I am a gamer and have no problem finding game to play. I am just no limited to some narrow list of games like mmoRPGS
If you "play games" then I'll agree, more variety than ever.
However if you are looking to live in a virtual world, not so much.
Couple of indie titles look to be promising, however for now EVE's pretty much it for me.
Ahhh, you went back...
What changed your mind?
Not back yet, currently on vacation so decided to hold off on any new games until after I returned home.
DAOC is starting to wear on me again, not finding any real purpose to level up more characters, nor do the RVR as it seems pointless. I most enjoyed DAOC when they had a FFA PVP server and it was my guild against the world. We would hold a keep and call it "ours", defending it from all comers, never relenting if someone took it from us.
Now I'm in the RVR keep trading mode, and I now remember I never really enjoyed that much.
One thing I've never done in EVE (well, besides industry) is play it strictly to PVP, with no focus on PVE.
I amassed more than enough riches, time to leave the PVE totally behind and go all in on the PVP and see what I can actually do with the vast number of ships and weapon's I've trained for. I literally can fly almost every ship hull and weapon type in the game short of Supers, and I'm not interesting in them.
Was actually going to do this in January, but the DAOC free shard detoured me for a bit, so probably going back for another EVE run.
Besides, it's summer, the Russians will be in an ebb mode, so good time to take some territory.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
@Sovrath - I hear ya. The reason I've been posting all this stuff here is basically in the hopes that some open-minded and innovative developer or aspiring developer might read them someday and get ideas. Probably won't happen, but I haven't given up all hope yet.
And I'm not being prideful. I know that there are much, much better ways to make mmorpgs than how most of them are being made now. Even if some of my ideas won't ever appeal to a lot of people, I'm pretty sure some of them will. I posted a lot of ideas similar to what Chronicles of Elyria is doing here on this forum last year. If you don't believe me I can link you one of the threads.
Someone rich just needs to buy Cryptic from PWE and put me in charge. I'll make a better game than anything else you can play right now (or in the near future), that's for sure.
Well then you would probably make a lot of money as there is a lot of money out there for a successful game.
In which case why don't you just enter game development? It would be a no brainer wouldn't it?
The problem is, I totally screwed up my life by being a drunk for over 10 years of my life. Got booted from the Army way back in 2000 because of it. Went to some college, but never graduated. Worked many different jobs. Started teaching myself programming back in 2004-2005, but didn't keep going with it. My friends and I were going to start an animation company back then. Fell through though. Four of them (artists) are working for Blizzard. Three have been working there for ten years or more. I don't talk to them anymore unfortuantely. I pissed off my former best friend on FB a few years ago by saying something he didn't like (about his treatment of me concerning a girl we were both in love with a long time ago) when I was really depressed.
Anyway, I have no credentials, and I have no real desire to learn programming. It would probably take me two years or more to get good enough to program a decent game. But I like to write and I have a lot of ideas. Oh, I did stop drinking when I played EQ2 for 7 months straight back in 2014.
Congrats on the quitting of drinking. EQ1 I would say was what helped me quit my bad drinking problem, and when I say bad realize I am from Wisconsin so it was even worse haha
Now sure how this fits, but my feelings are "Meh" with what is out there right now.
I mean I just tried Skyforge and ArcheAge, an for the life me, they feel about the same, not good, not bad, just "meh", I mean the graphics are pretty and all, and each has their own "hook" but, it's just not hooking me.
Trove was a very smooth line MMO, that I had blast with, but it just became too much of the same old same old, and fully RNG end game loot to make it a time sink.. was a killer, couple that with it had no real reason to keep going. I mean, I collected the patterns, got a few dragons, mounts, outfits, and some other things, and, the combat was right up my ally, smooth as glass, fun, and active. Almost everything about Trove was simple yet addicting, however, the total RNG loot, and complete lack of any real Lore, or Story, or Objective.. kinda made it a burn out game.
I bought a Club World, and was about 20% done with making a huge skull in the middle of it.. and was just like.. "meh.. I'm done".. Now Trove is still a great game, and I get the vibe that Sandbox MMO's are pretty much exactly what Trove was, which has the feel doing the digital equal to being a kid sitting in a playground eating mud.
Right now, I am playing, I swear to RNGesus has to be the worst rated MMO/MOBA ever made, Eternal Crusade, and I know I am only playing it because it is Warhammer 40K. But, I am also kinda having fun with it. It has been my first MOBA, and to be honest, after playing an MOBA, I could never return to MMO-PvP. I mean I Loved GW2, but the combat in EC vs GW2, for as bad as EC is, it's blows GW2 PvP combat out of the water, like a Trident Warhead hitting a Duck kind of decimation.
