I want seamless world with no load screens, similar to old non "Phased" wow.
Dynamic quests that really matter were what you do physically changes the faction/ person you are doing the quest for. (i.e. Helping a space pirate faction conquer and obtain a space station. Then the opposing faction has a quest to take it back. Or the shop selling mana potions was robbed. So noone can buy potions untill someone either gets them back or sells a large quantity to the shop owner.
I want to play a game that doesn't remind me that I'm playing a game. I want to feel like a participant, not a migrator. Let me do things that I haven't already been doing for over 5 years. I want unpredictability and can accept a degree of unbalance.
What do the PvE community want in terms of gameplay from a MMO, that doesn't include Crafting?
In short something similar to SWG but with today's tech, hugh world or worlds/planets to explore, interdependency which should be optional as for those who don't want to rely on others still should find enjoyable things to do ingame. Plenty of none-combat professions
Because over the months I have seen countless complaining about the bordom of PvE in MMOs over the years.
so what's the solution to improving PvE. What is fun about it?
Hard to tell since fun is subjective, but bringing many different game styles together into a MMORPG is what I felt was the strenght of this genre. Untill they started to limit this genre that has became mostly just a online combat game.
What makes PvE dull to you?
As said with most of today's MMO's seem to be merly online combat games with a minor taste of rpg slapped on it.
Because over the months I have seen countless complaining about the bordom of PvE in MMOs over the years.
One of the problems specific to the combat is a logical problem connected to solo questing. If you have a solo quest path that all the classes follow then
1) Each fight must be beatable by the weakest solo combat class.
2) None of the tasks involved in the quest can *require* a class skill that other classes don't have.
The standard response to this logical problem has been making the classes more and more similar so there's only very little difference between their solo combat power. It has also led to most class differences unrelated to combat being dropped as they are now redundant e.g. the rogue keeps backstab and stealth but has lost climb, jump, lockpick, find traps etc. However doing this (imo) reduces replayability and therefore game longevity as classes having distinct strengths, weaknesses and playstyles encourages alting.
A second response has been to try and distract the player from how faceroll it is by lots of flashing lights, rotations and big numbers but that doesn't work on the older crowd.
#
If you want distinctive classes and less face-roll then the above logical problem has some potential solutions
#
1) Drop questing and go back to grouped mob-grinding. This has lots of problems of it's own.
2) Grouped questing - this has the same problems as above except magnified ten times by people wanting other players to be on the exact same stage of the group-quest as them.
( Rifts / Dynamic Events / Public Quests etc are moves in this direction trying to combine 1) and 2) without the problems that usually go with them. They are definitely an improvement. However as long as a single shared main solo quest path remains the bulk of exp then the original logical problem remains.)
3) Separate solo quest paths designed around each class so it can include class abilities and make the fights suit the class e.g. thieves have to avoid guards rather than fight them, healer type priests have npc tank pets they need to keep alive rather than fight themselves. The obvious problem with this is the amount of work it would take to create.
#
Some other options which might help which i haven't seen as much
4) Games seem to have this dichotomy on group size: it's either one person or a full group. A "group" game could be designed around a group of two players as the baseline rather than 5-6 with a full group only being needed for the toughest fights. This would make soloing still viable especially on the good soloing classes while minimizing LFG problems.
5) Group-quests could be designed around the idea of a quester and companions i.e. one player has the quest and any other player who groups with them becomes a companion on the quest. Companion rewards would be set specifically and designed for synergy e.g. a priest gets a quest from his temple with a mace as the quest reward and exp and temple faction as the companion reward. Anyone could group with him to get the companion reward but a fighter might have the most incentive because the healing buffs you could buy from the temple with the faction points might be most useful for a fighter.
6) Tailored solo quests for significant class abilities e.g. the druid shapechanging spells in wow. So instead of having an entire quest chain from 1-50 for each class you have a certain number of class-specific signature quests which are tailored to the class and you focus on making the signature quests as memorable as possible.
7) Gating tailored quest chains using factions. You don't necessarily need tailored solo quests for each class from level 1 to maxlevel. If different races in the game have their version of a class with specific class skills e.g. theif, assassin, barbarian class etc each of which include a certain type of class-specific skills like climbing, stealth etc then you can have factions providing tailored solo quests for multiple classes with pre-requisites for joining i.e. only certain mage classes can join x faction, only certain rogue classes can join faction y etc. Other players could still potentially do those quests as companions but gating would make sure the quester would have any necessary abilities.
