Hmm.. seems like an EQ2 ad to me. I stopped reading at red flag #1 because you have to read quest text in DAoC too.
no its not that, its that chemical in so many peoples minds that as soon as something is gone and in the past then they suddenly love it
Yup. The same chemical that causes players to gravitate to indies trying to recapture the magic of "old school" games.
Like Darkfall, for example.
perfect example of how i was born in the 80's played games on and off most of my life starting with the original nes. i noticed in the past few years the more i play games i just blow thru most modern games,i remember being a kid and literally wanting to smack my head on walls or throw controllers growing up playing games when i would get stuck. there was a time you couldnt pay me to even look at an indie game.....now i cant get enough of them!
Hmm.. seems like an EQ2 ad to me. I stopped reading at red flag #1 because you have to read quest text in DAoC too.
no its not that, its that chemical in so many peoples minds that as soon as something is gone and in the past then they suddenly love it
Yup. The same chemical that causes players to gravitate to indies trying to recapture the magic of "old school" games.
Like Darkfall, for example.
perfect example of how i was born in the 80's played games on and off most of my life starting with the original nes. i noticed in the past few years the more i play games i just blow thru most modern games,i remember being a kid and literally wanting to smack my head on walls or throw controllers growing up playing games when i would get stuck. there was a time you couldnt pay me to even look at an indie game.....now i cant get enough of them!
the very concept to me that even the best of the 80-90s like Doom is better than something like 7 days to die is in my opinion insanity. Yeah doom was the bomb in the day but I can assure you if somehing like 7dtd came out in 1993 people would still be shittying their pants
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
How in the hell is the game crashing for you? I haven't had it crash on me in years unless it was an update which is just me being dumb and not paying attention to the time. As for arrows and stuff... go to options, you can set almost everything in the game from there. The options in the game are fantastic. As is the housing.
The mmorpg genre changed for good right around the time Wotlk came out. There was an addon. A "quest helper" type addon. It was quest helper though. It had a full customizable /scaleable mini map that not only marked the quest but gave you a line straight to it. Every AAA mmorpg after built in the same type features to their maps.
EQ2 was one of the few mmo's where the quests made me feel like I was progressing through an actual storyline.
The questing in the game is still one of the best. When my fae warden did his epic weapon quest it blew me away. I had to learn draconic which was an epic quest in its own right. I had to take down an open world X2 which mean rallying some guild members and people in general who were willing to help. I had to get reputation and go through several other adventures.
Another thing I like about the game is the global broker system instead of a simple auction house. You could play the market a little, be a commodities supplier, sell all your junk drops because people want those to break them down including the spellbooks.
I haven't logged in for a long while now but our guild hall was one of the coolest on Everfrost (Sun's Soldiers). No one in the guild plays anymore so it's a bit sad to visit, like when you're a kid and visit your grandparents while they're away. All the life left the hall.
I feel like this is mainly nostalgia. We all read quests when we first started MMOs (well... most of us) but few of us read them now. Things like this make a difference when you care about quests but not when you've done thousands of quests across dozens of MMOs and you are to the point of "Let's get this over with so I can get my XP."
I played it late in my MMO career because I was invited there by a friend. It's questing seemed no different than any other MMO to me. I just pushed through it to get levels. It was an obstacle to hanging out with my friend and doing high level content together. Nothing more.
EQ2 was one of the few mmo's where the quests made me feel like I was progressing through an actual storyline.
The questing in the game is still one of the best. When my fae warden did his epic weapon quest it blew me away. I had to learn draconic which was an epic quest in its own right. I had to take down an open world X2 which mean rallying some guild members and people in general who were willing to help. I had to get reputation and go through several other adventures.
Another thing I like about the game is the global broker system instead of a simple auction house. You could play the market a little, be a commodities supplier, sell all your junk drops because people want those to break them down including the spellbooks.
I haven't logged in for a long while now but our guild hall was one of the coolest on Everfrost (Sun's Soldiers). No one in the guild plays anymore so it's a bit sad to visit, like when you're a kid and visit your grandparents while they're away. All the life left the hall.
I feel like this is mainly nostalgia. We all read quests when we first started MMOs (well... most of us) but few of us read them now. Things like this make a difference when you care about quests but not when you've done thousands of quests across dozens of MMOs and you are to the point of "Let's get this over with so I can get my XP."