Getting back to MMO's, The main thing I have with most MMO's is they look bland, not bad, in fact, some of them have amazing graphics, and their combat looks decent, lots of options, but.. as I look at them.. I'm like.. "and this is different then the last 3 MMO's I just tried.. How?"... so, its not a feeling that they are bad, but, they come across as just.. "meh". I am looking forward to Pantheon, it has the potential to be a very fun game, I am kinda of excited about how that will turn out.
I am also looking forward to Chronicles of Elrya, Which I am a little worried that all that will happen is it ends up being little more then a glorified MOBA, and if that happens, I dunno, it would have to be one amazing jazzed up MOBA to hold me.
It is bad enough right now that I abandoned all the newer crap and went back to a 10 year old MMO. LOTRO is still beautiful, kept the good old school mechanics and replaced the bad ones with modern features. Would love to see it on a new graphics engine but the gameplay and atmosphere is so good (if you like old school MMOs) I don't really care anymore. It still has a sense of community and remains in another dimension where the cesspool that is the modern MMO community has not tainted.
In the end that is what is wrong with the modern MMOs, they forget what made this genre great in the first place, being part of a virtual community. Most are just single player RPGs with chat rooms and auction houses.
<--- Waiting on Pantheon - Will save the genre for me.
I am in the camp that MMORPG titles need to go back to niche gaming and instead of trying the wow monopolize all player base model. That way developers can be loyal and design a fun game that fit's their specific market.
Whilw WoW itself was a good game, it did alot to hurt the genre in my opinion.....If you look at the games that were around before WoW, they were all very different and all had very interesting worlds to explore...Once WoW came out, game makers went away from that and thought we all must want non stop questing all the way to end game, and thats just not the case.
It is bad enough right now that I abandoned all the newer crap and went back to a 10 year old MMO. LOTRO is still beautiful, kept the good old school mechanics and replaced the bad ones with modern features. Would love to see it on a new graphics engine but the gameplay and atmosphere is so good (if you like old school MMOs) I don't really care anymore. It still has a sense of community and remains in another dimension where the cesspool that is the modern MMO community has not tainted.
In the end that is what is wrong with the modern MMOs, they forget what made this genre great in the first place, being part of a virtual community. Most are just single player RPGs with chat rooms and auction houses.
The reason is small playerbases are a lot easier to develop a virtual community.
Any game that has a very small playebase is a lot more likely to have a tight community feel.
If LOTRO had 2 million players it wouldnt have the same feel at all.
I think thats one thing that many fail to recognize, you go back to an old game that has a small niche playerbase - you will never get that in a massively popular game.
Negative ghostrider....
LOTRO always had a rich community with more maturity than other MMOs, even in its prime. Most likely due to the fact it was a slower paced, deep story driven game. Many tried it because they saw the movies but never knew the books even existed. No doubt they were turned off by the mature Tolkien story telling. If you skip through dialogue you miss out on the best part of this MMO. You can't say that about many these days.
It is bad enough right now that I abandoned all the newer crap and went back to a 10 year old MMO. LOTRO is still beautiful, kept the good old school mechanics and replaced the bad ones with modern features. Would love to see it on a new graphics engine but the gameplay and atmosphere is so good (if you like old school MMOs) I don't really care anymore. It still has a sense of community and remains in another dimension where the cesspool that is the modern MMO community has not tainted.
In the end that is what is wrong with the modern MMOs, they forget what made this genre great in the first place, being part of a virtual community. Most are just single player RPGs with chat rooms and auction houses.
The reason is small playerbases are a lot easier to develop a virtual community.
Any game that has a very small playebase is a lot more likely to have a tight community feel.
If LOTRO had 2 million players it wouldnt have the same feel at all.
I think thats one thing that many fail to recognize, you go back to an old game that has a small niche playerbase - you will never get that in a massively popular game.
Negative ghostrider....
LOTRO always had a rich community with more maturity than other MMOs, even in its prime. Most likely due to the fact it was a slower paced, deep story driven game. Many tried it because they saw the movies but never knew the books even existed. No doubt they were turned off by the mature Tolkien story telling. If you skip through dialogue you miss out on the best part of this MMO. You can't say that about many these days.
Not trying to dis a game you love, but even in it's prime, LOTRO, was always a smaller player base game, it was made in 2007, during WoW's power days, and thus only ever pulled the fringe MMO players. Still a fine game, it was just never 'big'...
It is bad enough right now that I abandoned all the newer crap and went back to a 10 year old MMO. LOTRO is still beautiful, kept the good old school mechanics and replaced the bad ones with modern features. Would love to see it on a new graphics engine but the gameplay and atmosphere is so good (if you like old school MMOs) I don't really care anymore. It still has a sense of community and remains in another dimension where the cesspool that is the modern MMO community has not tainted.
