Originally posted by Dullahan Originally posted by FoomerangOriginally posted by DullahanAs a whole in EQ, people were not worried about how long things took. Every day I went different places and did different things. Sometimes I pvped over a dungeon, sometimes I farmed in one zone or another. I never looked at it as a painful grind and never heard anyone complain that it was such.Point is, there were many ways to enjoy those early games and at least in EQ, none of them felt like a grind regardless of how long it took to accomplish certain things. There was simply too much variation from day to day.
You mean you could kill stuff over here or kill stuff over there? Yeah so much variety....Versus today where everything is trivial and can be accomplished mostly alone, yes it was 100x the variety. Now its just a long line of boring quests and following the path laid out for you with very few chances of dying until you hit end game roughly a week after you start the game. For you, perhaps. That's not my current experience.
I do remember and some things I miss while others not so much.
The actual use of running dungeons before max level is one thing I miss, you actually needed the gear which lasted a long time and you got plenty more XP for itthan just grinding (or questing for the few quests that games like M59 had).
Then other things were not so great, standing 8 hours spawn camping sucked, you were there with a bunch of other so it wasn't hard but it was a easy and fast way to level up.
Leveling was actually too slow in the first few MMOs so they speeded it up but the problem is that they didn't stop when they should have (somewhere in the middle between DaoC and vanilla Wow). It shouldn't take a year of hard work to get a max level character but neither should it take a few weeks of easy casual playing with zero risk.
Why does things always go from one extrem to the the other? And the annoying thing is that all western MMOs being made tend to take the same time (as it was in the early days as well).
My problem with modern MMOs is that 95% is made for the exact same group of players while the last 5% is made for the super hardcore FFA full loot PvP players but there is actually a pretty large group wanting something in between. Sure, the super casuaql players are several times larger but when every game goes for them most get slimmer picking then one aiming for the in between would get.
I always call that the pendulum swing. Baffles my mind, if developers would just come up with their adjustments, and then back it off 20%, that kind of crap wouldn't happen. Instead you always have this ping pong effect where they overnerf something and overbuff something else.
Its really simple, if everyone says "ok we need to increase this abilities damage by 20%" then right before you implement just back it off a bit, 16%, 15%, something. Problem solved.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Originally posted by HabitualFrogStomp I think levels on the whole need to go. As long as there is a number and gamers only get their nut off if they make it bigger, it's going to go this way. Remove the levels, focus on the social aspect (like SWG attempted to) and don't be scared to design games like that just because SWG failed.
As long as you have any numbers that "get better" over time you have levels.
If there is better gear than what you have you have levels.
Any type of progression is "levels".
Levels aren't the issue. Having greater disparity between players is more of "that" issue.
I like the feeling that my character has gotten stronger over time. That greater disparity is good for my experience in the game.
I completely understand and even loved that my Spellhowler in Lineage 2 was once referred to by a clannie as "the closest thing you can get to a god". It hit extremely hard at high level.
But the issue there is that it's just not sustainable AND still keep the game enticing for new players.
Hence, all the "hey, does this game have any new server" questions you will see from time to time.
And then of course they make a new server, players rise and a new crop of players will only want to play on new servers. Yet the "old servers" start getting thin.
I love leveling and would never play a game that didn't have some type of leveling. I never complain when they raise level cap in any game.
But at the same time I believe that there are other types of progression that might be healthier for games.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Ok guys, I want to tell you about this MMO (kind of RPG) Wizard101. I know you have heard that it's a kids' game, but no it's not since the latest updates.
This game's max level cap is 100. Unlike other MMORPGs you don't waste YEARS to get all the good stuff and reach level 100 and you don't lose in real life opportunities to level up. This game is a better version of WOW, if you get bored of WOW's questing, this game is better. Ok so the combat is not like all RPGs, it's more of turn based card combat, BUT it gets fun starting from levels 20-50, level 50 is where the real fun begins. I have wasted only 4 months of membership on this game and completed it fully with one of the best gear sets, pets(yes this might be one of the best pet systems in MMORPGs), Weapons and a good build. This game also has Crafting, Fishing, Gardening, Housing. These double the fun. Gardening-best snacks possible for your pet, Fishing- to sell for gold or place in your house aquarium, crafting- you can craft any type of item(my gear is currently the crafted one), housing- you can decorated your houses and publish them at house tours so others can rate it. Talking of purchases, Wizard101 is not completely F2P, after level 20 game gets boring since you have to either gear a membership or purchase the areas to continue questing. Monthly membership is only 10 bucks, sometimes they do -50% sale on your first purchase which is only 5 bucks. So i wasted 55 bucks on this game, which means 4 months of membership and crowns to get the good gear. The PvP is amazing in this game but can get on your nerves if you are not well prepared. There are 3 types of PvP. They are Practice PvP, Ranked PvP and Tournaments. Well Practice PvP is for practice. Ranked PvP is where you start getting new pvp ranks. And Tournaments are a series of matches where players can get prizes after the tournament is over. PvP ranks are not that important unless you want to look cool.There is also PvP gear which is good for levels 30- 60.There is 1v1,2v2,3v3,4v4.