I played it late in my MMO career because I was invited there by a friend. It's questing seemed no different than any other MMO to me. I just pushed through it to get levels. It was an obstacle to hanging out with my friend and doing high level content together. Nothing more.
Wasn't nostalgia for me. I played EQ2 long after I first started playing mmo's. The questlines are done well enough and in such a manner that it gave me the feeling of progressing through a storyline as I went through the quests in a zone. It didn't feel like I was just doing a bunch of random, unconnected tasks.
I'd like to interject that the Visuals in Modern MMO's help people who may not speak the language but still want to try the MMO out, this allowing MMO's to be more global, even they are not fully translated to other languages or in some cases translated poorly.
EQ2 was one of the few mmo's where the quests made me feel like I was progressing through an actual storyline.
The questing in the game is still one of the best. When my fae warden did his epic weapon quest it blew me away. I had to learn draconic which was an epic quest in its own right. I had to take down an open world X2 which mean rallying some guild members and people in general who were willing to help. I had to get reputation and go through several other adventures.
Another thing I like about the game is the global broker system instead of a simple auction house. You could play the market a little, be a commodities supplier, sell all your junk drops because people want those to break them down including the spellbooks.
I haven't logged in for a long while now but our guild hall was one of the coolest on Everfrost (Sun's Soldiers). No one in the guild plays anymore so it's a bit sad to visit, like when you're a kid and visit your grandparents while they're away. All the life left the hall.
I feel like this is mainly nostalgia. We all read quests when we first started MMOs (well... most of us) but few of us read them now. Things like this make a difference when you care about quests but not when you've done thousands of quests across dozens of MMOs and you are to the point of "Let's get this over with so I can get my XP."
I played it late in my MMO career because I was invited there by a friend. It's questing seemed no different than any other MMO to me. I just pushed through it to get levels. It was an obstacle to hanging out with my friend and doing high level content together. Nothing more.
Wasn't nostalgia for me. I played EQ2 long after I first started playing mmo's. The questlines are done well enough and in such a manner that it gave me the feeling of progressing through a storyline as I went through the quests in a zone. It didn't feel like I was just doing a bunch of random, unconnected tasks.
I mean. I could say the same thing about in LOTRO when I slowed down, did every single quest in the hobbit zone, actually read all the quests, and took frequent breaks for crafting and roleplay. There was a lot of charm and flavor to that zone and I remember there being some pretty lore heavy quests if you actually stopped to read and enjoy them.
Same thing with SWTOR. On the first playthrough at least I really enjoyed the first few zones.
But lets be honest. Just like there were kernels of lore buried in LOTRO, and fun choices buried in SWTOR, the majority of questing in EQ2 was "Go here do that, go here do that, go here do that" with some rare gems buried underneath.
If you were to play EQ2 again you'd eventually fall in thought pattern of "I've done all this before" and power level to max just like you would do in any other MMO.
That's the issue with using quests as a gate to other content and making progression work in such a way that you can't come back and enjoy/appreciate them if you power past them at the start of the game.
It's like the difference between writing something because you want to and writing something as a class assignment. Anything you feel forced into is less enjoyable.
EQ2 was one of the few mmo's where the quests made me feel like I was progressing through an actual storyline.
The questing in the game is still one of the best. When my fae warden did his epic weapon quest it blew me away. I had to learn draconic which was an epic quest in its own right. I had to take down an open world X2 which mean rallying some guild members and people in general who were willing to help. I had to get reputation and go through several other adventures.
Another thing I like about the game is the global broker system instead of a simple auction house. You could play the market a little, be a commodities supplier, sell all your junk drops because people want those to break them down including the spellbooks.
I haven't logged in for a long while now but our guild hall was one of the coolest on Everfrost (Sun's Soldiers). No one in the guild plays anymore so it's a bit sad to visit, like when you're a kid and visit your grandparents while they're away. All the life left the hall.
I feel like this is mainly nostalgia. We all read quests when we first started MMOs (well... most of us) but few of us read them now. Things like this make a difference when you care about quests but not when you've done thousands of quests across dozens of MMOs and you are to the point of "Let's get this over with so I can get my XP."
I played it late in my MMO career because I was invited there by a friend. It's questing seemed no different than any other MMO to me. I just pushed through it to get levels. It was an obstacle to hanging out with my friend and doing high level content together. Nothing more.