In the end that is what is wrong with the modern MMOs, they forget what made this genre great in the first place, being part of a virtual community. Most are just single player RPGs with chat rooms and auction houses.
The reason is small playerbases are a lot easier to develop a virtual community.
Any game that has a very small playebase is a lot more likely to have a tight community feel.
If LOTRO had 2 million players it wouldnt have the same feel at all.
I think thats one thing that many fail to recognize, you go back to an old game that has a small niche playerbase - you will never get that in a massively popular game.
Sure you can, just set up small servers like we used to have, with average online no more than 2500 or so. Break it down by realm as they do on DAOC and now you regularly interface with about 800 or so.
Doing this now on freeshard and its working perfectly.
I recall in Vanilla WOW having a pretty good community on Kel Thuzad, with both strong ties in my faction and vilified enemies on the horde side. (still remember those guilds names)
Megaservers are probably a no go, yet funny thing is EVE has the largest real mega server, where up to 40K interact regularly and it has stronger communities in its corporation and alliance structures than most any other game today.
The difference is the design strongly encourages players to band together for not only defense, but to accomplish common goals.
Not always in a corp structure either. There's a form of high end PVE, closest EVE has to raiding called Incursion running.
Usually done in high sec space and one of the few places EVE pilots bring out their most expensive, bling fit ships. Due to the game's screwed up (IMO) war deck mechanic, these players don't join a corp, which allows them to avoid war decks.
Yet through the use of common chat channels they still build multiple incursion communities and often have alt characters which do join into corps and alliances.
So the trick seems to be when dealing with large player populations to offer mechanics in game to encourage players to band together regularly to accomplish common goals.
PVE Raiding could serve a similar purpose if you cap a guilds size but create content only an alliance of guilds or even unaffiliated players could take down.
Dragon raids on the free shard often run this way. While a single guild can kill dragons, they are often run at the alliance level and even people outside the alliance but are friends get invited along. Heck, if they have a needed skill even total randoms might get a tell asking them to come with.
Community building in new, popular MMOs is still possible, but not if designed primarily with no interdependent game mechanics.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
For my personal preferences, there is nothing on the market right now that meets my needs and there hasn't been anything for years. At the risk of turning into kopo, its been a little over 4 years since I last committed to an MMO - I've beta tested or trialed quite a few since then, but none have met my needs.
I have 4 minimum requirements for an MMO, based on examining what I liked and didn't like from all previous MMOs:
1) Deep combat system - if I'm going to be playing a game for years, the combat has to be deep enough to keep me interested. This can be somewhat mitigated by a deep meta-game. Sticking with the holy-trinity is also a turnoff as I find it too limiting when it comes to strategy.
2) Horizontal Progression - at a minimum, endgame progression needs to be horizontal, but I'd prefer the whole game to be. Despite the fact that I'm pretty much always at the top of the power curve, I hate power gaps. I'm all about grouping, so anything that segregates the community is a big no-no for me.
3) Objective-based open world pvp - this is my absolute favourite activity. I love fighting over keeps and objectives, I love fights involving 50+ people. I love roaming in small groups to disrupt reinforcements or ninja'ing objectives.
4) Strong IP - Preferably something I already know, but really just has to be an IP I can connect with. I have to want to live in the virtual world, so if the IP is too generic (like RIFT) or just plain wrong for me (like most asian mmos) I just won't play it, regardless of features.
The only game that ever met these requirements was LotRO, however it flip-flopped on the horizontal progression. For vanilla, it had horizontal gear progression at endgame. For mines of moria and mirkwood, it switched to vertical (damn radiance) and nearly killed the raiding scene. It did switch back to horizontal for Isenguard but by that point, the quality had dropped massively and content was sparse.
Luckily, there is one game on the horizon that will meet my needs: Camelot Unchained.
@cameltosis ; You can unquestionably get 1 and 3, and make some arguements for 2 with Screeps (at least comparing it to other MMO). The downsides are the higher skill barrier for entry when compared to almost any game, and that it's not very good at "frivolous" PvP (though if you want to fight serious tooth and nail fights it can be great when they happen).
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
Bummed out... I haven't been excited about the genre since SWtOR came out ( a huge disappointment for me). Tried a handful of games just nothing that really could compete with my MMORPG high points (Pre-wrath WoW and SWG/CU with JTL) everything since has been a poor substitute..
Someone rich just needs to buy Cryptic from PWE and put me in charge. I'll make a better game than anything else you can play right now (or in the near future), that's for sure.
