I'm curious as to what MMORPG, if any, you currently play.
I ask because of the examples you used in your OP of players no longer healing or buffing each other and all the responses from people playing current gen MMOs where we still very much do that.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I have my quibbles about there not being enough of that in ESO and I still think of Rift as the MMO high water mark for community activities on a much larger scale often affecting a whole zone at once and with unpredictable timers. Those PvE activities in ESO are on predictable timers at designated and well known spots.
Like I've said many times, those are exactly the sort of activities that MMOs should emphasize and be very good at. It's what sets them apart from other genres.
It's so nice to hear Rift credited for some of the things it did right, and for the first 18 - 24 months it did a lot really well. It had a really cool community. Then the Fire Nation attacked and it all went to hell.
The sad thing is that no one to date has bettered Rift in that zone-wide rift invasion dynamic community event aspect. GW2 did something similar but more limited. It felt like a lesser version of what Rift had already done.
And then ESO dialed the volume down even more by having their dynamic events happen only in specific locations and on a predictable timer. The ESO dynamic events are more reminiscent of what came before Rift: i.e more like Warhammer Online public quests.
It's such an obvious feature that should be a core part of all MMORPGs. MMORPGs are tailor made for those large community events and their focus should be there instead of the ridiculous "you are the chosen one" single player stuff they put so much emphasis on.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
When I played my first Dolmen in ESO I was like, holy freakin moly this is like a baby Rift. I wondered what they would do with them. Several years later I still wonder.
edit: Also PvP Rifts were brilliant. I never played Warhammer so I don't know how their public events worked, but I found the Rifts interesting. Trion kind of bungled those. They need more effort than PvE Rifts do, but they were still a cool idea and something that should be done a ton more in PvP based MMOs.
It's better than not having them at all but all they've done with them for Summerset and Elsweyr was re-skinned them.
PQs in Warhammer worked almost exactly like Dolmens in ESO: anyone near those static locations could go there and start it and anyone else in the area could casually join in grouped or ungrouped.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Only game I can think of that went aggressive with such things is Tabula Rasa honestly. They used the invasion scenario to make it so you had to actively fight for every zone and outlying base or it could be taken by the aliens and used to push further forward against the zones until you basically just had the starting point in the zone to land on. Rifts were neat to me, but didn't break away from the very binary-state side of things. Didn't really improve on what I'd seen in TR.
Only game I can think of that went aggressive with such things is Tabula Rasa honestly. They used the invasion scenario to make it so you had to actively fight for every zone and outlying base or it could be taken by the aliens and used to push further forward against the zones until you basically just had the starting point in the zone to land on. Rifts were neat to me, but didn't break away from the very binary-state side of things. Didn't really improve on what I'd seen in TR.
Never played TR but Rift had different types of rifts: those you could open at will if you had the right components and the zone invasion rift events that killed quest and merchant NPCs and had the potential to shut down towns and villages if they weren't dealt with. They had unpredictable timing and happened often enough to be a core part of the game play - they were especially fun when they happened in a PvP zone.
It's that 2nd type that I'm talking about not the simple binary ones.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Long story short, I noticed a trend where players on the team just hide and watch you die. When I started asking in chat as to why, they all said they "didn't want to risk the repair costs". I mean constantly losing easy "we should have won that" matches.
I play WoT very casual. As in, my feet are up on my desk. Leaned back as far as possible in my chair. I just want to blow things up sometimes.
I uninstalled after that. I can't recall the last time I got assmad over a game, if ever. But that was the moment. Kind of hard to win matches when over 1/3 of your team refuses to play because of stat padding or repair cost.
Only game I can think of that went aggressive with such things is Tabula Rasa honestly. They used the invasion scenario to make it so you had to actively fight for every zone and outlying base or it could be taken by the aliens and used to push further forward against the zones until you basically just had the starting point in the zone to land on. Rifts were neat to me, but didn't break away from the very binary-state side of things. Didn't really improve on what I'd seen in TR.
Never played TR but Rift had different types of rifts: those you could open at will if you had the right components and the zone invasion rift events that killed quest and merchant NPCs and had the potential to shut down towns and villages if they weren't dealt with. They had unpredictable timing and happened often enough to be a core part of the game play - they were especially fun when they happened in a PvP zone.
It's that 2nd type that I'm talking about not the simple binary ones.
Ultima Online was/is doing pretty epic Raids of Towns long before Rift ...Orcs raiding Brit / pirates Raiding Cove etc ... One Town Magnincia being Utterly destroyed , at one point and then Rebuilt anew .. These were the most dramatic NPC raids of towns cities i took part in .. Asherons Call had some pretty Epic ones also .... Recall a Giant with its minions coming down the river at Holtburg killing all in its path , Was fun as hell shooting it the face with a bow from the Bridge ....