Wasn't nostalgia for me. I played EQ2 long after I first started playing mmo's. The questlines are done well enough and in such a manner that it gave me the feeling of progressing through a storyline as I went through the quests in a zone. It didn't feel like I was just doing a bunch of random, unconnected tasks.
I mean. I could say the same thing about in LOTRO when I slowed down, did every single quest in the hobbit zone, actually read all the quests, and took frequent breaks for crafting and roleplay. There was a lot of charm and flavor to that zone and I remember there being some pretty lore heavy quests if you actually stopped to read and enjoy them.
Same thing with SWTOR. On the first playthrough at least I really enjoyed the first few zones.
But lets be honest. Just like there were kernels of lore buried in LOTRO, and fun choices buried in SWTOR, the majority of questing in EQ2 was "Go here do that, go here do that, go here do that" with some rare gems buried underneath.
If you were to play EQ2 again you'd eventually fall in thought pattern of "I've done all this before" and power level to max just like you would do in any other MMO.
That's the issue with using quests as a gate to other content and making progression work in such a way that you can't come back and enjoy/appreciate them if you power past them at the start of the game.
It's like the difference between writing something because you want to and writing something as a class assignment. Anything you feel forced into is less enjoyable.
I've played EQ2 on several different occasions and have played the same way each time. I don't powerlevel to max in mmo's, leveling for me is one of the best parts. I have 7 max level characters in WoW, and 4 others at various levels 90+.
@ the OP, I know how you feel. I had a similar experience
when I returned to Anarchy Online for the first time in 12 years. In the old
days I played as a doctor. Since I've grown fond of summoner/pet classes in
games like TERA and SMT:Imagine. I decided to be an engineer this time.
After completing the newbie area and getting to around level
10 with decent enough implants and gear to be able to summon a bot that was
higher level than me, I started doing some of the basic things I knew I would
need. One of the things on my list was to turn the newbie solar-powered pistol
into the first version of the "engineer pistol" (aka. Solar-powered
tinker pistol).
So I googled the recipe and it looked easy enough. Just
needed a robotic self-preservation system, a notum chip/fragment and a modified
jenson ore extractor. Easy, right? ..not so fast. The first part on my shopping
list supposedly dropped from junkyard robots or neutral backyard robots. After
a few hours of trying in each place and getting nothing I went back to the
internet to search for more information. Apparently the site i looked at was
outdated and it drops in Newland Desert
south of the whoompah (teleporter) from the buzzsaw scavanger bots near a small
lake (pond?). So, after several really hard fights (they were above my level so
it wasn't easy) I finally got the robotic preservation thingy.
Next on the list was a notum chip or fragment. At first I
confused the 'scrap of notum' thing I already had from killing a boss in the
newbie area as the thing I needed. No such luck. That's a part needed for the
'sided shoulderpad' quest so I stuck it in my bank for later. The online guides
said the notum things I needed were random from missions. That's ok. I needed
to try out the clicksaver and see if I could get some other essential items I
would need like the omni-med suit parts or ql 10 concrete cushions. So after
many missions I finally got a notum nugget...
Once again, that wasn't the notum thingy I was looking for.
...or was it? After asking in the newbie chat, Someone kindly informed me I
could make a notum fragment from my nugget by hitting it with a sledgehammer
(typically an enforcer weapon, in my case it was a tool). Later on, after
rolling the correct QL hammer in a mission and putting in some strength
implants to pump up my wimpy engineer to the strength requirement, I smashed
that nugget and got the right notum thingy finally.
Next on the list was the jensen ore extractor. I bought one
from a shop (finally something easy!). It was time to put it all together. First
I used my screwdriver on the ore extractor to make it a 'modified' ore
extractor. Then added the robotic preservy thingy to that to make it an
unstable preservation system. Then I was to add my notum chip to that to make a
stable preservy thing... It didn't work. The notum chip and preservation thingy
were too far apart in QL...
By this point I already had 2 weeks worth of my free time
invested in upgrading this gun. Now I had to either find a higher QL notum chip or make a new lower QL unstable preservation thingy...
Eventually I finally did make the first version of the "engi
pistol" and that long forgotten feeling of accomplishment from something in a
game was amazing! ...and that was just a small, very basic part of a much
bigger and more complicated adventure!