Well then you would probably make a lot of money as there is a lot of money out there for a successful game.
In which case why don't you just enter game development? It would be a no brainer wouldn't it?
The problem is, I totally screwed up my life by being a drunk for over 10 years of my life. Got booted from the Army way back in 2000 because of it. Went to some college, but never graduated. Worked many different jobs. Started teaching myself programming back in 2004-2005, but didn't keep going with it. My friends and I were going to start an animation company back then. Fell through though. Four of them (artists) are working for Blizzard. Three have been working there for ten years or more. I don't talk to them anymore unfortuantely. I pissed off my former best friend on FB a few years ago by saying something he didn't like (about his treatment of me concerning a girl we were both in love with a long time ago) when I was really depressed.
Anyway, I have no credentials, and I have no real desire to learn programming. It would probably take me two years or more to get good enough to program a decent game. But I like to write and I have a lot of ideas. Oh, I did stop drinking when I played EQ2 for 7 months straight back in 2014.
LOL /fail. Who cares, after the amount of negative posts you're bringing to the forums. Take your lack of self confidence elsewhere and don't spread your negativity here.
@Sovrath - I hear ya. The reason I've been posting all this stuff here is basically in the hopes that some open-minded and innovative developer or aspiring developer might read them someday and get ideas. Probably won't happen, but I haven't given up all hope yet.
And I'm not being prideful. I know that there are much, much better ways to make mmorpgs than how most of them are being made now. Even if some of my ideas won't ever appeal to a lot of people, I'm pretty sure some of them will. I posted a lot of ideas similar to what Chronicles of Elyria is doing here on this forum last year. If you don't believe me I can link you one of the threads.
Unfotunately, ideas are not the bottleneck. (I wish they were, that would make it much more easy to change the situation) Every game designer worth their salt already has long documents full of good game ideas and designs somewhere on their harddrive. (and those ideas/designs come from someone with training and experience and are already thought through, polished up and actually workable)
The real question is "do they get the chance to implement them?" That's what matters, stuff you actually implement and make work in the current market situation.
If we are talking high quality/budget, currently it seems noone puts the money on the table to turn the more innovative and risky ideas (or any MMORPG ideas, really) into reality, mainly because with the current bloated budget sizes and the somewhat saturated market you are heavily risking making an unprofitable product. Plus, the willingness to pay for the products is at an all time low (the race to the bottom has been in full effect for a while) and ARPUs are abismal, which just makes it even harder to be profitable unless you land that one 'lucky punch' out of a thousand tries and can pull a huge audience. It's too much of a lottery. That is the actual bottleneck, not the ideas.
The solution is to either accept lower scope/quality and let the more risk-loving small teams do their thing (they can afford to target niches) or to hope some rich fan who likes similar games as you do plops down 20+ mil for a risky innovative game that doesn't need to focus on being profitable.
The biggest problem with "ideas" for games, is that everyone only thinks up "what will make them happy", the difference between that and a game designer, is that the Designer is asking "What will make other people happy"
Personally, however, I think games are trying too hard to reach too many people, I don' see a problem with telling the 'hardcore" player to stuff it, and make an MMO that is total chill, or telling the PvP enthusiast to piss off and make a fully PvE game.
Another problem is that a MMO needs to be either a PvE MMO, or a PvP MMO, because of the nature of balancing the classes and how they function.
Case in point, if you build a PvE MMO, the classes are built to beat down mobs, which often have a lot more HP then the players do, as well as Team based PvE Classes, (Trinity Model) each class has a role, healer, CC, DPS, that it excels as at the expense of being able to full other roles, this type of set up cannot ever be balanced for PvP battles, due to how the classes become dependent on each other to fill voids.
PvP MMO's, the classes are balanced to face each other, which means each class need to be a for the most part a self sufficient combatant, (as well as any other 'special' abilities they may have), on top of that, any mob put into that game, will often be astonishingly weak, due to needing to having similar stats to a player, but nowhere near the process to give a good fight.
The thing is, game companies are not willing to say "Look, this game is not for you" when they set out to make them, and in an effort to please everyone, or as many as they can, they often just make these grey sludge games, that don't stand out and pull you in.
I think MMO's at this point, with the market as thick as it is, should step back, and say "Who are we looking for" and as opposed to just saying "Meh.. Anyone?" they need to pick their market, and say "These people, lets build a game for them" and while no one else may like it, those people will love it, and it will invest in that game.
The Indie scene is huge in MMO's right now, they need to embrace the small market, and I bet they will skyrocket.. well.. maybe not skyrocket.. but at least Take Off. This is why games like EVE still hold strong, they are not looking to please everyone, they took their market niche and worked it.