Events like this always bring community together and is sadly missing in most games ... Hoiw fun would it be to defend Staddle from a hoard of Orcs in LOTRO which ironically during the Internal tech Testing they did , was fun as hell ( which was just stress testing ) but something that should of made the transition to live
Another note is TR was a lotta fun and deserves a second chance IMO ...
Only game I can think of that went aggressive with such things is Tabula Rasa honestly. They used the invasion scenario to make it so you had to actively fight for every zone and outlying base or it could be taken by the aliens and used to push further forward against the zones until you basically just had the starting point in the zone to land on. Rifts were neat to me, but didn't break away from the very binary-state side of things. Didn't really improve on what I'd seen in TR.
Never played TR but Rift had different types of rifts: those you could open at will if you had the right components and the zone invasion rift events that killed quest and merchant NPCs and had the potential to shut down towns and villages if they weren't dealt with. They had unpredictable timing and happened often enough to be a core part of the game play - they were especially fun when they happened in a PvP zone.
It's that 2nd type that I'm talking about not the simple binary ones.
Ultima Online was/is doing pretty epic Raids of Towns long before Rift ...Orcs raiding Brit / pirates Raiding Cove etc ... One Town Magnincia being Utterly destroyed , at one point and then Rebuilt anew .. These were the most dramatic NPC raids of towns cities i took part in .. Asherons Call had some pretty Epic ones also .... Recall a Giant with its minions coming down the river at Holtburg killing all in its path , Was fun as hell shooting it the face with a bow from the Bridge ....
Another note is TR was a lotta fun and deserves a second chance IMO ...
I played AC as well and I remember those unique events too. They were awesome. But most of those pre-Rift were typically one-of events and usually also had GMs manually running them.
What Rift did was coded them to run automatically and put them into what otherwise was very much a theme park MMO.
But whether they were manually run and infrequent or automated and frequent my points were that those are the things that MMOs should be about as they bring communities together working on group goals. And that since Rift brought that into theme parks no other MMO that came after has improved on it.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Only game I can think of that went aggressive with such things is Tabula Rasa honestly. They used the invasion scenario to make it so you had to actively fight for every zone and outlying base or it could be taken by the aliens and used to push further forward against the zones until you basically just had the starting point in the zone to land on. Rifts were neat to me, but didn't break away from the very binary-state side of things. Didn't really improve on what I'd seen in TR.
Never played TR but Rift had different types of rifts: those you could open at will if you had the right components and the zone invasion rift events that killed quest and merchant NPCs and had the potential to shut down towns and villages if they weren't dealt with. They had unpredictable timing and happened often enough to be a core part of the game play - they were especially fun when they happened in a PvP zone.
It's that 2nd type that I'm talking about not the simple binary ones.
Ultima Online was/is doing pretty epic Raids of Towns long before Rift ...Orcs raiding Brit / pirates Raiding Cove etc ... One Town Magnincia being Utterly destroyed , at one point and then Rebuilt anew .. These were the most dramatic NPC raids of towns cities i took part in .. Asherons Call had some pretty Epic ones also .... Recall a Giant with its minions coming down the river at Holtburg killing all in its path , Was fun as hell shooting it the face with a bow from the Bridge ....
Another note is TR was a lotta fun and deserves a second chance IMO ...
I played AC as well and I remember those unique events too. They were awesome. But most of those pre-Rift were typically one-of events and usually also had GMs manually running them.
What Rift did was coded them to run automatically and put them into what otherwise was very much a theme park MMO.
But whether they were manually run and infrequent or automated and frequent my points were that those are the things that MMOs should be about as they bring communities together working on group goals. And that since Rift brought that into theme parks no other MMO that came after has improved on it.
Right they were run by GMs in AC and UO , and then of course you had the people whining that they were ( wherever) and missed the event and it was not fair .. wahh wahh wahh .. I pay money to ... LOL with that and cost for GMs from what i understand these Live Events died off
I recall another AC event when waves of Banderlings and Drudges raided Rithwic , was so funny that epic Drudge death cry still ringing in my head ..
I'm curious as to what MMORPG, if any, you currently play.
I ask because of the examples you used in your OP of players no longer healing or buffing each other and all the responses from people playing current gen MMOs where we still very much do that.
I don't play anything consistently. Just bounced around a lot modern MMORPG and some past one since playing a lot of WoW Legion
All of this stuff is what Pantheon wants to accomplish. So if that game ever comes we can see if that is what the MMO world needs.
But we do know it is what the mmo world needs. Old school mmos thrived with it, and have been dying a steady death in complete correlation with the carebearification of everything.