There are 7 schools(classes): Life, Death, Myth, Balance,Fire, Ice, Storm. Unlike other MMORPGs the class doesn't completely determine your gameplay. It depends on your gear. For example Life school is based on healing. If you get the Jade Gear(Best Tank gear) you can be a healing tank. But Don't go Tank or healer, either with Storm or Fire they are pure dps. To get the right gear your have to farm the right dungeons(or instances). The starter gear farming dungeon is Mount Olympus where you challenge Zeus The Skyfather to a duel and get some parts of his gear with each run.
The lore in this game is just amazing. There are 2 arcs(storylines) in this game+the 3rd one will be released like 2 or 3 months and there is a bonus one which you get after finishing the 2nd arc, it's very little but you face an old foe. Unlike other MMORPGs it is not necessary to do side quests. You can normally level up without doing them.
The game has currently more than 50.000.000 players which is the half of WOW's playerbase. If you are willing to constantly play and get all the good stuff(except for PvP ranking) you will max waste 60-70 dollars. And by the way you get updates in this game like every month. Soon there will be an update which is jewel socketing to increase your gear stats they are like add-ons.Give it a try so many years have passed. And those they say that the game is for kids, you are wrong. The game is becoming much darker and there are adult players, tons of them.
Asherons Call still the best game ever made I think. But even it was ruined by the max cap crowd because that forces the devs to be more concerned about keeping all the new max crowd happy then growing the game like they did monthly.
Originally posted by HabitualFrogStomp No I don't remember any of that. I had a different experience.
Same here, as I played almost every MMO except EQ. What the OP describes is the reason I only spent a week in EQ. Repetitive grind... bleh.
Probably why the OP also made the comment about today's younger generations being ADD, thus needing the instant gratification of current MMO's. You lose interest because you can't maintain focus. There was nothing wrong with grinding in vanilla EQ. In fact, there was nothing wrong with vanilla EQ period. When you earned a level in EQ, it was satisfying every "DING!"
Now, getting to max level barely even phases people. Makes me wonder why developers scratch their heads trying to figure out why they can't make money. Well, maybe cause you create easy content that can be blitzed through in a week. Subscription based MMO's are failing now because you've changed the games. What took months or years back in the day, can now be done in a week or less. Seriously, it's not that hard to figure out and if you don't stop feeding the content locust's agenda, you'll never get anywhere near profitable with an MMO.
Me not wantng to bang my head against the wall every day for few hours doesnt make me ADD, unable to keep focus.
The "real" MMO failed when much more enjoyable alternative appeared and everyone jumped ship from "real" MMO.
Yeah, farming same pixies for 6 weeks few hours a day. Those were the days. not
Actually, the grind in EQ was more focused on rare drops than leveling. You literally earned your gear for a change, instead of it being handed to you every level by picking berries for a lazy farmer. No worries, I understand the need for MMO's that have zero difficulty in terms of gear and leveling. There are all kinds of gamers out there, but there is a lack of subscription based long term MMO's at the moment. If it's a niche society, so be it. It would be nice to get at least one MMO similar to vanilla EQ to actually launch.
I literally earn my living. If i literally want to earn stuff id do it in RL.
Im not in market of paying for a job. Thats why those games are gone. Pretty much noone is.
The problem with mmo's is that the early areas become useless over time. As the games progress, you get new zones, items, cities ect ect and the older places stay the same. When a new player starts the game or even a vet starts a new toon, they are born into an old game area where there are very few people to play with and nothing to work towards. Devs put you on a fast track to the newer content for that reason. The smart thing to do would be to make the old content worth replaying instead of constantly trying to come up with something new all the time<< you can put out a new zone every day of the week and the content locasts will devour it within a few days and cry for more.