And that is what the newer MMO's coming out need to do, if they want to be something other then bland porridge.
The state of MMORPGs is terrible if you are a gen x like me.. if you are younger you probably like the current situation. As of right now though there isn't a single MMORPG out there that I would waste a single second in. Currently playing LoL and American Truck Simulator.
And one other thing, I'd give my left nut for a game where you just killed mobs and picked things up.. that's how you got things. Not do 1 quest, get awarded 2 keys which then allows you to play a random wheel game that you might get a chest in. But the keys may only open certain type of chests, so if you do an online survey you get a special key to open up that chest. Don't have the right chest, then tweet a message for the company or share a facebook post and get that special chest.
WTF is wrong with developers these days? Ever try to figure out the EQ2 F2P model, you will find it easier learning the stock market and trading in commodities.
To many companies focus to much on coming up with crap that doesn't add anything to the game. They spend all the dev time and funding on building a virtual Amazon.. so instead of actually playing the game you can go shopping to buy stuff. It's just stupid, these companies are playing customers for fools these days.
Many tried it because they saw the movies but never knew the books even existed.
I don't think I've ever met a person who didn't know LOTR was based on books . Even younger people. My sister and brother just hit their 20's they don't even read books, yet even they know of those books.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It is bad enough right now that I abandoned all the newer crap and went back to a 10 year old MMO. LOTRO is still beautiful, kept the good old school mechanics and replaced the bad ones with modern features. Would love to see it on a new graphics engine but the gameplay and atmosphere is so good (if you like old school MMOs) I don't really care anymore. It still has a sense of community and remains in another dimension where the cesspool that is the modern MMO community has not tainted.
In the end that is what is wrong with the modern MMOs, they forget what made this genre great in the first place, being part of a virtual community. Most are just single player RPGs with chat rooms and auction houses.
The reason is small playerbases are a lot easier to develop a virtual community.
Any game that has a very small playebase is a lot more likely to have a tight community feel.
If LOTRO had 2 million players it wouldnt have the same feel at all.
I think thats one thing that many fail to recognize, you go back to an old game that has a small niche playerbase - you will never get that in a massively popular game.
Negative ghostrider....
LOTRO always had a rich community with more maturity than other MMOs, even in its prime. Most likely due to the fact it was a slower paced, deep story driven game. Many tried it because they saw the movies but never knew the books even existed. No doubt they were turned off by the mature Tolkien story telling. If you skip through dialogue you miss out on the best part of this MMO. You can't say that about many these days.
I am talking about present playerbase, not playebase ages ago when Lotro was in its prime. EQ1, Daoc, AC all had awesome communities in their prime because 15 years ago the playerbase was vastly different.
You get 2mil players into lotro today and it would be a cesspool.
Totally wrong,
You always make it sound that younger people are quick tempered totally selfish and stupid.
And your real big thing is NO TIME FOR GAMING..... Where do you come up with this ?.... You often say "I'm older and don't have any time".... So for some reason no one else has
Games like LOTRO, EQ1, DAOC and AC just got old. Even games like EQ2 they eventually got old and outdated. They just got old looking. Some broke things that could have been expanded on never did. It would be inevitable that people would get sick of playing the same thing by attrition.
- You can't see that simple minded games are not liked by anyone. - With 99% of people complaining their is nothing to play, you still pretend "nothing wrong"
Even the classics are now broken and unplayable with easy mode, cash shops and really bad change designs that are patched in like a bad jigsaw puzzle......Their almost unplayable !
Overall I think there are too much of generic MMOs/MMORPGs actually available, which lack some depth and immesion. I am also not a fan of f2p or b2p models with cash shops. I miss an mmorpg without any influence from cash shops, where all players start under the same or similar condtions and can reach everything just by playing. Therefore, I prefer the model b2p with monthly subscrition fees (and preferably without any cash shop).