Unfortunately that
accomplishment came at the price of nearly a month of my free time. Time is
something I don't have like I did a decade ago. As much as I would love to play
something as difficult yet rewarding as Anarchy Online again, I just don't have
the time for it anymore.
Maybe one day they will make a game with the same kind
of difficulty in a way that isn't a huge time sink. (unlikely but I can dream.)
@ the OP, I know how you feel. I had a similar experience
when I returned to Anarchy Online for the first time in 12 years. In the old
days I played as a doctor. Since I've grown fond of summoner/pet classes in
games like TERA and SMT:Imagine. I decided to be an engineer this time.
After completing the newbie area and getting to around level
10 with decent enough implants and gear to be able to summon a bot that was
higher level than me, I started doing some of the basic things I knew I would
need. One of the things on my list was to turn the newbie solar-powered pistol
into the first version of the "engineer pistol" (aka. Solar-powered
tinker pistol).
So I googled the recipe and it looked easy enough. Just
needed a robotic self-preservation system, a notum chip/fragment and a modified
jenson ore extractor. Easy, right? ..not so fast. The first part on my shopping
list supposedly dropped from junkyard robots or neutral backyard robots. After
a few hours of trying in each place and getting nothing I went back to the
internet to search for more information. Apparently the site i looked at was
outdated and it drops in Newland Desert
south of the whoompah (teleporter) from the buzzsaw scavanger bots near a small
lake (pond?). So, after several really hard fights (they were above my level so
it wasn't easy) I finally got the robotic preservation thingy.
Next on the list was a notum chip or fragment. At first I
confused the 'scrap of notum' thing I already had from killing a boss in the
newbie area as the thing I needed. No such luck. That's a part needed for the
'sided shoulderpad' quest so I stuck it in my bank for later. The online guides
said the notum things I needed were random from missions. That's ok. I needed
to try out the clicksaver and see if I could get some other essential items I
would need like the omni-med suit parts or ql 10 concrete cushions. So after
many missions I finally got a notum nugget...
Once again, that wasn't the notum thingy I was looking for.
...or was it? After asking in the newbie chat, Someone kindly informed me I
could make a notum fragment from my nugget by hitting it with a sledgehammer
(typically an enforcer weapon, in my case it was a tool). Later on, after
rolling the correct QL hammer in a mission and putting in some strength
implants to pump up my wimpy engineer to the strength requirement, I smashed
that nugget and got the right notum thingy finally.
Next on the list was the jensen ore extractor. I bought one
from a shop (finally something easy!). It was time to put it all together. First
I used my screwdriver on the ore extractor to make it a 'modified' ore
extractor. Then added the robotic preservy thingy to that to make it an
unstable preservation system. Then I was to add my notum chip to that to make a
stable preservy thing... It didn't work. The notum chip and preservation thingy
were too far apart in QL...
By this point I already had 2 weeks worth of my free time
invested in upgrading this gun. Now I had to either find a higher QL notum chip or make a new lower QL unstable preservation thingy...
Eventually I finally did make the first version of the "engi
pistol" and that long forgotten feeling of accomplishment from something in a
game was amazing! ...and that was just a small, very basic part of a much
bigger and more complicated adventure!
Unfortunately that
accomplishment came at the price of nearly a month of my free time. Time is
something I don't have like I did a decade ago. As much as I would love to play
something as difficult yet rewarding as Anarchy Online again, I just don't have
the time for it anymore.
Maybe one day they will make a game with the same kind
of difficulty in a way that isn't a huge time sink. (unlikely but I can dream.)
Spending a month to craft anything, even a Star Destroyer is more time than I'd ever want to invest in building things. (let alone a pistol upgrade)
Thanks for the insight, clearly not a game for me.
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
I mean. I could say the same thing about in LOTRO when I slowed down, did every single quest in the hobbit zone, actually read all the quests, and took frequent breaks for crafting and roleplay. There was a lot of charm and flavor to that zone and I remember there being some pretty lore heavy quests if you actually stopped to read and enjoy them.
Yep, they are pretty good, not to mention informative as well, since those texts are from an era without interactive maps and quest trackers with gps arrows... and NPCs are not only giving nice directions and hints (or don't in case they don't know it, but then they're aiming at a fellow NPC who might know more), but have their own problems which are not quest or gameplay related, just adding to the charm and flavor you mentioned. (hobbit pie commitee in the Shire, or the proposal scene by the small lake in Overhill are usually the fan favourites )
I believe what the OP experienced is something I like to call "forced immersion".