Originally posted by damond5031 The problem with mmo's is that the early areas become useless over time. As the games progress, you get new zones, items, cities ect ect and the older places stay the same. When a new player starts the game or even a vet starts a new toon, they are born into an old game area where there are very few people to play with and nothing to work towards. Devs put you on a fast track to the newer content for that reason. The smart thing to do would be to make the old content worth replaying instead of constantly trying to come up with something new all the time<< you can put out a new zone every day of the week and the content locasts will devour it within a few days and cry for more.
Try GW2.
Of course, people like OP dont care about abything but little arbitrary number beside their char name, so they dont like that.
The "real" MMO failed when much more enjoyable alternative appeared and everyone jumped ship from "real" MMO.
The real MMO's still have at least 50% of their membership after a decade or more. They have not become less popular, they simply failed to attract the instant gratification players that you see swarming from game to game.
You cannot succeed in the long term by appealing to the instant gratification crowd, all you can do is make a money grab and cash in before they move on to the next game. A lot of publishers are aware of this, and games are not being designed for long-term players. They are literally designing around the 2-3 month cash grab.
Even if that was true (and its not lol, random nimber is random number)
WoW has 100000% of their membership after 10 years (and yes we know wows numbers)
AND large part of those 100000% are exact same players that yours 50%.
You were sayin?
So WOW has 540 million players? news to me...
Since were throwing arbitrary numbers around....why not?
I remember the days, it is what drew me into the genre.
Was sick of playing offline rpgs and them ending all the time, or running out of things to do after a week. When I first walked into the mmo scene the biggest draw to me was I could not complete it. I could play for 40hrs a week for years and never run out of ways to progress my character. EQ was great... then FFXI came along and stole my life for 10yrs, 20,000+hrs of non-afk gameplay put into that game (And I still was not even near finished with everything).
I do not have that playtime anymore, but even at 25hrs a week now I can finish almost all the weekly content in a mmo in about a day to 2 max everyweek. I can get a max level Job/Character in 2-3 days normally. In almost every mmo out there now I could start a new character and be able to do the top tier endgame within a month, this use to take years. I am a content locust as people say.... or as you can call it what was the norm for a mmo player back in the day.
This is one of the reasons why I feel the p2p model is dying. Everything is ultra watered down now, the goal has shifted to remove the grind, which is required to have unlimited gameplay. We went from a genre with 1000s of hours of content a week you could do to a 6hr/week tiered raiding system of the linear themepark. How can the devs keep up with people like me when I can complete content that is taking 6 months to develop in 1-3 weeks. IN order for a game to be worth a sub now... they would need to launch a full scale content patch almost bi-weekly to monthly to keep up with the most hardcore playerbase. Obviously that is beyond the capabilities of any game company. But still why would I want to pay $15/month for 8days worth of content? that should cost me $4.25. P2P MMOs today are a ripoff.
MMOs honestly are not different then offline games now. You play through it, then toss it aside and move to the next one. I do not want to do this... but the genre is forcing me to do it. The mmo genre has not evolved... it devolved into a console style genre. I mean come on... skyrim launched with more gameplay then most mmos do now days.
Yeah I agree, and it's not even about the money, I'd pay $50 a month to have those fun experiences again.
As a whole in EQ, people were not worried about how long things took. Every day I went different places and did different things. Sometimes I pvped over a dungeon, sometimes I farmed in one zone or another. I never looked at it as a painful grind and never heard anyone complain that it was such.
Point is, there were many ways to enjoy those early games and at least in EQ, none of them felt like a grind regardless of how long it took to accomplish certain things. There was simply too much variation from day to day.
You mean you could kill stuff over here or kill stuff over there? Yeah so much variety....
Duh, you wanted to kill stuff over here, btu if campspot was "taken" you would throw some verbal abusment around and had to go "over there"
Except you can't speak for all of us, only yourself. I loved these old MMOs very much (still do).
The "gameplay" was at least half made up of the social interaction with the world being the backdrop for that. For me, corpse runs, delevelling, no instant travel without the help of key classes - these were things that made the game difficult but also provided opportunities to build in game friendships (as in, better have a cleric to rez you or a necro to summon your corpse from down in that brutal dungeon you just wiped in).
Right, I only speak for myself. The money spoke far louder and for far more players, when WOW released and provided a MMORPG more distinctly more gameplay-focused.
Social interactions can be an enjoyable part of games, but they're not gameplay. A chatroom isn't gameplay. Only decisions related to game rules are gameplay.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
People in this thread, and others like it, amuse the hell out of me.