Despite this, I am a big fan of the D&D novels around Drizzt, Menzoberranzan and War of the Spider Queen. I would like to see a MMORPG playing in the world of the Drows (maybe in different towns of the underdark, particularly Menzoberranzan). Also the possibility to select different Religions of the Drows (e.g. Lolth, Eilistrae or Vhaeraun) which would influence the starting Point / home Location of the Player should be part of it. I have some ideas and also graphical conceptions in my mind who this game could look like, but unfortunately i am not a developer or have any such deep Knowledge. But combar and art style would be (according to D&D rules) quite fluid and more for mature Players. I do not like the actual Neverwinter Online game, therefore there is actually nothing which could fit to my most wanted game, except the good, old pen&paper Version
Despite this, I am a big fan of the D&D novels around Drizzt, Menzoberranzan and War of the Spider Queen. I would like to see a MMORPG playing in the world of the Drows (maybe in different towns of the underdark, particularly Menzoberranzan). Also the possibility to select different Religions of the Drows (e.g. Lolth, Eilistrae or Vhaeraun) which would influence the starting Point / home Location of the Player should be part of it. I have some ideas and also graphical conceptions in my mind who this game could look like, but unfortunately i am not a developer or have any such deep Knowledge. But combar and art style would be (according to D&D rules) quite fluid and more for mature Players. I do not like the actual Neverwinter Online game, therefore there is actually nothing which could fit to my most wanted game, except the good, old pen&paper Version
You might want to check out Dungeons and Dragons Online. Now, it's an older game, so it's now a patchwork of buggy "Great ideas" over the years, but... it seems exactly what you are looking for. It's set in Ebberon, but they have a Forgotten Realms Expansion.
i'm currently still playing DDO. it is a fun game, despite being older. and yes, it is buggy (a bit hard to avoid when the game has been around so long and been worked on by so many different coders over the years. bound to be a bit of spaghetti code in there). however... combat is surprisingly fluid and actiony for such an old game. you can dodge out of the way of hits, projectiles, and even spells depending on what type of spell (no, you can't dodge finger of death, but you may dodge a disintegrate ray). there is no "dodge" key like there are with some games (GW2 i'm looking at you).. you just move/jump out of the way. despite it's dilution with some "generic MMO" elements that have been added over the years, it does still have a strong D&D feel... you get to watch the dice roll for your actions.. skills and feats feel familiar to a D&D player (1d6 damage on a generic rapier. x + d20 roll for skill checks... etc etc etc). great (for the most part) stealth mechanics that make a lot of sense too...
all that said, it is mainly set in Eberron, which not everyone likes... it is extremely high magic that is to the point of appearing like technology. levitated buildings, moving platforms, "robots" (the Warforged are a playable race), and the like greet you from level 1. there IS a Forgotten Realms expansion (which, despite the base game being F2P you would have to purchase to experience the majority of the "good stuff"). the Forgotten Realms xpac is aimed at players 15th level and up (but they do have so called "iconic" class/race combos you can purchase from the cash shop that start at 15th level and start in FR instead of Eberron). the part you would be most interested in starts at 20th level... a quest chain that starts in King's Forest, moves to the Underdark (which is absolutely gorgeously done, by the way), and then moves to Lolth's domain of the Demonweb, and culminating with a raid where you actually fight Lolth herself (sorta).
for how much effort they put in to The Underdark and how nice it looks, there are disappointingly few quests in it. there is currently only one drow city you get to interact with (no sorry, not Menzoberranzan. it's actually Sschindylryn (holy crap i spelled that right on the first try!) the city of portals. there's a hint that at some point in the future one/some of those portals may lead to other drow cities, but nothing's been done with that since the xpack came out, so don't bank on it. (sorry)
overall, DDO does have it's issues, but it is still overall fun.
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Not back yet, currently on vacation so decided to hold off on any new games until after I returned home.
DAOC is starting to wear on me again, not finding any real purpose to level up more characters, nor do the RVR as it seems pointless. I most enjoyed DAOC when they had a FFA PVP server and it was my guild against the world. We would hold a keep and call it "ours", defending it from all comers, never relenting if someone took it from us.
Now I'm in the RVR keep trading mode, and I now remember I never really enjoyed that much.
One thing I've never done in EVE (well, besides industry) is play it strictly to PVP, with no focus on PVE.
I amassed more than enough riches, time to leave the PVE totally behind and go all in on the PVP and see what I can actually do with the vast number of ships and weapon's I've trained for. I literally can fly almost every ship hull and weapon type in the game short of Supers, and I'm not interesting in them.
Was actually going to do this in January, but the DAOC free shard detoured me for a bit, so probably going back for another EVE run.
Besides, it's summer, the Russians will be in an ebb mode, so good time to take some territory.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
And I'm not being prideful. I know that there are much, much better ways to make mmorpgs than how most of them are being made now. Even if some of my ideas won't ever appeal to a lot of people, I'm pretty sure some of them will. I posted a lot of ideas similar to what Chronicles of Elyria is doing here on this forum last year. If you don't believe me I can link you one of the threads.
Congrats on the quitting of drinking. EQ1 I would say was what helped me quit my bad drinking problem, and when I say bad realize I am from Wisconsin so it was even worse haha
I mean I just tried Skyforge and ArcheAge, an for the life me, they feel about the same, not good, not bad, just "meh", I mean the graphics are pretty and all, and each has their own "hook" but, it's just not hooking me.
