enable that make you invincible, have infinite money, or enable your units to move a lot faster. Is it fun to play these games with all of the cheats turned on? Hell yeah!... for about fifteen minutes. Then you get bored and turn them off or move on to another game. Why does it get boring? You're doing the exact same thing you do with the cheats off, there's just no challenge. Without risks, there are no real rewards. Without downtime, the uptime loses its luster. Without having to actually travel to get somewhere, you're not on a "journey," you're on a "job."
I'm not saying MMORPGs need to become tedious routines of headache tasks, but the more we neuter them by removing all of the challenge, downtime, and traveling, the faster you're going to get sick of them.
Excellent post!
-M-A-X--L-V-L--C-H-A-R-S-
-EQ: Exxar - 60 Wizard (Karana)
Quit - Scars of Velious
-DAOC: Sethir - 50 Bard (Percival)
Quit - Foundations
It sure sounds like you want to waste everyones time. I'm sure there is a game out there you can grief other players in, just keep looking. Thankfully, the new MMOs are not allowing players to ruin the experience of each other.
You make it sound as if I support griefing. The only waste of time is playing a game that babies one along and loses any sense of real adventure and risk.
-M-A-X--L-V-L--C-H-A-R-S-
-EQ: Exxar - 60 Wizard (Karana)
Quit - Scars of Velious
-DAOC: Sethir - 50 Bard (Percival)
Quit - Foundations
I kind of dissagree with the above assumptions, and still the thought of "different strokes for different folks come to mind......
Obviously wow has the numbers and the sales, and every other company would have loved to make the kind of splash wow made
We are living in a different world then when eq 1 was made.... Many of us have aged since then.
Not all gamers are 16- 18 that have massive ammounts of time on there hands for "camping", traveling, or mind numbing waiting, for "LFG" or upteen accounts & bots
The newer markets, that included "causal players" have made there own splash and found their place within the market , having a game that caters to causal players obviousl rang sweet with sales and numbers to lots of folks.
I would hate for the market to only consist of games that feel like i am being "punished when i play"
I would also hate to think that no small game company would ever want again to take risks and offer us as gamers something different........
THe idea of dummied down seems to me to be a knee jerk reaction of how fun looking for days for this mob, or camping this one mob spawn .... Esepcaily when in eq 2 in ooc you continual hear "Where is this that or the other"................
I think a good mix of accomplishing something when you get on, feeling as if you made some progress, and feel repitition to the mind numbing degree is part of what makes folks leave or stay with a game.
I will never understand the gamer that likes things to be so hard painful, and like being punished as fun....
But then when i log on i expect to enjoy my time on. I stay with games that I enjoy, and go oh well not for me on ones that i left after a short while.......................
-M-A-X--L-V-L--C-H-A-R-S-
-EQ: Exxar - 60 Wizard (Karana)
Quit - Scars of Velious
-DAOC: Sethir - 50 Bard (Percival)
Quit - Foundations
There are fun challenges and then there are tedious challenges.
Playing basketball against an evenly matched team is a fun challenge.
Looking for a parking spot in manhattan is a tedious challenge. And definitely not fun at all.
Currently, stuff like long travel time and downtime is tedious. So the MMO dev can choose to either eliminate long travel time, or find a way to make a tedious thing fun. Which is easier? To focus on elements that people already enjoy, or to waste time miring people in realism?
I don't want the game to be easy. But stuff like downtime and long travel time is more a challenge to my patience than a challenge to my gaming ability and intelligence.
Good challenges are more intelligent game AI, puzzles, politics, etc etc, or in a PvP game, other players.
Games are not my life. Why should there be both a downtime and uptime in an MMO? I already have stuff like doing bills, chores, or other day to day crap in real life. Thats my downtime. I want my game to be entertainment.
-M-A-X--L-V-L--C-H-A-R-S-
-EQ: Exxar - 60 Wizard (Karana)
Quit - Scars of Velious
-DAOC: Sethir - 50 Bard (Percival)
Quit - Foundations
-M-A-X--L-V-L--C-H-A-R-S-
-EQ: Exxar - 60 Wizard (Karana)
Quit - Scars of Velious
-DAOC: Sethir - 50 Bard (Percival)
Quit - Foundations
-M-A-X--L-V-L--C-H-A-R-S-
-EQ: Exxar - 60 Wizard (Karana)
Quit - Scars of Velious
-DAOC: Sethir - 50 Bard (Percival)
Quit - Foundations
Theblang,
I noticed in your sig u stayed with daoc a long while, not sure if u realize that there are many postive changes taken place there. Server clustering seems to be working out well with first runs, theres pvp going on and loaded frontiers........
Catacombs took some of the sting from leveling, has personal instant dungons that are sweet , they changed the portal gate to mag mell makes for a bit of traveling ( i beit slow)
anyway i am still having a ball there ........
Also if you go with a new race the /level 20 is a gonner in catacombs........
i would suggest looking at a real busy population server
Last night i saw something really neat in underground forest, i saw some mobs attacking other mobs, at a certain point i was albe to take down a quest mob even though it was oj to me and had fun watching the "Daoc" movie. A surprising even occured it seemd this mob baffed i ran into the other mob they were attacking and that mob took argo off of me and i made it out safely.
any way just a thought if your bored atm and want to see the changes..........
I never said any travel should be completely removed... just that long travel time should be.