"What!?. You dont enjoy standing in one spot killing the same mob over and over and over again several hours a day every day for a month. You MUST be some kid with ADD!"
Hate to break it to you, but very few MMO players actually enjoyed that aspect of MMOs. There was a lot to love about some of the games, but the repetition was not one of them. It was probably one of the biggest factors about the games themselves preventing the genre from becoming more than a niche at the time. The average person said "You want me to buy your game, and pay you $15 a month every month, to stand around and keep killing the same thing over and over again? That doesnt sound fun at all..."
Once that started to change and people were given things like more story driven content and quests / objectives, more diverse types of content, etc as they were used to in single player games, but online with other people, thats when the genre started really growing.
Unfortunately, the genre hasnt evolved much since then and has become stagnant. Aside from a few minor tweaks to the systems, nearly every game just follows the same old formula (follow a bunch of extremely easy quests to level cap, grind the same dungeon over and over) as the rest and they have stopped trying to implement cool new features / mechanics that have sprung up in single player games. They improved things, then just said "Good enough" and never continued adding to it.
There have been some amazing games in the past decade that had features / content types which would have been perfect to incorporate into the MMO genre and possibly even created whole new sub-genres, but instead the developers keep pumping out the same thing wrapped in a new skin every time. So now we are once again stuck with the same type of repetition only it's grinding the same dungeon over and over instead of just a single mob or group of mobs.
THAT is the problem with MMOs in recent years. Not that they didnt cling to an even more outdated feature (endlessly grinding mobs) which would have bored the crap out of anyone besides a few hundred people who cant stop whining about it, but that they replaced it with one thing and then just left it that way instead of continuing to improve and add even more to it.
Originally posted by HabitualFrogStomp No I don't remember any of that. I had a different experience.
Same here, as I played almost every MMO except EQ. What the OP describes is the reason I only spent a week in EQ. Repetitive grind... bleh.
Probably why the OP also made the comment about today's younger generations being ADD, thus needing the instant gratification of current MMO's. You lose interest because you can't maintain focus. There was nothing wrong with grinding in vanilla EQ. In fact, there was nothing wrong with vanilla EQ period. When you earned a level in EQ, it was satisfying every "DING!"
Now, getting to max level barely even phases people. Makes me wonder why developers scratch their heads trying to figure out why they can't make money. Well, maybe cause you create easy content that can be blitzed through in a week. Subscription based MMO's are failing now because you've changed the games. What took months or years back in the day, can now be done in a week or less. Seriously, it's not that hard to figure out and if you don't stop feeding the content locust's agenda, you'll never get anywhere near profitable with an MMO.
Me not wantng to bang my head against the wall every day for few hours doesnt make me ADD, unable to keep focus.
The "real" MMO failed when much more enjoyable alternative appeared and everyone jumped ship from "real" MMO.
Yeah, farming same pixies for 6 weeks few hours a day. Those were the days. not
Thank you, Malabooga. I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought that was a strange leap of logic.
Rhoklaw, your post seems to indicate you really haven't played anything outside of linear level grinds, so I'll write off your comment to just a lack of experience. While EQers were stalwartly braving the monotony of grinding to prove their manhood in a 'true' MMO. The rest of us were doing all sorts of 'instant gratification' things because of our 'younger generation ADD' (oh, those darn instant gratification kids spoiling MMOs back then!):
- building and maintaining player-run venues like
taverns
gambling halls
player cities
RP environments
fight arenas
mage towers and other SIG venues
- roleplaying, fighting and socializing in the above player-run venues
- organizing monthly meetings of the Monarchs (guild leaders) of our servers to address community issues and concerns
- organizing/joining content teams (official or player-run) to create quests, story arcs and plot characters based on official lore
- engaging in activities that require little or even zero combat such as being a dedicated crafter, fisherman, treasure hunter, baker, veterinarian, or even a rogue that does rogue things other than just backstab and hide.
So, yes, we had a different experience. For some reason the diehard EQers seem to refuse to accept that not only was there more to early MMOs than just EQ, it was a pretty diverse set of experiences.
Look, you like EQ and that's just fine. But when someone says they didn't care for it, it's a little arrogant - if not completely rude and uncalled for - to tell them that they didn't like EQ because they can't maintain focus or, worse, that if they didn't like grinding in EQ then it must be because they have a psychological disorder.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Everquest, and many of the older MMO's, were actually about the journey toward max level, instead of ''game start at max level'' like we have now.