Trove was a very smooth line MMO, that I had blast with, but it just became too much of the same old same old, and fully RNG end game loot to make it a time sink.. was a killer, couple that with it had no real reason to keep going. I mean, I collected the patterns, got a few dragons, mounts, outfits, and some other things, and, the combat was right up my ally, smooth as glass, fun, and active. Almost everything about Trove was simple yet addicting, however, the total RNG loot, and complete lack of any real Lore, or Story, or Objective.. kinda made it a burn out game.
I bought a Club World, and was about 20% done with making a huge skull in the middle of it.. and was just like.. "meh.. I'm done".. Now Trove is still a great game, and I get the vibe that Sandbox MMO's are pretty much exactly what Trove was, which has the feel doing the digital equal to being a kid sitting in a playground eating mud.
Right now, I am playing, I swear to RNGesus has to be the worst rated MMO/MOBA ever made, Eternal Crusade, and I know I am only playing it because it is Warhammer 40K. But, I am also kinda having fun with it. It has been my first MOBA, and to be honest, after playing an MOBA, I could never return to MMO-PvP. I mean I Loved GW2, but the combat in EC vs GW2, for as bad as EC is, it's blows GW2 PvP combat out of the water, like a Trident Warhead hitting a Duck kind of decimation.
Getting back to MMO's, The main thing I have with most MMO's is they look bland, not bad, in fact, some of them have amazing graphics, and their combat looks decent, lots of options, but.. as I look at them.. I'm like.. "and this is different then the last 3 MMO's I just tried.. How?"... so, its not a feeling that they are bad, but, they come across as just.. "meh".
I am looking forward to Pantheon, it has the potential to be a very fun game, I am kinda of excited about how that will turn out.
I am also looking forward to Chronicles of Elrya, Which I am a little worried that all that will happen is it ends up being little more then a glorified MOBA, and if that happens, I dunno, it would have to be one amazing jazzed up MOBA to hold me.
In the end that is what is wrong with the modern MMOs, they forget what made this genre great in the first place, being part of a virtual community. Most are just single player RPGs with chat rooms and auction houses.
LOTRO always had a rich community with more maturity than other MMOs, even in its prime. Most likely due to the fact it was a slower paced, deep story driven game. Many tried it because they saw the movies but never knew the books even existed. No doubt they were turned off by the mature Tolkien story telling. If you skip through dialogue you miss out on the best part of this MMO. You can't say that about many these days.
Doing this now on freeshard and its working perfectly.
I recall in Vanilla WOW having a pretty good community on Kel Thuzad, with both strong ties in my faction and vilified enemies on the horde side. (still remember those guilds names)
Megaservers are probably a no go, yet funny thing is EVE has the largest real mega server, where up to 40K interact regularly and it has stronger communities in its corporation and alliance structures than most any other game today.
The difference is the design strongly encourages players to band together for not only defense, but to accomplish common goals.
Not always in a corp structure either. There's a form of high end PVE, closest EVE has to raiding called Incursion running.
Usually done in high sec space and one of the few places EVE pilots bring out their most expensive, bling fit ships. Due to the game's screwed up (IMO) war deck mechanic, these players don't join a corp, which allows them to avoid war decks.
Yet through the use of common chat channels they still build multiple incursion communities and often have alt characters which do join into corps and alliances.
So the trick seems to be when dealing with large player populations to offer mechanics in game to encourage players to band together regularly to accomplish common goals.
PVE Raiding could serve a similar purpose if you cap a guilds size but create content only an alliance of guilds or even unaffiliated players could take down.
Dragon raids on the free shard often run this way. While a single guild can kill dragons, they are often run at the alliance level and even people outside the alliance but are friends get invited along. Heck, if they have a needed skill even total randoms might get a tell asking them to come with.
Community building in new, popular MMOs is still possible, but not if designed primarily with no interdependent game mechanics.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Ha, short and sweet
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
LOL /fail. Who cares, after the amount of negative posts you're bringing to the forums. Take your lack of self confidence elsewhere and don't spread your negativity here.
Every game designer worth their salt already has long documents full of good game ideas and designs somewhere on their harddrive. (and those ideas/designs come from someone with training and experience and are already thought through, polished up and actually workable)
The real question is "do they get the chance to implement them?"
That's what matters, stuff you actually implement and make work in the current market situation.
If we are talking high quality/budget, currently it seems noone puts the money on the table to turn the more innovative and risky ideas (or any MMORPG ideas, really) into reality, mainly because with the current bloated budget sizes and the somewhat saturated market you are heavily risking making an unprofitable product.