SOE changes name to Daybreak games, cause dey break games.
Only game I can think of that went aggressive with such things is Tabula Rasa honestly. They used the invasion scenario to make it so you had to actively fight for every zone and outlying base or it could be taken by the aliens and used to push further forward against the zones until you basically just had the starting point in the zone to land on. Rifts were neat to me, but didn't break away from the very binary-state side of things. Didn't really improve on what I'd seen in TR.
Never played TR but Rift had different types of rifts: those you could open at will if you had the right components and the zone invasion rift events that killed quest and merchant NPCs and had the potential to shut down towns and villages if they weren't dealt with. They had unpredictable timing and happened often enough to be a core part of the game play - they were especially fun when they happened in a PvP zone.
It's that 2nd type that I'm talking about not the simple binary ones.
Ultima Online was/is doing pretty epic Raids of Towns long before Rift ...Orcs raiding Brit / pirates Raiding Cove etc ... One Town Magnincia being Utterly destroyed , at one point and then Rebuilt anew .. These were the most dramatic NPC raids of towns cities i took part in .. Asherons Call had some pretty Epic ones also .... Recall a Giant with its minions coming down the river at Holtburg killing all in its path , Was fun as hell shooting it the face with a bow from the Bridge ....
Another note is TR was a lotta fun and deserves a second chance IMO ...
I played AC as well and I remember those unique events too. They were awesome. But most of those pre-Rift were typically one-of events and usually also had GMs manually running them.
What Rift did was coded them to run automatically and put them into what otherwise was very much a theme park MMO.
But whether they were manually run and infrequent or automated and frequent my points were that those are the things that MMOs should be about as they bring communities together working on group goals. And that since Rift brought that into theme parks no other MMO that came after has improved on it.
Right they were run by GMs in AC and UO , and then of course you had the people whining that they were ( wherever) and missed the event and it was not fair .. wahh wahh wahh .. I pay money to ... LOL with that and cost for GMs from what i understand these Live Events died off
I recall another AC event when waves of Banderlings and Drudges raided Rithwic , was so funny that epic Drudge death cry still ringing in my head ..
I am that crazy guy that still will wade in when I can help. I am usually a tank so you better be low life and fighting boldly since I don't have heals or even real buffs in most games.
Having said that, it is less common than it used to be. Games have changed. It's not just the beautiful dreamers on MMOs anymore. As gaming has become more mainstream, so have the gamers. This includes a great deal of good, and a sad amount of terrible.
None of this is true in the games I play. Stop playing poopbutt games.
Out of curiosity what MMO's do you play? I play FFXIV, Eso, and WoW at the moment and rarely do I ever get someone to heal me or buff me when I am not in a group. Very rarely do I ever get rescued from a mob even if I am about to die or getting my butt kicked. In FFXIV and ESO I rarely see a group of players playing together. Most people play solo until a dungeon.
Only game I can think of that went aggressive with such things is Tabula Rasa honestly. They used the invasion scenario to make it so you had to actively fight for every zone and outlying base or it could be taken by the aliens and used to push further forward against the zones until you basically just had the starting point in the zone to land on. Rifts were neat to me, but didn't break away from the very binary-state side of things. Didn't really improve on what I'd seen in TR.
Never played TR but Rift had different types of rifts: those you could open at will if you had the right components and the zone invasion rift events that killed quest and merchant NPCs and had the potential to shut down towns and villages if they weren't dealt with. They had unpredictable timing and happened often enough to be a core part of the game play - they were especially fun when they happened in a PvP zone.
It's that 2nd type that I'm talking about not the simple binary ones.
RIft stole almost it's entire game from other MMOs......They pretty much just used WARs public quest system and called them rifts.
Only game I can think of that went aggressive with such things is Tabula Rasa honestly. They used the invasion scenario to make it so you had to actively fight for every zone and outlying base or it could be taken by the aliens and used to push further forward against the zones until you basically just had the starting point in the zone to land on. Rifts were neat to me, but didn't break away from the very binary-state side of things. Didn't really improve on what I'd seen in TR.
Never played TR but Rift had different types of rifts: those you could open at will if you had the right components and the zone invasion rift events that killed quest and merchant NPCs and had the potential to shut down towns and villages if they weren't dealt with. They had unpredictable timing and happened often enough to be a core part of the game play - they were especially fun when they happened in a PvP zone.
It's that 2nd type that I'm talking about not the simple binary ones.
RIft stole almost it's entire game from other MMOs......They pretty much just used WARs public quest system and called them rifts.
In this case I don't think steal is appropriate.
Does this mean that every game out there can never have spontanious group quests because one game did them a certain way?