Without map markers and all those other convenience features, you are forced into the game world and must immerse yourself in order to progress. You have to read the quest text. You have to pay attention to what's around you. If you're anything like me, you'll probably end up deeply exploring areas because you can't figure out the clues for a quest and so you're just searching blindly.
In some ways this is great. IF you can get your playerbase to connect to the game world via it's design and story then retention goes up for those that made it that far. Players become more and more motivated to keep exploring. They remember much more of the areas they previously visited and the stories they went through.
The downside is the time it takes to create that emotional connection. In games without the standard convenience features, there is a certain amount of time between starting the game and forming the connection to the world and the stories in which the players can get quite frustrated. Progress can seem slow if you are forever searching around for quest items. You don't yet care about the stories and the initial wonder of the game may have started to wear off. The worse the story is, the longer it can take to create a connection. You can lose an awful lot of your playerbase during this time period.
Personally, I'm all for losing some convenience features like quest trackers / indicators and the like. I'd rather have a small-but-stable community. That said, I'd also like to remove XP from quest completion so that it doesn't matter if you get lost or can't find a quest item as your progress isn't determined by completing quests.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
I've had the same feeling time and time again. I am a bit different than you though. I feel like modern society has pushed me to the point where I feel playing games is a waste of time. Even if I have to think a bit it still just feels like I'm wasting time. It's a frustrating experience. I've never felt this until society started pushing so hard towards changing and learning in the last 10 to 20 years and mainstream society infiltrated video games. The people who play now mostly want to jump in for a quick thrill and then get back to their life. Games are no longer considered an important thing. Before you say they were never important I would disagree. There were a lot of people who believed them important for a long time and that belief is enough to make them important. This is true of anything in life and changes based on societies beliefs at a certain time. I think the sheer amount of games available has also cheapened their value. The main thing that has reduced their worth is social media and having other things to consume. For instance one might spend the time they would have playing games talking to someone on social media or watching a video on how to do something in real life. When I was growing up video games were both a competition amongst friends and a way to escape the annoying adults. Many of the adults in my time had a lot more bad habits like drinking, smoking, drugs, severe grumpiness, sexism, racism, etc. There was also a lot of bullying going on. Video games were an escape from all this. Whether or not they were a healthy escape is another matter. That is dependant on the content of the video games and how much time you spent with them. They were also more addicting with things like sexual depictions and violence being on another level than it is today in games. There were no restrictions on what could be in a video game in the 90s and prior. Personally, I find it hard to play games regardless of their format now. This is because as I pointed out there are other things you can do that are a bit healthier, less strenuous, and less addicting. Before you say video games are not strenuous I would disagree. They can cause a lot of stress to the eyes if you play them a lot. I notice that you don't blink much when playing video games and that is not a healthy thing. You are also fairly tense as you are waiting intently for something to happen and must be ready to react. Over a long period of time, this can wear you down. Depending on the content of the game it can at least have short term effects on you in terms of aggression based on the content and violence in the game and how much you play those games. This is based on my own experiences with video games over the years from the 80s to present.
In my mind Everquest 2 was always better than WoW. I truly loved the game and enjoyed it and I was sad when it fell because it never ran properly in the beginning for a lot of people. I think exploration and the quests were one of the strong points of EQ2 and it encouraged you to learn about the world and the surrounding and I was very immersed playing it.
Even back when EQ2 was a thing, it struggled for identity, after all these years though, perhaps they have managed to do something about that, its a little bit late though, there have been several generations of MMO's developed since then and EQ2 has not aged well in comparison, as a nostalgic experience, i can see how EQ2 might be worth looking into playing for a while, after all there is no telling how long before its shut down.
I've tried to get into EQ2 as I played and loved EQ1. EQ1 truly felt like a MUD brought to a graphical platform. It had the same characteristics and deep lore and community. When EQ2 came out I couldn't run it on my PC so I missed out. Years and years later I was finally able to dive into some of the MMOs I had missed out on and oddly enough, I still have problems running EQ2 well. The engine still seems choppy and jagged even though I can run MMOs from XIV to WoW to Wildstar without trouble. Even if it didn't live up to EQ1, I still wanted to experience it. I hear the quests and lore are really good.