It took months, if not years, to get max level... and part of that fun was progressivly exploring harder dunjon, killing those rare mobs for that elusive piece of gear that actually lasted more than a day... This was also a time where walkthrough / guide weren't as widespread over the internet.
Just google up EverQuest epic 1.0... any class... read the entire quest description... imagine you don't have a walkthrough next to you and actually have to figure stuff out by yourself... that was a quest ( unlike the : go kill wolves and bring me 10 pelt that we have in modern MMOs). Even if the game dosen't hold your hand, you bet the internet will.
That being said.. that era is over. no matter how hard you try, it's not comming back. WoW was an upgrade in that sense... but 10 years later, WoW still hasn'T changed, and the hundreds of WoW clones still haven't changed... it's still the same ultra-linear quest grind
I am still playing one of those games ,FFXI.It also has Epic dragon fights and was made for ALL platforms but has just now shut down the older consoles and stopped some language support.Too bad FFXI could not go on forever,that is because giant business operations need to see huge numbers or it is not viable for them as they have far too much overhead.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Originally posted by Wizardry I am still playing one of those games ,FFXI.It also has Epic dragon fights and was made for ALL platforms but has just now shut down the older consoles and stopped some language support.Too bad FFXI could not go on forever,that is because giant business operations need to see huge numbers or it is not viable for them as they have far too much overhead.
I'll be playing ffxi on my phone in the near future so maybe it will go on forever Hehe.
The more I think about it the more I realize that MMO's are just broken as a concept. And it's not the genres fault, it's not the developers or any particular games fault, it's 100% the players fault.
We expect content, I think by the current market trends we've established that the kind of games the OP is talking about are no longer attractive enough to actually make. I could be wrong, but I just don't see a revival for that kind of gameplay design. We need social community interaction for MMO's to have any sort of lifespan, yet nobody wants to talk to each other. We see dealing with other players as an inconvenience, very much like the EQ type grind. We don't want to have to wait for a group, we don't want to PVP with them unless we're pretty assured that were going to win ie. it's completely on our terms, we don't even want to stop and talk to another player, don't you dare expect me to stop, I'm going to the bank to sit semi-AFK for an hour and a half. This is how most of you play these games, and for every exception to the rule there are thousands that follow it religiously. You don't even take the time to read the god damned quests. Which is fine, if it weren't indicative of a larger problem.
The elder game is about playing the economy and doing raids or PVP, basically. But this is all isolated and disjointed because we've insisted that it be this way. If you go on a raid you do it with a handful of your closest friends and require an application and urine sample to bring anyone else along. Playing the economy consists of sitting at the AH NPC and buying stuff from noobs and reselling it at a mark up. PVP consists of jumping up and down on your rivals corpse in tea bag fashion.
Gee, no wonder you don't want to talk to anyone. You must assume everyone else is like you (they probably are).
I never played EQ but I'm sure what made it great was the community. (Like SWG or any other game that we have fond golden memories of). Unless you believe you yourself are capable of being an asset to one of those kind of communities, what makes you think anyone else is? It takes a lot of people to make it work, and make an MMO special.
Me not wantng to bang my head against the wall every day for few hours doesnt make me ADD, unable to keep focus.
The "real" MMO failed when much more enjoyable alternative appeared and everyone jumped ship from "real" MMO.
Yeah, farming same pixies for 6 weeks few hours a day. Those were the days. not
Thank you, Malabooga. I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought that was a strange leap of logic.
Rhoklaw, your post seems to indicate you really haven't played anything outside of linear level grinds, so I'll write off your comment to just a lack of experience. While EQers were stalwartly braving the monotony of grinding to prove their manhood in a 'true' MMO. The rest of us were doing all sorts of 'instant gratification' things because of our 'younger generation ADD' (oh, those darn instant gratification kids spoiling MMOs back then!):
- building and maintaining player-run venues like
taverns
gambling halls
player cities
RP environments
fight arenas
mage towers and other SIG venues
- roleplaying, fighting and socializing in the above player-run venues
- organizing monthly meetings of the Monarchs (guild leaders) of our servers to address community issues and concerns
- organizing/joining content teams (official or player-run) to create quests, story arcs and plot characters based on official lore
- engaging in activities that require little or even zero combat such as being a dedicated crafter, fisherman, treasure hunter, baker, veterinarian, or even a rogue that does rogue things other than just backstab and hide.