Good ideas are good ideas. As long as other companies don't copy them exactly it leads to the evolution of the genre.
Otherwise we would never be able to have fantasy races. Or we can't have interactive dialogue. Or we can't have npc companions.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Only game I can think of that went aggressive with such things is Tabula Rasa honestly. They used the invasion scenario to make it so you had to actively fight for every zone and outlying base or it could be taken by the aliens and used to push further forward against the zones until you basically just had the starting point in the zone to land on. Rifts were neat to me, but didn't break away from the very binary-state side of things. Didn't really improve on what I'd seen in TR.
Never played TR but Rift had different types of rifts: those you could open at will if you had the right components and the zone invasion rift events that killed quest and merchant NPCs and had the potential to shut down towns and villages if they weren't dealt with. They had unpredictable timing and happened often enough to be a core part of the game play - they were especially fun when they happened in a PvP zone.
It's that 2nd type that I'm talking about not the simple binary ones.
RIft stole almost it's entire game from other MMOs......They pretty much just used WARs public quest system and called them rifts.
If you say that ESO copied WAR's PQs with their Dolmens I could see it - especially since Matt Firor was involved in both of those. Those two have their dynamic events always in the same very small and contained locations. Rift's zone invasion events were much larger in scale spanning whole zones and were nothing like WAR's PQs.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Only game I can think of that went aggressive with such things is Tabula Rasa honestly. They used the invasion scenario to make it so you had to actively fight for every zone and outlying base or it could be taken by the aliens and used to push further forward against the zones until you basically just had the starting point in the zone to land on. Rifts were neat to me, but didn't break away from the very binary-state side of things. Didn't really improve on what I'd seen in TR.
Never played TR but Rift had different types of rifts: those you could open at will if you had the right components and the zone invasion rift events that killed quest and merchant NPCs and had the potential to shut down towns and villages if they weren't dealt with. They had unpredictable timing and happened often enough to be a core part of the game play - they were especially fun when they happened in a PvP zone.
It's that 2nd type that I'm talking about not the simple binary ones.
RIft stole almost it's entire game from other MMOs......They pretty much just used WARs public quest system and called them rifts.
In this case I don't think steal is appropriate.
Does this mean that every game out there can never have spontanious group quests because one game did them a certain way?
Good ideas are good ideas. As long as other companies don't copy them exactly it leads to the evolution of the genre.
Otherwise we would never be able to have fantasy races. Or we can't have interactive dialogue. Or we can't have npc companions.
One thing, you can't patent an idea, only the implementation of that idea. Taking an idea from one game and implementing it verbatim in another game is perfectly fine for a development company. Taking an idea from one game, improving that idea and implementing it in another game is better. It's when the ideas don't change that things stagnate.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Comments
I'm curious as to what MMORPG, if any, you currently play.
I ask because of the examples you used in your OP of players no longer healing or buffing each other and all the responses from people playing current gen MMOs where we still very much do that.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
And then ESO dialed the volume down even more by having their dynamic events happen only in specific locations and on a predictable timer. The ESO dynamic events are more reminiscent of what came before Rift: i.e more like Warhammer Online public quests.
It's such an obvious feature that should be a core part of all MMORPGs. MMORPGs are tailor made for those large community events and their focus should be there instead of the ridiculous "you are the chosen one" single player stuff they put so much emphasis on.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
PQs in Warhammer worked almost exactly like Dolmens in ESO: anyone near those static locations could go there and start it and anyone else in the area could casually join in grouped or ungrouped.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
It's that 2nd type that I'm talking about not the simple binary ones.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
And that's not any different than the invasions from TR, which is where the "didn't really improve" statement came from.
Long story short, I noticed a trend where players on the team just hide and watch you die. When I started asking in chat as to why, they all said they "didn't want to risk the repair costs". I mean constantly losing easy "we should have won that" matches.
I play WoT very casual. As in, my feet are up on my desk. Leaned back as far as possible in my chair. I just want to blow things up sometimes.
I uninstalled after that. I can't recall the last time I got assmad over a game, if ever. But that was the moment. Kind of hard to win matches when over 1/3 of your team refuses to play because of stat padding or repair cost.
What Rift did was coded them to run automatically and put them into what otherwise was very much a theme park MMO.
But whether they were manually run and infrequent or automated and frequent my points were that those are the things that MMOs should be about as they bring communities together working on group goals. And that since Rift brought that into theme parks no other MMO that came after has improved on it.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Having said that, it is less common than it used to be. Games have changed. It's not just the beautiful dreamers on MMOs anymore. As gaming has become more mainstream, so have the gamers. This includes a great deal of good, and a sad amount of terrible.
E: 86% S: 53% A: 40% K: 20%
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
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
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.