Originally posted by Cheboygan a huge world to explore - and incentive rewards to do so
This pretty much nails it...A world full of risk and reward and consequences for our actions.....What alot of the newer players don't realize is just how much fun MMOs were before questing became the main goal......When there was no hand holding, no symbols over NPCs heads, and no end game the genre was really much different......Its too bad so much of the RPG has gone out of the genre.
I recently returned to UO and had forgotten how exhilarating running from reapers, liches, trolls, ogres, etc can be(or that you can!) and the fear of losing your beginner armour and weapon/spellbook when you do die and can't find a wandering healer or worse yet do but can't remember where your body is!
OT, the quote pretty much sums it up for me too, as long as that huge uninstanced world includes customizable(within a reasonable preset in keeping with the game's environment be it primeval, medieval, space, modern or whatever) housing without stingy storage(think UO with it's containers), the ability to tame and train pretty much any wild creature and most definitely fun fishing where you have the chance to catch a bottle with a treasure map or a fish/creature that has swallowed some treasure.
Oh and those dungeons don't all have to have dangerous beasts in them, do they? Why not have them lead to jumping puzzles that in turn lead to some cool spot that you can build a home in or a huge inlet where you can launch boats etc.... which leads me to the next thing it needs imo, runes like UO(where you also need to the skill to mark them) with portals only between major centres. That way people will still group in the cities sure, but being able to explore and find amazing spots to play in or bring friends to, to make your own village with, will help bring community back to the rpger's that have been left in the offal of pvpers with their need to rule the whole world.
That brings me back to crafting, it must be viable crafting or why bother. Loot drops are fine but they should be 85% mats and 15% "other" items like rares, armour, weapons, body pieces, gold pouches from victims, etc. As for how complicated crafting must be, do you really need to find special recipes or the npcs that can teach you them after earning their trust?
In the end, what I would like is a world where the whole world is in it together against evil forces instead of warring factions that just end up trying to enslave the rest of the world to suit their own ends. As we know, that never ends well.
The features I listed above, I expect to be able to solo or duo. I need things that I can do on my own or with my husband. I've tried to like Vanguard because I really wanted to like this game, and have gone back to make further attempts. I didn't feel there were many zone options at all when I hit the 20's. I struggled to find mobs I could take on solo and was told I needed to get the armor from some quest line (I forget what it's called) killing mobs in a dungeon. My husband and I tried to do it, but obviously it was meant for a group. I want to explore a dungeon on my own just to see neat places. If there's not stuff for us to duo comfortably, then we move on. It's definitely a group-oriented game and I guess I should have clarified my aversion to that. And without the means to get gear, I was getting weaker as I leveled.
It has housing, but it was out of my reach. I never could afford it and didn't like how inaccessible it is.
Didn't see any fun features that created interactions with players. No music system, no accessible housing, no pubs or med centers. I didn't consider forced grouping a positive interaction (for me) so didn't include it in the list.
The one thing did like, though, were the classes. They were unique and not what you typically see. And you don't have a ridiculous number of skills on the bar, so you can enjoy the surroundings a bit more.
Probably the closest thing to what I listed (from my perspective) would be a combination of SWG and DAOC's co-op server pve. SWG had the social features. DAOC had a huge variety of incredibly fun classes, tons of dungeons and leveling options (EQ1 had awesome huge dungeons as well) most all that could be done solo or duo, a large seamless world to roam. And I loved housing in both these games as you could set up a shop and sell your wares out of them.
It does depend on which class you choose to play in VG. I found that I could do most small group and even some full group content solo on a paladin.
However, just this alone, the fact that there is so much group content in the game, means it is hard to get much of anywhere in VG with complete freedom of choice past a certain point and unfortunately as I already stated there is still a population problem.
In that sense, WoW has it right with complete freedom of choice of what class you play and how you play it. All classes are good in solo/group/PvP/etc.
My dream game would incorporate elements of SWG, EVE, WoW, and EQ2. There might be a themepark element but the overall game would be a sandbox.
Explore: Give me a huge world with random npcs, events and treasures. Also make exploration matter.
Optimize: I love to build a character, a skill or an item especially if I have to optimize the process to my liking.
Think: Puzzles are fun. Those puzzles in TSW were awesome. They kept me in the game, made me search for answers and made my playing time worthwhile.