So, yes, we had a different experience. For some reason the diehard EQers seem to refuse to accept that not only was there more to early MMOs than just EQ, it was a pretty diverse set of experiences.
Look, you like EQ and that's just fine. But when someone says they didn't care for it, it's a little arrogant - if not completely rude and uncalled for - to tell them that they didn't like EQ because they can't maintain focus or, worse, that if they didn't like grinding in EQ then it must be because they have a psychological disorder.
Nothing you named on your clever little list was beyond the scope of EQ.
Every time you speak about EQ it only becomes more apparent that you didn't play it. In fact the only people I've heard speak ill of EQ in this thread more than apparently did not play it. Its hilarious and tantamount to someone complaining about the new Hobbit trilogy installment by saying, "Ya, nothing really happened and there wasn't uh, enough fighting..."
Well eq didn't have any building so that takes out 6 things on the list. It also didn't have veterinarian do that takes out another. Are you sure you played eq?
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar Well eq didn't have any building so that takes out 6 things on the list. It also didn't have veterinarian do that takes out another. Are you sure you played eq?
- building and maintaining player-run venues like
taverns
gambling halls
player cities
RP environments
fight arenas
mage towers and other SIG venues
- roleplaying, fighting and socializing in the above player-run venues
- organizing monthly meetings of the Monarchs (guild leaders) of our servers to address community issues and concerns
- organizing/joining content teams (official or player-run) to create quests, story arcs and plot characters based on official lore
- engaging in activities that require little or even zero combat such as being a dedicated crafter, fisherman, treasure hunter, baker, veterinarian, or even a rogue that does rogue things other than just backstab and hide.
Each of the main points were a thing in EQ, especially on RP servers. You didn't build things but they certainly utilized the world to engage in those activities.
And lets be honest shall we, today were only further away from those activities than we were in the days of EQ and SWG.
Ultimately, that wasn't even the point of this thread but just another attempt to grasp at straws because the OP made a good point and there is no refuting it, no matter how many times you pretend that players of older games were discontent about "grinding." The content was still more meaningful to those of us who played those games than anything today. By a landslide vote. The fact that I couldn't just go anywhere and do anything and there was no golden path is proof enough. Every npc had to be considered, every decision you would be held accountable to due to factions and deities. People are currently going nuts for stuff in Pillars of Eternity for many of these same reasons we enjoyed EverQuest, and yet here are a bunch of late comers talking about old games using the same tired rhetoric without a clue of how things really were.
Comments
Versus today where everything is trivial and can be accomplished mostly alone, yes it was 100x the variety. Now its just a long line of boring quests and following the path laid out for you with very few chances of dying until you hit end game roughly a week after you start the game.
For you, perhaps. That's not my current experience.
I always call that the pendulum swing. Baffles my mind, if developers would just come up with their adjustments, and then back it off 20%, that kind of crap wouldn't happen. Instead you always have this ping pong effect where they overnerf something and overbuff something else.
Its really simple, if everyone says "ok we need to increase this abilities damage by 20%" then right before you implement just back it off a bit, 16%, 15%, something. Problem solved.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I completely understand and even loved that my Spellhowler in Lineage 2 was once referred to by a clannie as "the closest thing you can get to a god". It hit extremely hard at high level.
But the issue there is that it's just not sustainable AND still keep the game enticing for new players.
Hence, all the "hey, does this game have any new server" questions you will see from time to time.
And then of course they make a new server, players rise and a new crop of players will only want to play on new servers. Yet the "old servers" start getting thin.
I love leveling and would never play a game that didn't have some type of leveling. I never complain when they raise level cap in any game.
But at the same time I believe that there are other types of progression that might be healthier for games.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Ok guys, I want to tell you about this MMO (kind of RPG) Wizard101. I know you have heard that it's a kids' game, but no it's not since the latest updates.