Take for example, what D&D Online is doing; when you leave a city, you travel overland with a red arrow, Indiana Jones style. There are still points of interest and random encounters, much like Fallout though. All it does is fast forward over the tedious part. I understand that might not be what some people are looking for in an MMO, but it suits me just fine for MMO's to take inspiration and game mechanics from single player games.
I never said any travel should be completely removed... just that long travel time should be.
Take for example, what D&D Online is doing; when you leave a city, you travel overland with a red arrow, Indiana Jones style. There are still points of interest and random encounters, much like Fallout though. All it does is fast forward over the tedious part. I understand that might not be what some people are looking for in an MMO, but it suits me just fine for MMO's to take inspiration and game mechanics from single player games.
I agree with you here. The point im trying to make is that travel should not become as easy as click a stone or buy a ticket and poof you are there, as is the case with EQ2.
-M-A-X--L-V-L--C-H-A-R-S-
-EQ: Exxar - 60 Wizard (Karana)
Quit - Scars of Velious
-DAOC: Sethir - 50 Bard (Percival)
Quit - Foundations
I didn't get that theory out of my butt. I've heard many MMORPG developers state as much. By making it time consuming to level, you keep people playing longer. It worked for EQ, they have subscribers that have been there since launch playing the same character.
Time consuming != Challenging
Patience != Skill
I'll make no bones about the fact that I'm a casual gamer. I'm lucky if I can get an hour in a night to play. My college days where I could spend all weekend playing video games and drinking beer are long gone.
I want a game where I can log in, play, and feel like I've accomplished something. There is no way for a game to balance this need of the casual gamer with that of the hardcore gamer. And it's unfair to say that one play style is "better" than another.
Unfortunately also for the hardcore gamer, they are vastly outnumbered by casual gamers. So that's the audience that the big commericial games are going to cater to. But I think there is a strong "niche" audience out there for a good, hardcore game to be profitable if they can keep costs low enough to match the fact that they won't have a huge number of subscribers like the "big boys."
I didn't get that theory out of my butt. I've heard many MMORPG developers state as much. By making it time consuming to level, you keep people playing longer. It worked for EQ, they have subscribers that have been there since launch playing the same character.
Time consuming != Challenging
Patience != Skill
I'll make no bones about the fact that I'm a casual gamer. I'm lucky if I can get an hour in a night to play. My college days where I could spend all weekend playing video games and drinking beer are long gone.
I want a game where I can log in, play, and feel like I've accomplished something. There is no way for a game to balance this need of the casual gamer with that of the hardcore gamer. And it's unfair to say that one play style is "better" than another.
Unfortunately also for the hardcore gamer, they are vastly outnumbered by casual gamers. So that's the audience that the big commericial games are going to cater to. But I think there is a strong "niche" audience out there for a good, hardcore game to be profitable if they can keep costs low enough to match the fact that they won't have a huge number of subscribers like the "big boys."
There are more than just casual and hardcore players. In fact I think the biggest MMO audience would be those in the middle.
-M-A-X--L-V-L--C-H-A-R-S-
-EQ: Exxar - 60 Wizard (Karana)
Quit - Scars of Velious
-DAOC: Sethir - 50 Bard (Percival)
Quit - Foundations
Much has been made of the comparision with early EQ and new games.
Check here:
http://www.vanguardsoh.com/faq.php?eid=16&faqid=16&ptext=Dealing+with+issues+%26+problems+plaguing+earlier+MMOG%27s
or: http://www.vanguardsoh.com/faq.php
You know who Brad McQuaid is right?
That's what he and his team think, and they say it better than most people in this thread.
the lower the complexity the greater the potential audience. condiser two unique scenarios: say a lone developer has an idea for what he/she would consider a great game. The game could be very complex and have great depth. It might not appeal to many people, but it does appeal to him/her. Now consider how a billion-dollar company would look at the prospects of making a game. Are the guys with the corner offices concerned if the game is fun? no. accounts don't care if games are fun, they are only concerned with the figure at the bottom of the balance sheet.
Thus for the lone developer it's not about how many people the game attracts, just that it's a great game. The large comany, on the otherhand, is mainly concerned with how to maximize revenues. One way to do this is the broaden its appeal.
Here's a surefire formula: make extra spiffy graphics. Pictures on gameboxes sell games. Graphics are only skin deep, but of course you won't know that's the case until after you've already spent the 50 bucks. Death penalties frustrate people, so remove them. It's little wonder that the penalties for death are lower with successive generations of MMOs. Also, by removing the complexity of things like the economy and skills we can make it more attractive to even more players! Again we aren't going for a great game here, we just want to maximize our return on investment. Be sure to thank Vivendi, SOE, EA, and the like next time you see them.
www.TheChippedDagger.com My 90-day 2D Java MMORPG project
They that can give up essential liberty for temporary safetey deserve neither. -- Ben Franklin
If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. -- Milton Berle
I really miss games where I can place my stats where I want them, not just use equips to do so. If Im gonna make an archer that does absolutely amazing dmg in parties, I dont want points put into healthstaminawatever. I want pure dexagi. If I want a mage that can solo really well, I wanna be able to put points into intelligence and health.
You really lose that with oversimplification, then you get every person of the same class and lvl who is in no way original, except MAYBE equips. I dont like it when that happens, no matter wat I do, how much money I spend, how much I suffer trying to lvl solo so that when I party I will totally rock other classes of my lvl away, etc.. Ill still just be a "Lvl Insert Class Here". *sigh*