To clarify, It took me nearly a month due to my lack of free time to spend on online games. I was playing 2 hours a night at most and I missed some days completely. Surely someone could do it in just one day if they had the entire day to do it or in a few hours with help from a good party and/or guild (I was still soloing everything). And I'll admit I'm not the best at MMOs (But I still enjoy them anyway). A pro crafter in AO wouldn't have made the same newbie mistakes that led to my setbacks.
Maybe I got too used to games with really fast progression (the "race to the endgame" mentality the OP alluded to) that I forgot the fun part of some games was not the destination but the journey? Quitting because I don't have time free time was mostly a convenient excuse. The real reason is that I really don't like joining an org (guild, clan, whatever) and being left behind while everyone else moves on to bigger an better things without me. In that sense I did quit because of my lack of time to play.
Anyway, It doesn't really take a month to upgrade a pistol in AO. That's just for casual noobs like me lol
And Flyte27 I agree. Games used to feel way more important and special than they do now. There was a time where I felt very fortunate to be one of those who played a game online with people from all around the world. These days it's commonplace and mainstream. Since they no longer feel like something special, games are rarely treated as such by their players anymore.
Heres how I played EQ2: I dont like to read quests..they bore the heck out of me....SO in EQ2 I just grab as many as I can find, start running through the nearby zone and mainly just start killing everything in sight...Often if it is a fetch quest or some other thing you can tell what to grab and I probably handled 75% of the quests this way....The game simply has way too many quests....Also I found the game to be a complete graveyard every time I ever tried it.
Heres how I played EQ2: I dont like to read quests..they bore the heck out of me....SO in EQ2 I just grab as many as I can find, start running through the nearby zone and mainly just start killing everything in sight...Often if it is a fetch quest or some other thing you can tell what to grab and I probably handled 75% of the quests this way....The game simply has way too many quests....Also I found the game to be a complete graveyard every time I ever tried it.
I think that is how most people play it. I did the same
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Comments
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Like Darkfall, for example.
~~ postlarval ~~
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I think Trove sells anti-annoyance lollipops in their cash shop. A few of those and he'll be just fine.
~~ postlarval ~~
I agree with ya, rift is a poor excuse for an mmo. EQ2 leaves it standing.
I played it late in my MMO career because I was invited there by a friend. It's questing seemed no different than any other MMO to me. I just pushed through it to get levels. It was an obstacle to hanging out with my friend and doing high level content together. Nothing more.
Just saying on that.
Same thing with SWTOR. On the first playthrough at least I really enjoyed the first few zones.
But lets be honest. Just like there were kernels of lore buried in LOTRO, and fun choices buried in SWTOR, the majority of questing in EQ2 was "Go here do that, go here do that, go here do that" with some rare gems buried underneath.
If you were to play EQ2 again you'd eventually fall in thought pattern of "I've done all this before" and power level to max just like you would do in any other MMO.
That's the issue with using quests as a gate to other content and making progression work in such a way that you can't come back and enjoy/appreciate them if you power past them at the start of the game.
It's like the difference between writing something because you want to and writing something as a class assignment. Anything you feel forced into is less enjoyable.
@ the OP, I know how you feel. I had a similar experience when I returned to Anarchy Online for the first time in 12 years. In the old days I played as a doctor. Since I've grown fond of summoner/pet classes in games like TERA and SMT:Imagine. I decided to be an engineer this time.
After completing the newbie area and getting to around level 10 with decent enough implants and gear to be able to summon a bot that was higher level than me, I started doing some of the basic things I knew I would need. One of the things on my list was to turn the newbie solar-powered pistol into the first version of the "engineer pistol" (aka. Solar-powered tinker pistol).
So I googled the recipe and it looked easy enough. Just needed a robotic self-preservation system, a notum chip/fragment and a modified jenson ore extractor. Easy, right? ..not so fast. The first part on my shopping list supposedly dropped from junkyard robots or neutral backyard robots. After a few hours of trying in each place and getting nothing I went back to the internet to search for more information. Apparently the site i looked at was outdated and it drops in Newland Desert south of the whoompah (teleporter) from the buzzsaw scavanger bots near a small lake (pond?). So, after several really hard fights (they were above my level so it wasn't easy) I finally got the robotic preservation thingy.