This game's max level cap is 100. Unlike other MMORPGs you don't waste YEARS to get all the good stuff and reach level 100 and you don't lose in real life opportunities to level up. This game is a better version of WOW, if you get bored of WOW's questing, this game is better. Ok so the combat is not like all RPGs, it's more of turn based card combat, BUT it gets fun starting from levels 20-50, level 50 is where the real fun begins. I have wasted only 4 months of membership on this game and completed it fully with one of the best gear sets, pets(yes this might be one of the best pet systems in MMORPGs), Weapons and a good build. This game also has Crafting, Fishing, Gardening, Housing. These double the fun. Gardening-best snacks possible for your pet, Fishing- to sell for gold or place in your house aquarium, crafting- you can craft any type of item(my gear is currently the crafted one), housing- you can decorated your houses and publish them at house tours so others can rate it. Talking of purchases, Wizard101 is not completely F2P, after level 20 game gets boring since you have to either gear a membership or purchase the areas to continue questing. Monthly membership is only 10 bucks, sometimes they do -50% sale on your first purchase which is only 5 bucks. So i wasted 55 bucks on this game, which means 4 months of membership and crowns to get the good gear. The PvP is amazing in this game but can get on your nerves if you are not well prepared. There are 3 types of PvP. They are Practice PvP, Ranked PvP and Tournaments. Well Practice PvP is for practice. Ranked PvP is where you start getting new pvp ranks. And Tournaments are a series of matches where players can get prizes after the tournament is over. PvP ranks are not that important unless you want to look cool.There is also PvP gear which is good for levels 30- 60.There is 1v1,2v2,3v3,4v4.
There are 7 schools(classes): Life, Death, Myth, Balance,Fire, Ice, Storm. Unlike other MMORPGs the class doesn't completely determine your gameplay. It depends on your gear. For example Life school is based on healing. If you get the Jade Gear(Best Tank gear) you can be a healing tank. But Don't go Tank or healer, either with Storm or Fire they are pure dps. To get the right gear your have to farm the right dungeons(or instances). The starter gear farming dungeon is Mount Olympus where you challenge Zeus The Skyfather to a duel and get some parts of his gear with each run.
The lore in this game is just amazing. There are 2 arcs(storylines) in this game+the 3rd one will be released like 2 or 3 months and there is a bonus one which you get after finishing the 2nd arc, it's very little but you face an old foe. Unlike other MMORPGs it is not necessary to do side quests. You can normally level up without doing them.
The game has currently more than 50.000.000 players which is the half of WOW's playerbase. If you are willing to constantly play and get all the good stuff(except for PvP ranking) you will max waste 60-70 dollars. And by the way you get updates in this game like every month. Soon there will be an update which is jewel socketing to increase your gear stats they are like add-ons.Give it a try so many years have passed. And those they say that the game is for kids, you are wrong. The game is becoming much darker and there are adult players, tons of them.
Yah, and, ironically, journey that consisted of endless camping.
http://www.progressquest.com/play/
you can even play it while chatting with friends!
I literally earn my living. If i literally want to earn stuff id do it in RL.
Im not in market of paying for a job. Thats why those games are gone. Pretty much noone is.
I am with the OP on this one. That is what I remember and want to do again.
Try GW2.
Of course, people like OP dont care about abything but little arbitrary number beside their char name, so they dont like that.
Since were throwing arbitrary numbers around....why not?
Yeah I agree, and it's not even about the money, I'd pay $50 a month to have those fun experiences again.
Duh, you wanted to kill stuff over here, btu if campspot was "taken" you would throw some verbal abusment around and had to go "over there"
Right, I only speak for myself. The money spoke far louder and for far more players, when WOW released and provided a MMORPG more distinctly more gameplay-focused.
Social interactions can be an enjoyable part of games, but they're not gameplay. A chatroom isn't gameplay. Only decisions related to game rules are gameplay.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
People in this thread, and others like it, amuse the hell out of me.
"What!?. You dont enjoy standing in one spot killing the same mob over and over and over again several hours a day every day for a month. You MUST be some kid with ADD!"
Hate to break it to you, but very few MMO players actually enjoyed that aspect of MMOs. There was a lot to love about some of the games, but the repetition was not one of them. It was probably one of the biggest factors about the games themselves preventing the genre from becoming more than a niche at the time. The average person said "You want me to buy your game, and pay you $15 a month every month, to stand around and keep killing the same thing over and over again? That doesnt sound fun at all..."
Once that started to change and people were given things like more story driven content and quests / objectives, more diverse types of content, etc as they were used to in single player games, but online with other people, thats when the genre started really growing.
Unfortunately, the genre hasnt evolved much since then and has become stagnant. Aside from a few minor tweaks to the systems, nearly every game just follows the same old formula (follow a bunch of extremely easy quests to level cap, grind the same dungeon over and over) as the rest and they have stopped trying to implement cool new features / mechanics that have sprung up in single player games. They improved things, then just said "Good enough" and never continued adding to it.