Plus, the willingness to pay for the products is at an all time low (the race to the bottom has been in full effect for a while) and ARPUs are abismal, which just makes it even harder to be profitable unless you land that one 'lucky punch' out of a thousand tries and can pull a huge audience. It's too much of a lottery.
That is the actual bottleneck, not the ideas.
The solution is to either accept lower scope/quality and let the more risk-loving small teams do their thing (they can afford to target niches) or to hope some rich fan who likes similar games as you do plops down 20+ mil for a risky innovative game that doesn't need to focus on being profitable.
Personally, however, I think games are trying too hard to reach too many people, I don' see a problem with telling the 'hardcore" player to stuff it, and make an MMO that is total chill, or telling the PvP enthusiast to piss off and make a fully PvE game.
Another problem is that a MMO needs to be either a PvE MMO, or a PvP MMO, because of the nature of balancing the classes and how they function.
Case in point, if you build a PvE MMO, the classes are built to beat down mobs, which often have a lot more HP then the players do, as well as Team based PvE Classes, (Trinity Model) each class has a role, healer, CC, DPS, that it excels as at the expense of being able to full other roles, this type of set up cannot ever be balanced for PvP battles, due to how the classes become dependent on each other to fill voids.
PvP MMO's, the classes are balanced to face each other, which means each class need to be a for the most part a self sufficient combatant, (as well as any other 'special' abilities they may have), on top of that, any mob put into that game, will often be astonishingly weak, due to needing to having similar stats to a player, but nowhere near the process to give a good fight.
The thing is, game companies are not willing to say "Look, this game is not for you" when they set out to make them, and in an effort to please everyone, or as many as they can, they often just make these grey sludge games, that don't stand out and pull you in.
I think MMO's at this point, with the market as thick as it is, should step back, and say "Who are we looking for" and as opposed to just saying "Meh.. Anyone?" they need to pick their market, and say "These people, lets build a game for them" and while no one else may like it, those people will love it, and it will invest in that game.
The Indie scene is huge in MMO's right now, they need to embrace the small market, and I bet they will skyrocket.. well.. maybe not skyrocket.. but at least Take Off. This is why games like EVE still hold strong, they are not looking to please everyone, they took their market niche and worked it.
And that is what the newer MMO's coming out need to do, if they want to be something other then bland porridge.
IMHO.
WTF is wrong with developers these days? Ever try to figure out the EQ2 F2P model, you will find it easier learning the stock market and trading in commodities.
To many companies focus to much on coming up with crap that doesn't add anything to the game. They spend all the dev time and funding on building a virtual Amazon.. so instead of actually playing the game you can go shopping to buy stuff. It's just stupid, these companies are playing customers for fools these days.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Totally wrong,
You always make it sound that younger people are quick tempered totally selfish and stupid.
And your real big thing is NO TIME FOR GAMING..... Where do you come up with this ?.... You often say "I'm older and don't have any time".... So for some reason no one else has
Games like LOTRO, EQ1, DAOC and AC just got old. Even games like EQ2 they eventually got old and outdated. They just got old looking. Some broke things that could have been expanded on never did. It would be inevitable that people would get sick of playing the same thing by attrition.
- You can't see that simple minded games are not liked by anyone.
- With 99% of people complaining their is nothing to play, you still pretend "nothing wrong"
Even the classics are now broken and unplayable with easy mode, cash shops and really bad change designs that are patched in like a bad jigsaw puzzle......Their almost unplayable !
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
Edgar Allan Poe
all that said, it is mainly set in Eberron, which not everyone likes... it is extremely high magic that is to the point of appearing like technology. levitated buildings, moving platforms, "robots" (the Warforged are a playable race), and the like greet you from level 1. there IS a Forgotten Realms expansion (which, despite the base game being F2P you would have to purchase to experience the majority of the "good stuff"). the Forgotten Realms xpac is aimed at players 15th level and up (but they do have so called "iconic" class/race combos you can purchase from the cash shop that start at 15th level and start in FR instead of Eberron). the part you would be most interested in starts at 20th level... a quest chain that starts in King's Forest, moves to the Underdark (which is absolutely gorgeously done, by the way), and then moves to Lolth's domain of the Demonweb, and culminating with a raid where you actually fight Lolth herself (sorta).
for how much effort they put in to The Underdark and how nice it looks, there are disappointingly few quests in it. there is currently only one drow city you get to interact with (no sorry, not Menzoberranzan. it's actually Sschindylryn (holy crap i spelled that right on the first try!) the city of portals. there's a hint that at some point in the future one/some of those portals may lead to other drow cities, but nothing's been done with that since the xpack came out, so don't bank on it. (sorry)
overall, DDO does have it's issues, but it is still overall fun.