I blame Blizzard, they decided that public dungeons always were bad and skipped them in Wow, you don't see them in many games today.
Personally I thought they had a certain charm but it could get annoying if you got too many teams in the same dungeon, particularly if it was on the smallish side.
That personal thought was just confirmed at the launch of the Saga server. With too large player's number, even the "smallish side" criteria is not needed... I posted this in an earlier Saga thread after the launch:
"It definitely brings back the memories of the original launch 10 years
ago, when you see the totally empty White Sands Isle or the Underhall...
Seriously, like after locusts, everything is wiped clean, and more
players running around than mobs used to be present. And as soon as a
poor mob respawns, players jumps on it and kill it right away. It is
very hard to questing now, and ranged classes have a clear advantage in
tapping mobs."
I can't decide whether it's a pro or a con in the topic of having single player tutorials... probably both.
I found that was part of the fun in old MMOs and why I would sometimes jump to new servers. I liked to watch the chaos and people fighting over spawns. In EQ I remember Kelethin and people fighting to kill bats, orc pawns, skeletons, etc. If you knew what you were doing you could get some pelts and make some leather armor quickly. Most people were trying to get out of the zone admittedly and I was one of them, but it is exciting. I could compare it to going to a sports event which has a lot of buildup with regards to the importance of who wins. When the New York Rangers won the Stanley Cup after a long drought is that kind of excitement. I also have to agree with people again that it isn't fun to fight over things provided it doesn't to go an extreme level. I have always found fighting over things to make things more exciting. Fighting over loot and stealing it from each other in games like Diablo 1/2 with friends is what made it fun. It both provided competition and also a lot of laughs from what would otherwise have been just a boring loot grind.
I'm a big fan of public dungeons, though admittedly haven't encountered all that many.
In SWG, I spent a lot of time hanging out in the geonosian caves. I just really enjoyed the aesthetics of it, and whilst it was sometimes annoying when people were camping Acklay at the end, there was still a lot of fun to be had.
But, I think WAR probably had my favourite. That game had tons of public dungeons, most of which just contained the usual trash spawns and then public quests to provide bosses. Kept things quite fair, but also hardly anyone did them so my guild usually had the dungeons to ourselves or maybe 1 or 2 other groups. My favourite was Mt Gunbad, there was just tons to do in there. Only slight downside was the final boss(es) of each wing were put into 6 man instances. That was good insofar as tuning the fight and preventing camping, but mostly that was a negative as it was rare we'd have the perfect group setup so a lot of people would miss out.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
I like it, but would have to have the caveat that you can miss it if you wish , for instance when i play a game that ive not played before i do like to do the tutorial instead of assuming its the same as all games, but then i get annoyed when i HAVE to run it again for every other character i have, its like ive been playing this game for xx years and still it teaches me how to walk (im looking at you Rev online)
3-5 hours for a tutorial is really excessive. MMORPG's are simply not that complicated. Almost all of them can be explained in 3-5 minutes.
Your concept of a tutorial seems to also include learning the lore which is something I care nothing about. Any game that forces me to watch intro movies and cut scenes is immediately uninstalled.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
I remember playing Assassin's Creed 3, and being forced to stomach that God-awful part where you have to play as a child, and quitting the game before I ever finished it. It was that bad.
Please, no. Tutorials are generally either (a) too short to do any good at all, and therefore not even needed or (b) too long and overdone, frustrating gamers who already know how to hold a mouse or controller pad and don't need their hands held, also.
"We are all as God made us, and many of us much worse." - Don Quixote
That's it, just so rarely used nowadays that I forgot the term... Tortage has the main zone with the city, and 3 large* (plus a few more smaller) public dungeons around, each with a normal and a hard mode.
*with large I mean White Sands Isle for example is larger than Tortage, so in practice it is a public zone but technically it is a public dungeon, since the whole zone has a hard version too.
I blame Blizzard, they decided that public dungeons always were bad and skipped them in Wow, you don't see them in many games today.
Personally I thought they had a certain charm but it could get annoying if you got too many teams in the same dungeon, particularly if it was on the smallish side. I guess Blizz cut them out since they mainly went for smaller dungeons or something.
I remember watching two players streaming some Eastern game and they came across another player and one of them said "whoa, there's another player in here. Weird!"
I think people who grew up on World of Warcraft sort of see things very differently from those who played earlier games.
I actually like public dungeons. Oh, I get why Blizzard had more instanced content, but public dungeons help establish more of a "world".
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
LotRO's take is an interesting one, they don't really have public dungeons (except 2). The tech is clearly there, there are lots of public "indoors", most festivals also have such instances, but in the original sense, with mobs and quests and looting, there's just those 2 (if I don't forget about something else... )
Sure, they don't need it that much, the world is open so you meet with other players everywhere while you're questing, no matter what tiny corner you find you can be sure others can get there too - but then why those 2, at the start, right? That can give false hopes for those who like public dungeons, raise their interests, just to never find an another one later
(the two I can remember of is for dwarf and man characters at the beginning, Rockbelly Pit and the spider cavern near Archet. Very low levels, in practice the first dungeon those races get into, besides the story. Easy to assume all the other dungeons will be similar later.)