There have been some amazing games in the past decade that had features / content types which would have been perfect to incorporate into the MMO genre and possibly even created whole new sub-genres, but instead the developers keep pumping out the same thing wrapped in a new skin every time. So now we are once again stuck with the same type of repetition only it's grinding the same dungeon over and over instead of just a single mob or group of mobs.
THAT is the problem with MMOs in recent years. Not that they didnt cling to an even more outdated feature (endlessly grinding mobs) which would have bored the crap out of anyone besides a few hundred people who cant stop whining about it, but that they replaced it with one thing and then just left it that way instead of continuing to improve and add even more to it.
Thank you, Malabooga. I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought that was a strange leap of logic.
Rhoklaw, your post seems to indicate you really haven't played anything outside of linear level grinds, so I'll write off your comment to just a lack of experience. While EQers were stalwartly braving the monotony of grinding to prove their manhood in a 'true' MMO. The rest of us were doing all sorts of 'instant gratification' things because of our 'younger generation ADD' (oh, those darn instant gratification kids spoiling MMOs back then!):
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Kinda wish more games had dune gangs, to be perfectly honest.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Is that what you're looking for? have I got the game for you:
http://progressquest.com/
take the code and change the XP to .0001 XP. Then only run it when you're looking at it.
Enjoy!
Everquest, and many of the older MMO's, were actually about the journey toward max level, instead of ''game start at max level'' like we have now.
It took months, if not years, to get max level... and part of that fun was progressivly exploring harder dunjon, killing those rare mobs for that elusive piece of gear that actually lasted more than a day... This was also a time where walkthrough / guide weren't as widespread over the internet.
Just google up EverQuest epic 1.0... any class... read the entire quest description... imagine you don't have a walkthrough next to you and actually have to figure stuff out by yourself... that was a quest ( unlike the : go kill wolves and bring me 10 pelt that we have in modern MMOs). Even if the game dosen't hold your hand, you bet the internet will.
That being said.. that era is over. no matter how hard you try, it's not comming back. WoW was an upgrade in that sense... but 10 years later, WoW still hasn'T changed, and the hundreds of WoW clones still haven't changed... it's still the same ultra-linear quest grind
I am still playing one of those games ,FFXI.It also has Epic dragon fights and was made for ALL platforms but has just now shut down the older consoles and stopped some language support.Too bad FFXI could not go on forever,that is because giant business operations need to see huge numbers or it is not viable for them as they have far too much overhead.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The more I think about it the more I realize that MMO's are just broken as a concept. And it's not the genres fault, it's not the developers or any particular games fault, it's 100% the players fault.
We expect content, I think by the current market trends we've established that the kind of games the OP is talking about are no longer attractive enough to actually make. I could be wrong, but I just don't see a revival for that kind of gameplay design. We need social community interaction for MMO's to have any sort of lifespan, yet nobody wants to talk to each other. We see dealing with other players as an inconvenience, very much like the EQ type grind. We don't want to have to wait for a group, we don't want to PVP with them unless we're pretty assured that were going to win ie. it's completely on our terms, we don't even want to stop and talk to another player, don't you dare expect me to stop, I'm going to the bank to sit semi-AFK for an hour and a half. This is how most of you play these games, and for every exception to the rule there are thousands that follow it religiously. You don't even take the time to read the god damned quests. Which is fine, if it weren't indicative of a larger problem.
The elder game is about playing the economy and doing raids or PVP, basically. But this is all isolated and disjointed because we've insisted that it be this way. If you go on a raid you do it with a handful of your closest friends and require an application and urine sample to bring anyone else along. Playing the economy consists of sitting at the AH NPC and buying stuff from noobs and reselling it at a mark up. PVP consists of jumping up and down on your rivals corpse in tea bag fashion.
Gee, no wonder you don't want to talk to anyone. You must assume everyone else is like you (they probably are).
I never played EQ but I'm sure what made it great was the community. (Like SWG or any other game that we have fond golden memories of). Unless you believe you yourself are capable of being an asset to one of those kind of communities, what makes you think anyone else is? It takes a lot of people to make it work, and make an MMO special.
Nothing you named on your clever little list was beyond the scope of EQ.
Every time you speak about EQ it only becomes more apparent that you didn't play it. In fact the only people I've heard speak ill of EQ in this thread more than apparently did not play it. Its hilarious and tantamount to someone complaining about the new Hobbit trilogy installment by saying, "Ya, nothing really happened and there wasn't uh, enough fighting..."