Dodge: Action oriented combat like in TERA or vindictus makes fighting addictive. I have played action oriented but otherwise crappy games for a far longer time than AAA games like GW2 just because the combat was actually fun.
--- Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Meaning: I don't care if the game follows the Sandbox Party or the Themepark Party, as long as there is plenty of variety of things to do. I don't care if that variety requires me to reach a cap, or requres me to craft 10000 useless items before I can start making some good ones. I don't care if I have to tab-target or shooter-target. I could give a rats arse if the action takes place in the open world, or in an instance. I don't care if I have to crawl for hours through the tundra to recover my corpse and loot, or if a magic fairy returns me instantly to life and makes me dinner.
And no, I don't think "system X" is the "must have" system I just can't live without, please stop telling me it is.
Ideologues = driving me nuts.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Rather than the star trek holodeck that many are requesting here, I just want a good story and char. Other than swtor I don't see an mmo that fulfill that need.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
how to make content drag out longer and save money:
make an insanely hard dungeon/raid that can only be cleared by insane gear or exploits. then gradually nerf it until every noob and his mother can clear it.
Comments
I want seamless world with no load screens, similar to old non "Phased" wow.
Dynamic quests that really matter were what you do physically changes the faction/ person you are doing the quest for. (i.e. Helping a space pirate faction conquer and obtain a space station. Then the opposing faction has a quest to take it back. Or the shop selling mana potions was robbed. So noone can buy potions untill someone either gets them back or sells a large quantity to the shop owner.
Also player housing that is not instanced.
Ea is like a poo fingered midas ~ShakyMo
- good fun combat with lots of interesting mechanics
- good abilities, and build variations
- good progression (level, items ...)
And no .. these things are not exclusive to MMOs.
In short something similar to SWG but with today's tech, hugh world or worlds/planets to explore, interdependency which should be optional as for those who don't want to rely on others still should find enjoyable things to do ingame. Plenty of none-combat professions
Hard to tell since fun is subjective, but bringing many different game styles together into a MMORPG is what I felt was the strenght of this genre. Untill they started to limit this genre that has became mostly just a online combat game.
As said with most of today's MMO's seem to be merly online combat games with a minor taste of rpg slapped on it.
One of the problems specific to the combat is a logical problem connected to solo questing. If you have a solo quest path that all the classes follow then
1) Each fight must be beatable by the weakest solo combat class.
2) None of the tasks involved in the quest can *require* a class skill that other classes don't have.
The standard response to this logical problem has been making the classes more and more similar so there's only very little difference between their solo combat power. It has also led to most class differences unrelated to combat being dropped as they are now redundant e.g. the rogue keeps backstab and stealth but has lost climb, jump, lockpick, find traps etc. However doing this (imo) reduces replayability and therefore game longevity as classes having distinct strengths, weaknesses and playstyles encourages alting.
A second response has been to try and distract the player from how faceroll it is by lots of flashing lights, rotations and big numbers but that doesn't work on the older crowd.
#
If you want distinctive classes and less face-roll then the above logical problem has some potential solutions
#
1) Drop questing and go back to grouped mob-grinding. This has lots of problems of it's own.
2) Grouped questing - this has the same problems as above except magnified ten times by people wanting other players to be on the exact same stage of the group-quest as them.
( Rifts / Dynamic Events / Public Quests etc are moves in this direction trying to combine 1) and 2) without the problems that usually go with them. They are definitely an improvement. However as long as a single shared main solo quest path remains the bulk of exp then the original logical problem remains.)
3) Separate solo quest paths designed around each class so it can include class abilities and make the fights suit the class e.g. thieves have to avoid guards rather than fight them, healer type priests have npc tank pets they need to keep alive rather than fight themselves. The obvious problem with this is the amount of work it would take to create.
#
Some other options which might help which i haven't seen as much
4) Games seem to have this dichotomy on group size: it's either one person or a full group. A "group" game could be designed around a group of two players as the baseline rather than 5-6 with a full group only being needed for the toughest fights. This would make soloing still viable especially on the good soloing classes while minimizing LFG problems.
5) Group-quests could be designed around the idea of a quester and companions i.e. one player has the quest and any other player who groups with them becomes a companion on the quest. Companion rewards would be set specifically and designed for synergy e.g. a priest gets a quest from his temple with a mace as the quest reward and exp and temple faction as the companion reward. Anyone could group with him to get the companion reward but a fighter might have the most incentive because the healing buffs you could buy from the temple with the faction points might be most useful for a fighter.