Next on the list was a notum chip or fragment. At first I confused the 'scrap of notum' thing I already had from killing a boss in the newbie area as the thing I needed. No such luck. That's a part needed for the 'sided shoulderpad' quest so I stuck it in my bank for later. The online guides said the notum things I needed were random from missions. That's ok. I needed to try out the clicksaver and see if I could get some other essential items I would need like the omni-med suit parts or ql 10 concrete cushions. So after many missions I finally got a notum nugget...
Once again, that wasn't the notum thingy I was looking for. ...or was it? After asking in the newbie chat, Someone kindly informed me I could make a notum fragment from my nugget by hitting it with a sledgehammer (typically an enforcer weapon, in my case it was a tool). Later on, after rolling the correct QL hammer in a mission and putting in some strength implants to pump up my wimpy engineer to the strength requirement, I smashed that nugget and got the right notum thingy finally.
Next on the list was the jensen ore extractor. I bought one from a shop (finally something easy!). It was time to put it all together. First I used my screwdriver on the ore extractor to make it a 'modified' ore extractor. Then added the robotic preservy thingy to that to make it an unstable preservation system. Then I was to add my notum chip to that to make a stable preservy thing... It didn't work. The notum chip and preservation thingy were too far apart in QL...
By this point I already had 2 weeks worth of my free time invested in upgrading this gun. Now I had to either find a higher QL notum chip or make a new lower QL unstable preservation thingy...
Eventually I finally did make the first version of the "engi pistol" and that long forgotten feeling of accomplishment from something in a game was amazing! ...and that was just a small, very basic part of a much bigger and more complicated adventure!
Unfortunately that accomplishment came at the price of nearly a month of my free time. Time is something I don't have like I did a decade ago. As much as I would love to play something as difficult yet rewarding as Anarchy Online again, I just don't have the time for it anymore.
Maybe one day they will make a game with the same kind of difficulty in a way that isn't a huge time sink. (unlikely but I can dream.)
"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
(hobbit pie commitee in the Shire, or the proposal scene by the small lake in Overhill are usually the fan favourites
Without map markers and all those other convenience features, you are forced into the game world and must immerse yourself in order to progress. You have to read the quest text. You have to pay attention to what's around you. If you're anything like me, you'll probably end up deeply exploring areas because you can't figure out the clues for a quest and so you're just searching blindly.
In some ways this is great. IF you can get your playerbase to connect to the game world via it's design and story then retention goes up for those that made it that far. Players become more and more motivated to keep exploring. They remember much more of the areas they previously visited and the stories they went through.
The downside is the time it takes to create that emotional connection. In games without the standard convenience features, there is a certain amount of time between starting the game and forming the connection to the world and the stories in which the players can get quite frustrated. Progress can seem slow if you are forever searching around for quest items. You don't yet care about the stories and the initial wonder of the game may have started to wear off. The worse the story is, the longer it can take to create a connection. You can lose an awful lot of your playerbase during this time period.
Personally, I'm all for losing some convenience features like quest trackers / indicators and the like. I'd rather have a small-but-stable community. That said, I'd also like to remove XP from quest completion so that it doesn't matter if you get lost or can't find a quest item as your progress isn't determined by completing quests.
To clarify, It took me nearly a month due to my lack of free time to spend on online games. I was playing 2 hours a night at most and I missed some days completely. Surely someone could do it in just one day if they had the entire day to do it or in a few hours with help from a good party and/or guild (I was still soloing everything). And I'll admit I'm not the best at MMOs (But I still enjoy them anyway). A pro crafter in AO wouldn't have made the same newbie mistakes that led to my setbacks.
Maybe I got too used to games with really fast progression (the "race to the endgame" mentality the OP alluded to) that I forgot the fun part of some games was not the destination but the journey? Quitting because I don't have time free time was mostly a convenient excuse. The real reason is that I really don't like joining an org (guild, clan, whatever) and being left behind while everyone else moves on to bigger an better things without me. In that sense I did quit because of my lack of time to play.
Anyway, It doesn't really take a month to upgrade a pistol in AO. That's just for casual noobs like me lol
And Flyte27 I agree. Games used to feel way more important and special than they do now. There was a time where I felt very fortunate to be one of those who played a game online with people from all around the world. These days it's commonplace and mainstream. Since they no longer feel like something special, games are rarely treated as such by their players anymore.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me