LotRO's take is an interesting one, they don't really have public dungeons (except 2). The tech is clearly there, there are lots of public "indoors", most festivals also have such instances, but in the original sense, with mobs and quests and looting, there's just those 2 (if I don't forget about something else... )
Sure, they don't need it that much, the world is open so you meet with other players everywhere while you're questing, no matter what tiny corner you find you can be sure others can get there too - but then why those 2, at the start, right? That can give false hopes for those who like public dungeons, raise their interests, just to never find an another one later
(the two I can remember of is for dwarf and man characters at the beginning, Rockbelly Pit and the spider cavern near Archet. Very low levels, in practice the first dungeon those races get into, besides the story. Easy to assume all the other dungeons will be similar later.)
They were trying lots of new gameplay ideas and mixing old with new standards. Not all of them were followed through, but we still got an extraordinarily good MMO. Lotro was the last AAA to be truly innovative in my eyes, even the AAA I highly rate after Lotro just did not try to find a new formula as much as they did.
In ESO before they redid it most people raced through the starter area they had but if you stayed and grinded a bit you came out with nearly all the different types of weapons and full armor. The drops would get better the longer you stayed there. So you had decent gear and starter skills when you got to the first city which usually allowed you to fly through the local city quests.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Havn't played Eve lately but they did or do have a new player tutorial which they expanded.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
no, my character has no history because they are me who magically teleported to the mmo
Well, to have the choice of a set basic story or to make some ingame choices as a young adventurer could be rather fun in the right game as long as it is optional but that wouldn't be a tutorial, more a backstory part of a game.
That actually sounds pretty fun, particularly if your character could turn good or evil in it.
Did Age of Conan have public dungeons? I remember playing Shaiya(why o why id I idk?!?!?!? ) but they had public dungs and I thought that was fun and frustrasting all at the same time
Sounds like an interesting way to learn about a games lore. But the words "Single Player" should have no connection to MMOs. Playable solo, sure, but single player, never. Blaspheme!
AoC has public dungeons, but not as much as you find in Tortage (the pre-20, "tutorial" area). The second part is accurate, it is fun but can be frustrating if too many players are there - which is not something very common in AoC, let's face it (it is still fairly populated, but mostly at the endgame, besides a few alts leveling here and there)
Comments
In SWG, I spent a lot of time hanging out in the geonosian caves. I just really enjoyed the aesthetics of it, and whilst it was sometimes annoying when people were camping Acklay at the end, there was still a lot of fun to be had.
But, I think WAR probably had my favourite. That game had tons of public dungeons, most of which just contained the usual trash spawns and then public quests to provide bosses. Kept things quite fair, but also hardly anyone did them so my guild usually had the dungeons to ourselves or maybe 1 or 2 other groups. My favourite was Mt Gunbad, there was just tons to do in there. Only slight downside was the final boss(es) of each wing were put into 6 man instances. That was good insofar as tuning the fight and preventing camping, but mostly that was a negative as it was rare we'd have the perfect group setup so a lot of people would miss out.
This post is all my opinion, but I welcome debate on anything i have put, however, personal slander / name calling belongs in game
where of course you're welcome to call me names im often found lounging about in EvE online.
Use this code for 21days trial in eve online https://secure.eveonline.com/trial/?invc=d385aff2-794a-44a4-96f1-3967ccf6d720&action=buddy
3-5 hours for a tutorial is really excessive. MMORPG's are simply not that complicated. Almost all of them can be explained in 3-5 minutes.
Your concept of a tutorial seems to also include learning the lore which is something I care nothing about. Any game that forces me to watch intro movies and cut scenes is immediately uninstalled.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
Please, no. Tutorials are generally either (a) too short to do any good at all, and therefore not even needed or (b) too long and overdone, frustrating gamers who already know how to hold a mouse or controller pad and don't need their hands held, also.
I think people who grew up on World of Warcraft sort of see things very differently from those who played earlier games.
I actually like public dungeons. Oh, I get why Blizzard had more instanced content, but public dungeons help establish more of a "world".
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
Sure, they don't need it that much, the world is open so you meet with other players everywhere while you're questing, no matter what tiny corner you find you can be sure others can get there too - but then why those 2, at the start, right? That can give false hopes for those who like public dungeons, raise their interests, just to never find an another one later
(the two I can remember of is for dwarf and man characters at the beginning, Rockbelly Pit and the spider cavern near Archet. Very low levels, in practice the first dungeon those races get into, besides the story. Easy to assume all the other dungeons will be similar later.)
They were trying lots of new gameplay ideas and mixing old with new standards. Not all of them were followed through, but we still got an extraordinarily good MMO. Lotro was the last AAA to be truly innovative in my eyes, even the AAA I highly rate after Lotro just did not try to find a new formula as much as they did.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
That actually sounds pretty fun, particularly if your character could turn good or evil in it.
The second part is accurate, it is fun but can be frustrating if too many players are there - which is not something very common in AoC, let's face it
(it is still fairly populated, but mostly at the endgame, besides a few alts leveling here and there)