6) Tailored solo quests for significant class abilities e.g. the druid shapechanging spells in wow. So instead of having an entire quest chain from 1-50 for each class you have a certain number of class-specific signature quests which are tailored to the class and you focus on making the signature quests as memorable as possible.
7) Gating tailored quest chains using factions. You don't necessarily need tailored solo quests for each class from level 1 to maxlevel. If different races in the game have their version of a class with specific class skills e.g. theif, assassin, barbarian class etc each of which include a certain type of class-specific skills like climbing, stealth etc then you can have factions providing tailored solo quests for multiple classes with pre-requisites for joining i.e. only certain mage classes can join x faction, only certain rogue classes can join faction y etc. Other players could still potentially do those quests as companions but gating would make sure the quester would have any necessary abilities.
I recently returned to UO and had forgotten how exhilarating running from reapers, liches, trolls, ogres, etc can be(or that you can!) and the fear of losing your beginner armour and weapon/spellbook when you do die and can't find a wandering healer or worse yet do but can't remember where your body is!
OT, the quote pretty much sums it up for me too, as long as that huge uninstanced world includes customizable(within a reasonable preset in keeping with the game's environment be it primeval, medieval, space, modern or whatever) housing without stingy storage(think UO with it's containers), the ability to tame and train pretty much any wild creature and most definitely fun fishing where you have the chance to catch a bottle with a treasure map or a fish/creature that has swallowed some treasure.
Oh and those dungeons don't all have to have dangerous beasts in them, do they? Why not have them lead to jumping puzzles that in turn lead to some cool spot that you can build a home in or a huge inlet where you can launch boats etc.... which leads me to the next thing it needs imo, runes like UO(where you also need to the skill to mark them) with portals only between major centres. That way people will still group in the cities sure, but being able to explore and find amazing spots to play in or bring friends to, to make your own village with, will help bring community back to the rpger's that have been left in the offal of pvpers with their need to rule the whole world.
That brings me back to crafting, it must be viable crafting or why bother. Loot drops are fine but they should be 85% mats and 15% "other" items like rares, armour, weapons, body pieces, gold pouches from victims, etc. As for how complicated crafting must be, do you really need to find special recipes or the npcs that can teach you them after earning their trust?
In the end, what I would like is a world where the whole world is in it together against evil forces instead of warring factions that just end up trying to enslave the rest of the world to suit their own ends. As we know, that never ends well.
It does depend on which class you choose to play in VG. I found that I could do most small group and even some full group content solo on a paladin.
However, just this alone, the fact that there is so much group content in the game, means it is hard to get much of anywhere in VG with complete freedom of choice past a certain point and unfortunately as I already stated there is still a population problem.
In that sense, WoW has it right with complete freedom of choice of what class you play and how you play it. All classes are good in solo/group/PvP/etc.
My dream game would incorporate elements of SWG, EVE, WoW, and EQ2. There might be a themepark element but the overall game would be a sandbox.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
To explore, to optimize, to think and to dodge.
Explore: Give me a huge world with random npcs, events and treasures. Also make exploration matter.
Optimize: I love to build a character, a skill or an item especially if I have to optimize the process to my liking.
Think: Puzzles are fun. Those puzzles in TSW were awesome. They kept me in the game, made me search for answers and made my playing time worthwhile.
Dodge: Action oriented combat like in TERA or vindictus makes fighting addictive. I have played action oriented but otherwise crappy games for a far longer time than AAA games like GW2 just because the combat was actually fun.
---
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Variety over ideology.
Meaning: I don't care if the game follows the Sandbox Party or the Themepark Party, as long as there is plenty of variety of things to do. I don't care if that variety requires me to reach a cap, or requres me to craft 10000 useless items before I can start making some good ones. I don't care if I have to tab-target or shooter-target. I could give a rats arse if the action takes place in the open world, or in an instance. I don't care if I have to crawl for hours through the tundra to recover my corpse and loot, or if a magic fairy returns me instantly to life and makes me dinner.
And no, I don't think "system X" is the "must have" system I just can't live without, please stop telling me it is.
Ideologues = driving me nuts.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
they want content.
how to make content drag out longer and save money:
make an insanely hard dungeon/raid that can only be cleared by insane gear or exploits. then gradually nerf it until every noob and his mother can clear it.